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Kieron Pollard will return to the Pakistan Super League for the first time since 2019 after he was picked by Multan Sultans in the replacement draft. The draft, which took place over a conference call on Wednesday, allowed each of the PSL sides to add two more supplementary players, as well as to name partial replacements for those whose availability was limited. Each side was allowed a maximum of one foreign player among the two supplementary picks.Haris Sohail, who recently returned to the Pakistan ODI side for the first time since 2020, was picked by his former side Peshawar Zalmi. Saud Shakeel, who recently made his mark in Pakistan’s home Test series against England and New Zealand, will play for Quetta Gladiators.All the movements at the PSL replacement draft•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

There were a number of replacement picks owing to availability issues for the duration of the PSL, primarily due to a bilateral series between West Indies and South Africa, as well as potential international commitments for Afghanistan. A white-ball series between England and Bangladesh spanning much of the length of the PSL means several England players also needed to be partially replaced, with Adil Rashid, Moeen Ali and Jason Roy potentially unavailable.Related

• Qalandars rebuild around Afridi; Sultans retain successful core

• Karachi Kings lack batting firepower; Peshawar Zalmi missing premium fast bowlers

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• PSL 2023 to kick off with Multan Sultans vs Lahore Qalandars in repeat of last season's final

• PCB postpones women's T20 league to September

In the Platinum category, Lahore Qalandars picked Sam Billings for Rashid Khan; Peshawar Zalmi replaced Rovman Powell with Richard Gleeson; Islamabad United picked Gus Atkinson and Tymal Mills for Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Alex Hales. Multan Sultans replaced David Miller with Izharulhaq Naveed. Quetta reserved their pick for Sri Lanka’s Wanindu Hasaranga, who will depart the tournament on March 3, meaning he will be available for Quetta’s first six games.In the Diamond category, Islamabad United and Peshawar Zalmi reserved their picks for Fazalhaq Farooqi and Mujeeb ur Rehman; Quetta Gladiators picked Dwaine Pretorius and Will Jacks for Odean Smith and Jason Roy.The PSL begins on 13 February in Multan, with the final taking place in Lahore on 19 March.

Somerset put themselves one step closer to qualification for the Vitality Blast quarter-finals with a 16-run win over Glamorgan in Cardiff.Persistent rain reduced the match to a seven-over contest with Glamorgan putting Somerset into bat. Early wickets pegged the visitors back but some powerful blows from Tom Abell and Ben Green took Somerset to 75 for 6.Just as was the case with the Somerset innings, Glamorgan suffered early losses as they got the chase underway. Unlike Somerset they did not have the late acceleration to get them to their target with Colin Ingram playing a lone hand to finish on 37 not out.Victory takes Somerset to 16 points, and while a quarter-final isn’t a mathematical certainty they are extremely well placed.Once the match got underway Michael Neser gave Glamorgan the perfect start with the ball. Somerset lost the wickets of Tom Banton and Rilee Rossouw from consecutive balls, both batters dismissed for golden ducks. Banton attempted to scoop a length ball to the boundary and it crashed into his stumps. Rossouw pulled a shorter ball into the hands Sam Northeast at midwicket.Somerset’s batting efforts received another blow in the second over, Will Smeed chipped a ball from Michael Hogan to Andrew Salter at mid-off for 3. His wicket meant that Somerset were 7 for 3 inside the first two overs.Prem Sissodya’s first over also brought a wicket, Lewis Gregory edging behind to wicket-keeper Alex Horton for 7 to leave his side 15 for 4. The second over from Sissodya contained two boundaries before he bowled Tom Lammonby for 18 to leave Somerset at 41 for 5 with two overs to go.Michael Hogan almost claimed his second wicket of the night when he came back into the attack when Abell hit a drive high into the Cardiff sky. Kiran Carlson was the fielder and he couldn’t hold on to what would have been a very impressive catch.Abel and Green were impressive in the final two overs, putting on 34 runs in 13 balls at the end of the Somerset innings.Glamorgan’s pursuit of the 76 run target got off to a poor start, Northeast becoming the third player to be dismissed first ball when he edged Craig Overton through to Banton. David Lloyd fell the following over, bowled by Peter Siddle for just 1 to reduced Glamorgan to 17 for 2.Dan Douthwaite, promoted up the order in this shortened game, lasted four balls before be holed out on the boundary edge for just 3 with Green picking up the wicket. Green’s impressive all-round performance continued in his second over when Kiran Carlson edged him through to Banton for 7.Ingram and Eddie Byrom where left with 38 runs required from just 12 balls. That equation became 32 from 11 when Byrom smashed Josh Davey for six but the Glamorgan batter was trapped lbw the very next ball.Ingram swung manfully in the final over but there was too much left to do with Somerset claiming their eighth win of this Blast campaign.

