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Zimbabwe Cricket has denied reports that Brendan Taylor has given it an ultimatum over his desire to play club cricket overseas.Sources close to the player said he had given himself a cut-off date of Friday (June 6) to decide on his international career. Taylor had been trying to get permission from the board to play club cricket in Europe. “He is seriously considering resigning now,” Cricinfo was told. “By end of week he would have made a decision.”However, this version of events was disputed by Lovemore Banda, ZC’s media manager. “This gives the impression that ZC is an overbearing organisation that is unreasonably denying Taylor leave to play overseas,” he told Cricinfo. “Nothing can be further from the truth.”At the onset of the 2007-08 season, ZC made it clear to every player that they were expected to fulfil all their domestic obligations with the organisation and would only be free to play wherever they wanted after the end of the season (June 2). We have invested heavily by providing exposure to our nucleus of senior players over time. It is only proper that we get a return on that investment by having the players taking part in our domestic cricket and raising the standard of the local game.”At the end of the season, the players are allowed to play in whichever country they accept an offer from, since ZC stands to benefit if the players remain exposed to a high level of play.”We remain supportive of all our players and said as much in our letter of May 7 to Taylor, part of the last paragraph of which reads: ‘We would therefore encourage you to complete your obligations as per the dates outlined and we remain supportive of whatever direction you so decide your career to take’.”

Graham Thorpe today issued the following statement:”I have informed the selectors that I wish to withdraw from the tour to Australia.During the 6 weeks away from the game my personal situation did improve and I felt that I was able to make myself available for the tour.Since returning to the game I have found it difficult to consistently concentrate on cricket and I must be totally focused for the tour. I therefore feel it is better to be honest with the England cricket team, the management, and myself now, rather than during the Ashes tour.It would be wrong for me to go to Australia purely for the financial gain that it would bring me whilst I am finding it difficult to fully focus on the job in hand 100% of the time.This has been the hardest decision of my cricket career. I ask that I may be given the respect and privacy required so that I may recover to play cricket at highest level next season.”Paul Sheldon, Surrey County Cricket Club Chief Executive stated:”It is best for everyone concerned that a final decision over this winters tour has been made now. We will continue to do everything we can to help Graham through this very difficult time. Surrey is his cricketing home and we will be in very close touch throughout the winter.”

Either Craig White or Alex Tudor could be called into the England Ashes squad should they decide to look outside the existing party for a replacement for Andrew Flintoff.The England coach, Duncan Fletcher, announced today that Flintoff is to receive further treatment on his hernia injury at the Australian cricket academy in Adelaide.”Although Andrew’s recovery programme is running behind schedule at present, we remain confident that he will be able to take part in the Ashes series,” Fletcher said.”However, our physio Kirk Russell has a heavy workload at present due to the number of injuries in the squad and we feel that the medical team at the Academy are best placed to give Andrew the intensive one-to-one treatment he needs if he is to be fit for the first Test in Brisbane.”Other players are around in Australia, practising, and if the injuries don’t work out, we may have to make a decision to bring them in. We’ll make that decision over the next four or five days.”Tudor, who celebrates his 25th birthday today, has taken 26 wickets at 31.5 in nine Tests. The Surrey fast bowler narrowly missed selection in the original squad after an up-and-down summer against Sri Lanka and India that was interrupted by shin splints.White was another of the summer’s injury victims, suffering a side strain that prevented him from bowling after he had batted impressively against India, scoring an unbeaten 94 at Trent Bridge.If he is now fit to bowl, White’s all-round credentials are the stronger. Although Tudor made an unbeaten 99 against New Zealand three years ago, White’s Test average of nearly 25 fits him more closely to the vital number seven slot which is will be at issue if Flintoff does not recover in time for Brisbane.Three recuperating England players, Flintoff, Michael Vaughan and Darren Gough, missed the opening game of England’s tour against an Australian Cricket Board (ACB) Chairman’s XI, which the tourists lost by 58 runs in Perth.”Vaughan has a very good chance of playing in the next three-day match against Queensland, starting in Brisbane on November 2,” Fletcher told a news conference.”Gough is pretty positive. He has bowled on each of the past two days and there has been no reaction. He is feeling pretty bullish at this stage. We don’t want to push him too soon. We’ll just have to wait and see. We won’t know whether he is ready for the Test unless he is ready for the Brisbane three-day game.”Fletcher dealt succinctly with a question about whether England should have brought so many injured players on tour against the world’s top-ranked side.”Should we have left them at home then?” he said.England next match is over two days against Western Australia in Perth, starting tomorrow.

