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Chris Gayle has said he “will explore the opportunities available” to him elsewhere since he can no longer wait on the WICB to resolve their issues with him

ESPNcricinfo staff01-Jul-2011Chris Gayle has said he “will explore the opportunities available” to him elsewhere since he can no longer wait on the WICB to resolve their issues with him, but is available for selection for West Indies and Jamaica and has ruled out retirement. In a long and emotional public statement he said communication with officials of the West Indies and Jamaica boards had broken down and traced the evolution of the long-running and bitter dispute back to 2009, when Ernest Hilaire, now CEO of the WICB, cast doubts on his ability to captain the team.Gayle also referred to the recent efforts at rapprochement with Hilaire and said that Hilaire would not be able to meet him till August, ruling him out of West Indies’ current home series against India.”I have now reached the stage where I have to say that enough is enough,” Gayle wrote. “I understand that the WICB and the Jamaica Board met and my matter was discussed but nobody has told me anything and I can only assume without any positive feedback there has been no resolution. There is a disciplinary process in West Indies cricket. Yet the board is allowed to be the complainant as well as policeman, judge, jury and executioner in my case. When I tried to respond to the accusations made against me, I am deemed to be out of place and trying to destroy West Indies cricket.”I am now coming close to the end of my shelf-life as a cricketer … and must concentrate on providing for my family now and in the future. On this basis, and not hearing from the West Indies Cricket Board with any clear pathway forward, I have come to the bitter realisation that I am not wanted by the board and all that has gone before in terms of reconciliation is a sham and a mockery. I see it as a scam to fool the people of the West Indies and the world into believing that they were serious about my returning to West Indies cricket.”My eyes are open, my heart is clean, my conscience is clear and the voice of reason is loud in my ears telling me that I should close this chapter in my life. I am not going to be the WICB’s whipping boy. We as West Indies players are admired throughout the world for our honesty and sportsmanship. Yet the custodians of West Indies cricket, the people who are responsible for the development of our heritage sport, have not dealt with us honestly.”It is against this background that I have now decided not to wait on the WICB any longer but, while I still have the time and the skills, explore the opportunities available to me elsewhere. I do it reluctantly but have no choice. I have people to take care of and cannot sit for months waiting on WICB CEO Ernest Hilaire and the board.”Despite all that has happened I am still hopeful that good sense will prevail and I would once again represent my country and my region in near the future. I wish to make it abundantly clear that I have not yet retired from any form of the game and remain available for selection for both Jamaica and West Indies. However, this is entirely out of my hands.”Gayle suggested his exclusion from the series against India was part of a long-term plan to remove him from the team. The problem, Gayle said, goes back to 2009, since when he had “been put in a no-win situation”. Soon after Hilaire took office that October, he said, the board questioned the selectors’ recommendation that he should captain the team to tour Australia. While eight members voted for him, five voted against. “Clive Lloyd, who had praised me highly before was one of them [who voted against him]. He never said anything to me about why he was no longer on my side. Joel Garner, who was the manager of the West Indies team and who worked with me closely on the Stanford game which we won, was another. Conde Riley from Barbados too. Most surprising is the man who said publicly that he always supported me as captain. Professor Hilary Beckles voted against me so when he says that he pushed for me to be captain you have to decide whether to believe Beckles or the minutes of the meeting. Gregory Shillingford of the Leeward Islands voted against me.”The Board set up a committee to meet with him, he said, which included Lloyd, Garner and Beckles. He was then criticised in coach Ottis Gibson’s report on the 2010 World Twenty20, which said, “the captain was not a natural leader” and “not a student of the game and lacks tactical awareness on the field”. However, Gayle wrote, Gibson never said anything to him before or after his report. “He is a man who sought my advice when things were not going well. Before he became the West Indies coach he used to call me often.”In October 2010, Gayle was sacked as captain, and says he still has no idea why. “I did not protest since the captaincy is not a right. It is a duty.” He said he went on the Sri Lanka tour in November 2010 having recommitted himself to West Indies cricket and backing Darren Sammy, the new captain. He pointed to his triple-century in the first Test of that tour, and said: “Nobody questioned my commitment then.”After the World Cup, he said, the board was looking for people to blame for the poor performance of the team and “picked on me and the other senior players”. This time it was not the captaincy that was the issue but the senior players – “Gibson said we lacked the hunger and the desire to succeed”.Gayle said he played with an injury during the World Cup and returned to Jamaica to get in shape for the home series against Pakistan. A camp was set up but nobody contacted him, and he was again ignored when the squad was picked for the first two ODIs. That, he says, is when he got an offer to play in the IPL – for Royal Challengers Bangalore – and went when the WICB made it publicly clear that Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Gayle were not considered for selection. “I did not turn my back on the West Indies because the West Indies had already turned its back on me. I was not in the squad and it was clear that there was no intention to pick me.”From there on things moved swiftly – and dramatically. Gayle said the controversial June 15 meeting with WICB officials, at which WIPA president Dinanath Ramnarine was also present, was called to discuss his future but had a motive other than his reinstatement in the side.On June 22, he said, he wrote to Hilaire in response to an email received the previous day in which Hilaire said he wanted to resolve the issue but sought to know what Gayle wanted him to do. Gayle said he had not received any guidance, other than what has appeared in the media, on what he needed to do to be included in the West Indies team.He received a reply two days later in which Hilaire said that the issue was about a “history of misunderstanding, miscommunication and mishandling of issues, on both sides”. He said Gayle would have to meet with the team management and after that with the selectors, and after that with the cricket operations department and only then would Hilaire meet him before reporting to the board. That, Hilaire said, would not be until August.Gayle also referred to the WICB’s claim that Ramnarine had threatened Hilaire with a chair at the June 15 meeting, saying nothing of the sort happened. He admitted tempers flared during the meeting but disagreed with accusations that Ramnarine had not represented Gayle’s best interest in the meeting.