Half-centuries from Suryakumar Yadav and Virat Kohli trumped fifties from Cameron Green and Tim David as India chased down 187 and clinched the series 2-1 in front of a sell-out crowd in Hyderabad.Suryakumar got together with Kohli after Daniel Sams and Pat Cummins had bounced out KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma respectively. Whenever the bowlers hit the Hyderabad pitch hard, the ball either kicked up or stopped on the batters. Case in point: the first ball to Suryakumar, from Cummins, reared up from a back of a length and zipped away past his outside edge.Suryakumar, however, rose above the conditions and Australia’s attack, proving a potent point of difference in India’s line-up. He struck up a 104-run partnership off 62 balls with Kohli and disrupted the bowlers by manufacturing swinging room or jumping out of the crease.After Suryakumar ultimately fell for 69 off 36 balls, with India 53 away from victory, Australia staged a mini-fightback and dragged the game down to the last over in which the hosts needed 11.Kohli shovelled the first ball from Sams over long-on and holed out next ball for 63 off 48 balls. Dinesh Karthik and Hardik Pandya, though, got the job done for India with one ball to spare.8:05

Rohit: ‘We still need to be more aggressive and clinical’

Green’s opening salvo
With the new ball sliding onto the bat, Green immediately teed off in the powerplay, muscling his way to a 19-ball fifty in the fifth over. Much like Suryakumar, Green often backed away outside leg and lustily swung at the ball. Only David Warner and Glenn Maxwell have hit faster fifties for Australia in T20Is.Green was responsible for 52 off the 66 runs Australia had scored in the powerplay. He once again unfurled his range against spin when he cracked Axar Patel for three successive fours in the fourth over, with the pick of those being a hard, flat sweep to the midwicket boundary.Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who had conceded 12 runs in his first over, however, returned to the attack in the next over and hid one away from his reach to have Green caught at backward point for 52 off 21 balls. Axar steps up once again
After being picked apart by Green, Axar got his arm ball fizzing against Maxwell and varied his pace well to make it even more effective. He had already dismissed Aaron Finch for 7 and claimed 1 for 31 in his three overs in the powerplay.Axar then returned to the attack with a double-wicket 14th over. He had Josh Inglis lobbing a catch to backward point and drew a return catch from Matthew Wade. Axar went over the wicket to the left-handed Wade, got a shortish ball into the pitch and had him spooning a punch back to him. Axar ended the series with figures of 8 for 63 in ten overs at an economy rate of 6.30. No other bowler got more than three wickets in the series.2:36

Has Tim David cemented his place in the Australia XI?

David’s end-overs bash
That Australia reached 186 for 7 from 117 for 6 was largely down to David’s big-hitting. In his first international series for Australia, David showed why he is in demand in franchise T20 leagues. Despite India posting fielders at both long-on and long-off for the most part, David took 27 of his 54 runs down the ground with Kieron Pollard-esque blows. When Bhuvneshwar marginally missed his yorker, David took him for 6, 6, 4 in the 18th over. Jasprit Bumrah, too, couldn’t control the damage, finishing with 0 for 50 – the most he has conceded in a T20I.The Suryakumar-Kohli show
India lost both their openers within four overs, but Suryakumar and Kohli quickly changed the mood and tempo of the chase. Both batters were proactive against legspinner Adam Zampa, using their feet and hitting him against the intended turn for sixes.Zampa could’ve cut Kohli’s innings short at 23 had he hung onto a tough return catch. Suryakumar soon overtook Kohli and surged to a 29-ball fifty. He then hit two sixes and a four off his next five balls and threatened to rush India home. Hazlewood and co. though applied the brakes and made India work hard for victory.India managed only one four and a six between overs 16 and 19, but Suryakumar’s early assault ensured the chase was always within their grasp.