Somerset entertain championship table toppers Surrey at the County Ground tomorrow, and will be anxious to earn some vital points to enable themselves to climb away from the relegation zone.When the sides met at the Oval in May the rain affected game ended in a draw. Since then Surrey have continued their run of success and have four wins from their six matches.The Cidermen however have continued to be dogged by the bad weather, which has prevented them from getting a result after being in winning situations.They have also had more than their fair share of injuries, and tomorrow will be missing the services of Jamie Cox, who is still recovering from a broken thumb, and strike bowler Richard Johnson who pulled a hamstring at Edgbaston last week.The Somerset team is: Matt Wood, Piran Holloway, Mike Burns, Peter Bowler, Keith Parsons, Ian Blackwell, Rob Turner, Keith Dutch, Simon Francis, Matt Bulbeck and Steffan Jones.Earlier this morning Somerset coach Kevin Shine told me: "This is another big match for us, and it is important for us to get a result. When we met at the Oval earlier in the season we were in a good position before the rain came down. Our championship form this year is good, so the boys will be full of confidence tomorrow."Acting captain Mike Burns told me: "We are playing well at the moment without much luck. Hopefully this will change and things will start to turn our way starting tomorrow."

CASTRIES – Trinidad and Tobago secured a place in the Final Four when they routed Canada for a meagre 55 runs to race to a lop-sided 175-run victory in their final Zone "B" Red Stripe Bowl match at the Beausejour Stadium yesterday.West Indies fast bowler Mervyn Dillon combined with captain Daren Ganga and Richard Smith, who hit contrasting half-centuries in a challenging total of 230 off 49.5 overs, to lead Trinidad and Tobago’s ruthless demolition of Canada.Dillon took four wickets for 25 runs in his ten overs, and leg-spinner Dinanath Ramnarine bagged three for 17.Canada’s capitulation was the second lowest total in the regional One-Day competition following Bermuda’s 48 against the Windward Islands in 1999.Just one Canadian batsman, pinch-hitting opener John Davison, reached double figures, his ten runs, which included two of the three fours in the entire innings, coming in Dillon’s first over.

Heavy overnight rain put pay to any thoughts of play in Glamorgan`s final match of their pre-season tour to Cape Town yesterday, and the 50 over match against the Hermanus club was called off without a ball being bowled.Despite the loss of this final one day game, as well as over three hours of play in the three day game against Boland Academy, the tour has given the Glamorgan squad valuable outdoor practice and some competitive warm-up games as they prepare for the start of the new season next week.

Sunday, 24th June sees the start of the CricInfo Test series between the women of England and Australia at Shenley. The players then move to Derby, Northampton and Lord’s for the CricInfo One-Day International series, before the Second Test gets under way at Headingley on 6th July.

During a similar period last summer, the English women would have been taking on the undisputed world champions. However, since an unexpected defeat at the hands of hosts, New Zealand, in the final of the CricInfo Women’s World Cup just before Christmas, the Australians can no longer regard themselves as being invincible.The summer still presents a tough challenge for England however; for in Christchurch it was the Kiwi girls who proved themselves to be up there on a par with the Australians, rather than the Aussies going backwards.Before the World Cup began, Australia and New Zealand were thought to be out on their own with two out of England, South Africa and India likely to occupy the other semi-final places. But England failed to beat either of their rivals and so were the team to miss out.Just as the men’s team looked overseas for a coach to resurrect the national fortunes by enlisting Duncan Fletcher from Zimbabwe, so too have the English women. John Harmer is the man asked to turn around the women’s game and restore it to its position of former glory. The delightful irony here is that John Harmer has been coach of the Australian women’s team and lifted it to a supreme status in the game.How does he feel about changing camps and finding himself pitted against his former charges immediately? “Not well” is the instant response. Then, more seriously, “I’m looking forward to it with a great deal of excitement because I think we can do a lot of work and we’ve got a lot of interested people here – young people who are keen to tackle the issues and get on with it. That will be excellent – working with the other staff.”Harmer believes that he saw enough potential in the England camp to lift them to challenge the likes of Australia and New Zealand. “I don’t think there’s any question that they can do it; just a question of how we go about it. There are some good players and the advances made in athleticism and skills in the last three years have been very significant, so we just need to build on what’s already there.”There is nobody better to judge what progress England will have hopefully made in the course of this summer, and Harmer’s appointment as full-time coach on along-term contract as part of a wider national strategy for cricket must bode well for the future. Not that miracles can be expected in such a short time, but if progress can be seen to be occurring, John Harmer will at least be on the way to achieving one of the ECB’s stated aims for women’s cricket – winning back the World Cup last held in 1993.Certainly England have the base from which to build a good side. Evergreen Clare Taylor was the second top wicket taker in the CricInfo Women’s World Cup, Claire Taylor is far too fine a player not to come back strongly, and skipper Clare Connor fronts a young side full of emerging talents – such as 17-year-old spinner Laura Harper.As for the Australians, they still represent a mighty test for any newly found inspiration among the English women. They might have got it wrong one day in Christchurch, but as a cricketing unit of the highest calibre, they will have been stung by that defeat and will be going flat out to restore lost pride. It should be some contest.