Ricky Ponting has told his team to maintain its newly-found high standards after Australia’s breakthrough victory ended a five-Test winless streak and squared the Ashes series

Peter English at the WACA19-Dec-2010Ricky Ponting has told his team to maintain its newly-found high standards after Australia’s breakthrough victory ended a five-Test winless streak and squared the Ashes series. The crushing 267-run success gave the hosts some much-needed momentum as the sides heads to Melbourne for a Boxing Day Test that will now be a blockbuster.”We got a nice old hiding in Adelaide last week and so to bounce back as drastically and dramatically as we have done, it says a lot about us and where we’re at,” Ponting said after missing the final morning with a broken little finger. The result caused a dramatic shift as the campaign swung in a similar way to the see-sawing 2009 Ashes in England.”There was a lot of emotion in this win, we hadn’t had much to celebrate up to now,” Ponting said. “We have now set a new set of standards this week, this is the best way for us to play our cricket, and we have to maintain those standards. We have had a better team performance here than we have for a long time and it is important we don’t take this for granted, but make sure this win is significant.”Australia have picked an unchanged 12 for Melbourne and have the option of adding a standby player if Ponting’s injury continues to be a problem. Phillip Hughes and Steven Smith held their spots after unconvincing contributions and Michael Beer retains his place as Australia seek stability.Beer, the left-arm spinner, was released to play for Western Australia in their Sheffield Shield loss to Tasmania and went wicket-less in 11 overs. Australia had huge success with a four-pronged pace attack at the WACA but will need more variety on the drop-in surface in Melbourne, where Beer is in line to debut in front of a crowd that could top 90,000.”He’s grown up in Melbourne his whole life, so he’ll know what the conditions are going to be pretty much down there,” Ponting said of Beer. “Whether he plays or not will depend on what the wicket looks like a couple of days before the game.”After the innings thrashing in Adelaide, Ponting thought “here we go again” when Australia slumped to 5 for 69 on the first day, but they recovered through the batting of Michael Hussey, Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson. Johnson then surged Australia ahead in England’s first innings before he and Ryan Harris finished off the match.The Australians were the target of fierce criticism after their performances in the first two Ashes Tests and this was the first time they have sung the team song since they beat Pakistan at Lord’s in July. “It has been warranted,” Ponting said of the public and media reaction over the past month. “Yes, it has been pretty harsh, but you expect that when you’re not performing the way people want you to perform. That is the way the team has taken it.”We’ve not been that worried about it, we’ve just tried to be better to give you guys something good to say about us and we’ve done that this week. The feeling around our group has been great and nothing has changed. I’ve just waited for it to click together like it has done this week and that is what makes me so proud of the guys.”The last Ashes series had a handful of key turning points and this campaign has a familiar feel as two solid sides trade blows without any knock-outs. England won the second game at Lord’s after being out-played in the drawn opener, while Australia drew level in the fourth Test before losing the match and the urn at The Oval.Ponting said his side had gained momentum and confidence after failing to grab it in Brisbane and Adelaide. “We’ve got the tide going back in our direction now and, more importantly, we’ve got some of our key players going well,” he said. “Like Mitchell, who is on top of the world and has as much confidence as he’s ever had in his career.”Mike Hussey is in the same boat, as is [Shane Watson], Ryan Harris, Ben Hilfenhaus and Brad Haddin, so we’ve got a number of guys playing somewhere near their best and that is why I’m confident in this group. It is amazing what impact confidence and that winning feeling amongst the group can have. It can make the team achieve some special things.”Australia squad Shane Watson, Phillip Hughes, Ricky Ponting (capt), Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, Steven Smith, Brad Haddin (wk), Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle, Michael Beer, Ben Hilfenhaus.