Former India allrounder Manoj Prabhakar has stepped down as the head coach of the Nepal men’s national team, the country’s cricket board said in a statement. He had been appointed to the role in August this year.Prabhakar only worked five T20Is and seven ODIs with Nepal, including four matches in the World Cup Super League 2.Related

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Nepal had a successful tour of Kenya under Prabkhakar, winning a five-match T20I series 3-2 and then sweeping the one-dayers 3-0. A 2-1 home ODI series win against UAE followed in November.In the World Cup Super League, they suffered two defeats to Scotland and one to Namibia, with their other game against Namibia ending in a no result.Nepal currently sit second from bottom in the World Cup Super League 2 table, with just eight wins from 24 matches.A bowling allrounder, Prabhakar played 39 Test matches and 130 ODIs for India. He has coached the Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh teams, and was the bowling coach of Delhi when they won the Ranji Trophy in 2008. Prabhakar has also worked with Afghanistan when he joined them as their bowling coach in 2015, continuing on to the 2016 T20 World Cup.

Former Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan has reversed his retirement from Tests and T20Is, and has said that he wishes to play all three formats. Shakib has not played international cricket in over a year and had announced his retirement from Tests and T20Is last year.”I am officially not retired from all formats,” Shakib said on the podcast, which features Moeen Ali, on Sunday. “This is the first time I’ll be revealing that. My plan is to go back to Bangladesh, play one full series of ODI, Test, and T20, and retire.”I mean, [I can] retire from all formats in a series. So it can start from T20I, ODI and Test, or Test, ODI, T20I. Either way, I’m fine, but I want to play a whole series and retire. That’s what I want.”Related

• BCB says door still open for Shakib to play for Bangladesh

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Shakib hasn’t returned to Bangladesh since May 2024, once the Awami League government was dethroned on August 5. Shakib was an MP for that party. He was named in an FIR in an alleged murder case, although he was not in the country at the time. He then went on to play Tests in Pakistan and India. The second Test against India in Kanpur was his last international game.When asked whether he will return to Bangladesh, Shakib said, “I am hopeful. That’s why I’m playing [T20 leagues]. I think it will happen.”Shakib further said that he will not be burdened by results and he wants to “give something back to the fans” for years of support in a home series.”I think when a player says something, they try to stick to their words,” he said. “They normally don’t change it all of a sudden. It doesn’t matter if I play well or not. I might play a bad series after that, if I want to play. But I don’t need to do that.”I think this is enough. It’s just a nicer way to say bye to the fans that they supported me always, give something back to them, playing a home series.”Shakib Al Hasan last played a Test in late 2024•AFP/Getty Images

Ahead of the Kanpur Test in September last year, Shakib announced he wasn’t going to play T20Is anymore, while expressing his desire to play his last Test in the home South Africa series that was scheduled for October.There were some protests and clashes around the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka ahead of the Test series, after which Shakib issued an apology for his silence during the students-led protest which led to hundreds of deaths in July and August.The BCB then dropped Shakib for the Tests against South Africa, mainly because Bangladesh’s interim government couldn’t guarantee his safe exit from the country.Earlier this year, a BCB official said that Shakib was welcome to return to the Bangladesh team. In September, Bangladesh’s sports adviser Asif Mahmud declared that Shakib would not be allowed to play for the country after Shakib wished former prime minister Sheikh Hasina on her birthday.Shakib, who was elected as an MP from his hometown Magura in January 2024, also suggested that he wasn’t done with his political career when he was asked what legacy he wants to leave. “[I have] done my cricketing part. Maybe political side is left,” he said. “It’s something I want to do for the people of Bangladesh and people of Magura. That was my intention, and it is still my intention. Let’s see where Allah takes me.”