A major embarrassment for the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) and the WICB was avoided after the Trinidad & Tobago players departed for South Africa to compete in the Champions League Twenty20 after initially threatening to pull out of the tournament over a monetary dispute with the TTCB.”The players from T&T have decided to travel to South Africa,” Suruj Ragoonath, the TTCB chief executive, told ESPNcricinfo. “In the meantime, the TTCB and WIPA, who have good relations, continue discussions on the matter.”The dispute began on October 3 when five T&T players – Denesh Ramdin, Darren Bravo, Ravi Rampaul, Lendl Simmons and Samuel Badree – currently in Sri Lanka representing West Indies in the World Twenty20, told the TTCB that they would participate in the CLT20 only if the board shared with them the $450,000 it received for allowing Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo and Sunil Narine to represent their IPL teams instead of their country.The players’ emissary was Dinanath Ramnarine, the former WIPA president. Ramnarine, who has had numerous run-ins with the WICB on various issues, had recently helped Simmons and Ramnaresh Sarwan claim damages from the WICB for breach of their player contracts.It is understood the situation worsened on Thursday morning, when the ten other members of the T&T squad also refused to travel to South Africa on their 5pm flight from Port-of-Spain unless the demands were met. The problem had arisen six days before T&T’s first game in the qualifying stage of the Champions League and it caught the TTCB off guard.Reacting to the development, the TTCB initially explained to the players that a guaranteed sum of more than $20,000 was assured to each individual for two qualification matches. Ramnarine pointed out that in case the team advanced to the main round, the TTCB had guaranteed an additional $200,000 before taxes. It was also reported that 75% of the monies and any other prize money would be shared among the squad.That, however, did not change the players’ minds and so the TTCB reportedly asked the selectors to appoint five replacements. Former West Indies players Mervyn Dillon, Daren Ganga, and Dave Mohammed were sounded out, along with the pair of Justin Guillen and Stephen Katwaroo.The TTCB also contacted WICB officials and informed them about the development. “The WICB was told that the players had put down a condition to travel which the TTCB did not believe was fair,” a CLT20 official told ESPNcricinfo. “TTCB said that the money paid by the IPL franchises had nothing to do with the T&T squad and they were not willing to share. They have reached deadlock.”The WICB officials went scrambling to try and organize a Jamaica squad, who were runners-up in the Caribbean T20 last season, as a replacement team. “The WICB felt they had to send a team to represent the Caribbean and the board was is in talks with the Jamaica Cricket Association to send a team,” the official said.However, after last-minute negotiations, the T&T players decided to board the flight to Johannesburg.

Kanwaljeet Singh (5 for 100) and Mohammad Ghouse (5 for 97) took all theten wickets between themselves but failed to revive the hopes of Hyderabad,last year’s runners-up, in their Ranji Trophy pre quarter-final matchagainst Madhya Pradesh at the Daly College Ground in Indore on Wednesday.Madhya Pradesh entered the quarterfinals by virtue of their 107-run firstinnings lead. Madhya Pradesh will now meet Orissa in the quarterfinals.Resuming at 116 for 1, MP went on to make 291 runs, setting an improbablevictory target of 399 with only a few overs left for Hyderabad. The toporder – HS Sodhi (36), NV Ojha (40), Amay Khurasiya (35) and DevendraBundela (11) – all fell to Ghouse. Then Kanwaljeet took over and sent themiddle order packing. But Jai P Yadav (48) and Chandrakant Pandit (69 notout) forged a 76-run seventh wicket partnership. The lower order caved inwithout resistance to the guiles of the veteran off spinner. But by thetime the innings folded up, the result was well and truly decided.Hyderabad in the remaining eight overs scored 50 runs while losing bothopeners Daniel Manohar (25) and Vanka Pratap (4). Anirudh Singh (16) and DVinay Kumar (1) were unbeaten at the end.

Another fast bowler from New Zealand has succumbed to a stress fracture of the back following similar injuries to Dion Nash, Geoff Allott and Daniel Vettori.Canterbury’s Wade Cornelius has been struggling with back pain for “the last couple of games,” said coach Michael Sharpe, who lost a bowler early on for the third State Championship match in a row.Cornelius, who has been Canterbury’s breakthrough player this year with 33 first-class wickets at 16, told CricInfo, “It’s a bit sad, but I suppose it could have come at a worse time.”Following he and brother Cleighten opening the bowling together for Canterbury this week against Auckland, the first time siblings have shared the new ball for the province since Richard and Dayle Hadlee 20 years ago, yesterday’s day of celebration turned sour at the doctor’s this morning.Cornelius said, “I’ve had an x-ray that shows two stress fractures,” adding that the next step was to further confirm the diagnosis with a bone scan.”It puts paid to my chances of going to England for the winter,” he continued.Just last Saturday former Lancaster Park team-mate Jimmy Hindson, who played for Nottinghamshire from 1992-97 phoned Cornelius to ask him to play in the Nottinghamshire League for Caythorpe, where the left-arm spinner is professional.”I’ll have to see if I can go as a batsman,” joked the likeable tail-ender Cornelius, who will join the likes of Chris Cairns, Shane Bond and Warren Wisneski in the sickbay of Canterbury and New Zealand cricket.