Ian Westwood scored the only half-century of the match to guide bottom side
Warwickshire to a seven-wicket victory over fellow County Championship
strugglers Essex at Southend

06-Aug-2010
ScorecardIan Westwood scored the only half-century of the match to guide bottom side
Warwickshire to a seven-wicket victory over fellow County Championship
strugglers Essex at Southend.The visiting captain struck 61 to steer his side to their third success of the
summer after they had been left with a target of 155. Westwood combined a solid defence with the occasional flourish as he gathered his runs from 130 deliveries with the aid of six fours.The opener was finally undone by Australian leg-spinner Bryce McGain when he
was trapped lbw playing back with Warwickshire still requiring a further 37. But Jim Troughton and Rikki Clarke were to see them to their target without further alarms.Darren Maddy also played a significant part in the visitors’ win, helping
Westwood add 82 in 26 overs for the second wicket before he edged David Masters
to Tim Phillips in the slips. Earlier, Essex managed to add a further 81 after resuming on 78 for 6. That was due largely to the efforts of Matt Walker and Masters.After Phillips had been removed early on by Boyd Rankin, the eighth-wicket pair
added 46 against a diet of pace without looking in serious trouble. The mystery was why Westwood waited so long to introduce spinner, Imran Tahir, into the attack as they dug in. When he did so, Tahir wasted very little time in claiming the remaining wickets.With the seventh delivery of a new spell, he had Walker taken at slip by Clarke
to end a resolute innings that spanned 111 balls and brought him 39 runs. Masters became an lbw victim in Tahir’s next over after he had struck 34 with the help of five boundaries, before Andy Carter suffered the same fate.Tahir’s three wickets came in the space of 22 deliveries at a personal cost of
seven as he finished with figures of four for 20 from 8.4 overs. Jimmy Ord became an early scalp of Masters, caught at slip, when Warwickshire set off in pursuit of victory. But Westwood and Maddy’s productive partnership virtually put paid to any victory hopes Essex may have entertained as they carried the total into three figures.Both were then dismissed in the space of half a dozen overs, Maddy falling for
39 against Masters, but, by then, Essex were resigned to a defeat that saw them
extract only three points from the match and leave them with an enormous task to
avoid relegation, having played more games than those struggling around them.Warwickshire, despite gaining 19 points, are still rooted to the bottom of the
table, but at least they will go into their next game against Nottinghamshire at
Trent Bridge with renewed hope.

Surrey’s woes continued as they sank to a 39-run defeat at the hands of a buoyant Sussex at The Oval