Taking six wickets on the first day of a Test after losing the toss and bowling on a slow pitch might not be the worst day’s work. But with Sri Lanka having pushed past 300, scoring at 3.66 runs per over across the day, Pakistan were pushed onto the back foot by the time stumps were called in Galle on the first day of the second Test.Pakistan allrounder Mohammad Nawaz, who picked up two wickets on the day, indicated Pakistan might have got things strategically wrong by choosing to press ahead in search for wickets as opposed to trying to restrict the runs.”I think we let them score a little bit too much,” Nawaz said. “The pitch isn’t like the first Test; it wasn’t turning and the pitch was slow. I think we would have been better served by squeezing the score rather than attacking. Because the pitch was very slow and the wickets weren’t coming as easily, you needed to work especially hard for them. So if we’d restricted their score, perhaps the wickets would have come easier.”For much of the day, it was the home batters that dictated the tempo of the play, scoring at over four runs per over in the first and last sessions. In the morning, Sri Lanka’s positive intent was laid crystal clear in the way Oshada Fernando played, scoring 50 off 70 balls including three sixes off the spinners. In the final session, even when Naseem Shah threatened to burst through the lower order with a late new-ball wicket, Pakistan went searching, and Niroshan Dickwella’s unbeaten 43-ball 42 kept the scoring rate sprightly.Nawaz singled out Oshada for praise, but it wasn’t as if Pakistan had no chances. Late in the second and third sessions, two straightforward catches were put down, reprieving Angelo Mathews and Niroshan Dickwella respectively. Pakistan captain Babar Azam was responsible for shelling both chances, leaving Nawaz to rue what might have been.”In cricket, anyone can drop catches,” Nawaz said. “It’s very rare that it happens to Babar, but if those catches had been taken then we might have been able to restrict them to a lower score. Oshada attacked the spinners in the morning and the scoring happened quickly, and then when Chandimal and Mathews struck up a partnership, that was very effective for them.”I think it could still be a spinner’s game, because I expect the pitch behaviour to change on the third and fourth day. In the second innings, the spinners will be more effective.”

India offspinner R Ashwin has replaced England’s James Anderson as the No. 1 bowler in the ICC Test rankings.Ashwin’s rise was the result of him taking six wickets in the second Test of the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia in Delhi, and he has the opportunity to extend his lead at the top in the remaining two Tests of the series.Anderson had displaced Australia’s Pat Cummins as the No. 1 bowler on February 22, after taking seven wickets in the first Test against New Zealand. At the age of 40, he was the oldest top-ranked bowler since Australian legspinner Clarrie Grimmett in 1936. However, Anderson took only three wickets in the second Test against New Zealand, which wasn’t enough to hold off Ashwin’s surge up the charts.Related

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India’s Jasprit Bumrah and Pakistan’s Shaheen Shah Afridi have moved up one spot each to fourth and fifth in the latest rankings update, despite neither bowler having played a Test since July last year. This is because England’s Ollie Robinson has dropped down two spots to No. 6.India’s left-arm spinning allrounder Ravindra Jadeja moved to eighth in the Test bowling rankings following his Player-of-the-Match performance – 10 wickets and 26 runs – in the Delhi Test against Australia. He also leads the Test rankings for allrounders, with Ashwin in second place.England’s Joe Root moved up to eighth in the allrounder’s rankings and also to third in the rankings for batters, after scoring 153* and 95 in the Wellington Test last week. Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith are first and second among Test batters.Harry Brook, after playing just six Tests, has already jumped to 16th place among batters, level with Virat Kohli. Brook has scored 809 runs in ten innings at a strike rate of 98.77.

Cricket Australia has targeted the inclusion of the sport at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics as part of a strategic plan to expand participation and maintain the game’s position at the heart of the country’s sporting culture.The ambitious “Where the Game Grows” plan released on Monday aims to double the number of children aged five to 12 playing the game to 210,000 over the next five years, with girls making up 60,000 of that tally.Another of the targets is to get cricket back into the Olympics for the first time since 1900 – if that goal has not already been achieved at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.Cricket has been shortlisted for possible inclusion at the 2028 Olympics along eight other sports and the International Cricket Council (ICC) will make a presentation to organisers later this month.The host city can include any sport but needs the approval of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).Women’s T20 cricket made its Commonwealth Games debut in Birmingham last month with Australia beating India by nine runs in the final to claim the inaugural gold medal.Brisbane has plans to rebuild the city’s Gabba cricket ground as a 50,000-seater Olympic Stadium to host the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2032 Games.The inclusion of cricket in the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics is part of the “sustainable future” strand of the plan, which also aims to improve fan experience, expand the grassroots and continue Australia’s success on the world stage.CA has set a target of at least three ICC tournament triumphs over the next five years for both the men’s and women’s national teams.Elsewhere, it has committed to publishing an action plan related to environmental sustainability.”Cricket is a quintessential part of the Australian summer. However, recent years have shown how vulnerable our game is to a changing climate,” the document said.There is also a strong focus on the BBL and WBBL with this season labeled the “Rebound” following the impact of Covid, especially on attendance, before a period that has been called “Reimagine”. The challenges are particularly acute for the BBL given the rapid growth of T20 leagues in the January window.”This strategy contains both a vision and a clear plan for how we can achieve bold, transformative change while also meeting our core responsibilities,” said CA chief executive Nick Hockley.”I would like to thank everyone across the game for their passion and commitment as we work to unite and inspire everyone to love and play cricket, and in so doing make cricket a sport for all that makes Australians proud.”

The ECB disciplinary hearing into allegations of racism at Yorkshire is set to be postponed until the new year, following a series of appeals against a controversial ruling that the case should be heard in public.The Cricket Discipline Commisson (CDC) had been set to convene on November 28, with seven individuals as well as Yorkshire CCC itself all charged with offences, in the wake of allegations made by the club’s former player, Azeem Rafiq.It was Rafiq’s request for greater transparency that led the CDC to break with precedent, with previous cases held behind closed doors before written judgements were handed down.Michael Vaughan, the former England captain, is among those facing charges, following Rafiq’s allegations that he had told a group of Asian Yorkshire players in 2009 that “there are too many of you lot” and “we need to do something about it”.Last week, the Telegraph, the newspaper for which Vaughan writes a column, reported that Vaughan himself was “happy for the proceedings to be held in public”.Others, however, are reportedly less keen, among them, the newspaper added, the former Yorkshire and England fast bowler, Matthew Hoggard. According to Rafiq’s testimony before MPs at the DCMS hearings in November 2021, Hoggard had rung the player to apologise for his behaviour during their shared time at the club, with Rafiq subsequently telling the panel that “all I ever wanted was an apology”.Andrew Gale, Yorkshire’s former captain and head coach, and another of the charged players, has already stated that he will take no part in what he described as a “tainted process”, after walking away from the sport earlier this year, while Roger Hutton, the club’s former chairman, also announced this week that he will not attend the hearings.Hutton, who was one of the few Yorkshire administrators, past or present, to attend last year’s DCMS hearings, was similarly critical of the decision to make the proceedings public, stating: “I simply do not have confidence in the ECB, its governance or its agenda and who notably escape all scrutiny themselves.”In a statement, the ECB said: "Appeals have been filed by a number of the respondents in relation to the decisions of the CDC panel following the preliminary issues hearing last month. The appeals now need to be heard and therefore the full CDC hearing into the ECB’s charges against Yorkshire CCC and a number of individuals will no longer start on November 28. That hearing is now expected to take place in early 2023.”;Related