The Bulletin by Liam Brickhill20-Jun-2010

ScorecardSurrey’s woes continued as they sank to a 39-run defeat at the hands of a buoyant Sussex at The Oval. For the visitors, all of the top order bar Matt Prior contributed in a total of 158 for 7, Brendon McCullum top-scoring with 34. Surrey’s batting folded after Rory Hamilton-Brown had been removed after a fiery 13-ball 24, with 21-year-old legspinner Will Beer taking the wickets of Steve Davies and Andrew Symonds in a parsimonious spell to earn the Man of the Match award before Chad Keegan brought the game to a swift end with three clean-bowled dismissals.Things had looked much brighter for the home side when they began their chase on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Chris Nash was asked to open the bowling with his offspin, but the experiment was a disaster as first Davies thrashed him firmly through the covers and Hamilton-Brown then lifted him for two monstrous sixes to take 18 from the over.Sussex regained some control as Keegan’s first over went for just six, but Robin Martin-Jenkins waivered in both line and length and Surrey raced to 36 in the first three overs. Goodwin, captaining in Michael Yardy’s absence, continued to cycle his bowlers, with Dwayne Smith replacing Keegan and James Kirtley brought on for Martin-Jenkins. Kirtley’s introduction brought immediate success as he got a ball to rear up and hurry Hamilton-Brown’s pull, the resultant top-edge being snaffled easily by Goodwin himself, running back from square leg.Surrey could soon have been in even deeper trouble when Mark Ramprakash swept Beer and the ball looped off the outer half of the bat towards fine leg, but the fielder spilled the tough, dipping chance. Ramprakash could make nothing of the second life, however, falling soon after to a superb stumping by Andy Hodd as he over-balanced while looking to nudge Martin-Jenkins away.Hodd has the experience of both Prior and McCullum in the squad to draw upon but looked a superb ‘keeper in his own right today, as not a chance went begging behind the stumps and not a single bye was given away.Surrey began to slide with Ramprakash’s dismissal, Symonds falling second ball as he aimed to clear the infield and Davies falling in similar fashion two overs later for 35 – the highest score of the innings – to give Beer his second wicket and leave his side in some strife at 74 for 4 in the 11th over.With the required run-rate climbing, Stewart Walters got going with a cracking pull off Kirtley that raced to the midwicket boundary almost before any of the fielders could move, but then found Keegan at deep square leg trying to repeat the stroke off Smith.Nash’s re-introduction then sealed the result, with Gareth Batty and Younis Khan – who will no doubt have been somewhat distracted by his snubbing for Pakistan’s Test and Twenty20 squads for their England tour – perishing within four balls of each other as they tried to reach the boundary, and Surrey were dead in the water at 97 for 7 with just 24 balls left. It was left to Keegan to administer the final blow, as he steamed in to shatter the stumps of Nos. 8, 9 and 11 to bowl Surrey out for 119.Surrey had looked a far more competitive side in the field than with the bat, with Chris Tremlett’s menacing pace and bounce accounting for Prior early on before Chris Schofield did his best to asphyxiate the middle order.After McCullum and Goodwin fell in consecutive overs to slow bowlers, Smith, who hit the most sixes for Sussex in this competition last year, was soon into his stride, lifting Symonds over square leg with nonchalance and then cracking him into the second tier of the stands beyond long-on to move into the 20s.Sussex lost a wicket as the partnership was beginning to look threatening as Smith played over the top of a full delivery from Schofield to be bowled for 23 with the score at 99 for 4 and Hodd could have been run out soon after when Nash stepped down the wicket to thrash Tim Linley to Schofield at long-off and a second run was called for, unwisely, after a slight misfield. Linley couldn’t hold on to the return from the deep, which would have had the batsman out by at least a foot, but made amends soon after when he speared in a yorker which struck Hodd’s pads in front of the stumps as he shuffled across to attempt a scoop.There were the usual histrionics from Andre Nel, particularly when he had Nash ducking and weaving in his second spell, but in between the showboating and the steely glares Nel also showed some guile and experience to keep boundaries to a minimum at the death.Tremlett, too, continued to impress. Joe Gatting sent the fifth ball of his second spell scything over the turf to the cover boundary where, much to the amusement of the crowd, it bobbled over the rope and struck one of the Lionesses cheerleading group (thankfully, not mid-routine). But the tall fast bowler struck back immediately to have Gatting easily caught by third man running in from the boundary after an intelligent change of pace.But that was as good as it got for Surrey, whose shoddy limited-overs batting means they continue to languish in the bottom half of the South Group points table.

Keacy Carty and Alex Hales put on an 87-run stand for the second wicket in the Knight Riders’ chase after the bowlers had set a modest target for them

ESPNcricinfo staff28-Aug-2025Nicholas Pooran finished the game with a huge six off Jayden Seales with eight balls and eight wickets in the bank, but Trinbago Knight Riders’ jinx-breaking win over Antigua and Barbuda Falcons (they had lost all three games prior to this one) on Wednesday night in CPL 2025 had been all-but confirmed well before that.First, by Mohammad Amir, Andre Russell and Akeal Hosein, who picked up seven wickets between them to set up a chase of 147. And then by a partnership worth 87 runs between Alex Hales and Keacy Carty for the second wicket, which took its time (73 balls), but Knight Riders were never in a hurry.Related

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In between, young McKenny Clarke pulled off a most remarkable catch in the deep, running to intercept a shot off Jewel Andrew, Falcons’ best batter on the night, and then just sticking a hand out and finding the ball in it.It was all rather comprehensive for Knight Riders, who had lost all their three games against Falcons before this one, and gave them a big start to their home leg, while also taking them to No. 2, just behind Falcons, on the points table.Pooran, though, had done exactly what Knight Riders wanted him to at the start, winning the toss and giving Amir & Co a chance to have a go at the Falcons batters. Amir was on the job right away, trapping Rahkeem Cornwall lbw second ball and doing the same to Karima Gore off the fifth ball of the over.