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The prospect of a postponement gives rise to the possibility that Adil Rashid, England’s T20 World Cup-winning legspinner, could now attend the hearings in person, having previously stated that he would be out of the country, at the Abu Dhabi T10s and a subsequent family holiday, during the original hearing date.Rashid, who was in Yorkshire’s team at the time of Vaughan’s alleged comments, at Trent Bridge in 2009, previously corroborated Rafiq’s version of events, as did Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, the former Pakistan international who was then one of the club’s overseas players.Rafiq, who is also due to attend a follow-up DCMS select committee hearing on December 13, was this week accused of two counts of indecent exposure during his time at Yorkshire, in court documents relating to a lawsuit from the former club physiotherapist, Wayne Morton, who was sacked last year in a mass purge of the back-room staff.A spokesperson for Rafiq, who has since left the country for an indefinite period following threats against his family, said: “People who have been desperate for the sport to retain its toxic culture have spread numerous variations of these false allegations since Azeem spoke at the select committee last year.”Every time they have been shown to be incorrect and falsified, details always changing. This twisted campaign of lies has been never ending and it has seriously compromised Azeem’s and his family’s safety, which is why he has left the country.”This level of lies and vengeance only proves the sport is not ready to change and why whistle-blowers need proper protection.”

A set plan to tackle the spinners with sweeps and reverse sweeps in addition to overlooking the “smoke” around his batting form allowed Jason Roy to make 132 off 124 balls in a series-winning effort in the second ODI against Bangladesh.Roy’s ton was big enough to end the hosts’ proud home record of seven unbeaten ODI series wins in seven years. Bangladesh were bundled out for 194 in pursuit of 327, and it was Roy’s innings that mainly put them out of the contest.Roy got four boundaries with reverse hits off the left-arm spinners, apart from playing the conventional sweep to milk the slow bowlers.”It was a plan [to sweep and reverse sweep] with the amount of turn,” Roy said. “To go over point was the safest option for me. I tried to go over cover a couple of times, it was just too slow and too much spin. I tried to put that to bed quickly. Once Shakib [Al Hasan] gets that undercutter, I should have hit it to the sightscreen, but I tried to sweep him [and got out]. It was a slightly poor decision but apart from that, I think you had to keep your boundary options very simple. You can hit it wherever you want when you get a lot of runs. Out there, [hitting the sweeps and reverse sweeps] was one of the only boundary options for me today.”Roy said that the Dhaka pitch played to the batters’ advantage. It was slow, but the spin was to a consistent degree, which allowed for easier strokeplay compared to the first ODI where the pitch offered uneven bounce.”I only faced four balls the other day, it was clearly a lot easier today,” he said. “But there was a bit more spin, but it was consistent. The other day it was slightly inconsistent bounce as well as turn. It was far lower scoring whereas today there was slow bounce. I think the boys showed a high amount of skill to give us that total.”Roy spoke about the relief of getting runs on this Bangladesh tour, particularly after getting out early in the first game.”Every single time [scoring a hundred] means the world. I worked hard to right my wrongs from the first match. I made a silly mistake then, and I was hungry to make some runs. There are some hundreds in the past when you get to 40, and you feel really free-flowing when you get to the hundred. Every boundary was a scrap. I built a great partnership with Jos [Buttler]. We ticked over nicely.”Every place poses completely different skillsets. None more so somewhere like here. I have scored runs in India. As far as skillset for batsmen, to score runs in these sort of conditions is as rewarding as it can get. I am very happy to score. The amount we scored today on that wicket in a series-defining match was awesome.”Roy said that he took a leaf out of Dawid Malan’s book from the first ODI when the left-hander struck his fourth ODI hundred. It saved England from defeat essentially, as Malan mastered the conditions to take the visitors home.”I have realised that very quickly once I stuck that one up in the air in the first game,” Roy said. “The way Malan went about his innings, I quickly realised to switch on, put my head in and bat some time.”It was just time at the crease. I can score a lot of runs if I batted that amount of time. As simple as that. I reduced the risk in boundary options. The one I got out to, was the highest risk for a boundary option I took. I got out stupidly.”