Mike Procter has given his seal of approval to Pakistan’s security arrangements, ahead of South Africa’s Test series later this month. Procter, a former South African allrounder, has been officiating as an ICC match referee during Pakistan’s Test series against Bangladesh, and described the preparations for the tour as “excellent”.The United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCB) is due to test the water for itself this Sunday, when a delegation arrives to discuss the concerns surrounding the matches in Karachi and Peshawar. The UCB has warned that they will not be “sending a team anywhere” unless they are satisfied, but Procter believes their fears are misguided.”It would not be fair for me to comment on the UCB stand on playing in Karachi and Peshawar,” said Procter. “They have their concerns, but they have been in touch with me and taken feedback from me. I have given them my frank views. But I can understand that the negative image and information about some cities in Pakistan to the outside world does have a bearing on how others think about playing in Pakistan.”Last May, New Zealand pulled out of a Test match in Karachi following a bomb explosion outside the team hotel, while Peshawar – in the North West Frontier Province – has been viewed with suspicion by touring sides because of its proximity to Afghanistan. Both cities, however, held Tests in the recent Bangladesh series, and both passed without incident. The UCB has nonetheless asked that the venues be moved.

Morne van Wyk, the 24-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman from Free State, will join the injury hit South African squad in Pakistan. South Africa have been plagued by a number of fitness worries early on the tour: Herschelle Gibbs missed the first one-day international due to muscle soreness, Neil McKenzie suffered from back spasms, while Graeme Smith and Boeta Dippenaar were clearly bothered by the heat and humidity in that match.Explaining the decision to opt for a reinforcement, Eric Simons, the South African coach, said: "We do have a few injury worries with Herschelle and Neil, and the severe heat and humidity also took its toll on Friday when Graeme Smith and Boeta Dippenaar suffered from cramps. Morne will give us more flexibility if we have further injury problems or if we decide to rotate players in the rest of the games." van Wyk will join the South African team on Monday.South Africa have a busy schedule ahead of them in Pakistan, playing four ODIs in a week’s time before being faced with back-to-back Tests. Simons added that the packed itinerary was also a reason why the team management decided to ask for cover. "It takes nearly 24 hours to travel from South Africa, so we would rather have him here than back home should problems arise next week."van Wyk made his international debut in the NatWest Series final against England earlier this year, and has been in terrific batting form for the A side, scoring 52, 56 and 118 in three one-day matches against the Sri Lankan A team last week.

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ScorecardDarren Berry, Victoria’s captain, strongly defended his team’s strategy as their Pura Cup match against Western Australia headed for a draw. WA were 0 for 100 in their second innings at stumps, an overall lead of 18 runs, after Victoria’s post-tea declaration on 9 for 355.Wayne Clark, Victoria’s coach, said the game “just may peter out into a very, very tame draw”, but Berry contended that was entirely up to WA. “We lost four or five wickets more than what we wanted to, which made it look poor,” Berry said. “Now it looks bad and I can understand that and I’m prepared to cop that, but for me I still think the game is very much alive.”They’ve said all along they want to play for six points, we want to play for six and we were going to go with dominating the game because I felt we deserved that right after bowling them out and being 2 for 200. The facts are we stuffed up with the bat, which then swung it around … 6 for 80 dropped us in the poo.”Berry pointed to WA’s first-innings collapse on day one, when they lost 7 wickets for 58 runs to be all out for 273, and his side’s slide of 6 wickets for only 83 in 15 overs before tea, as signs that this was a result wicket. He contended WA could bat for 50 or 60 overs tomorrow, with a minimum of 112, and then set Victoria a target.Victoria resumed on 1 for 78 after yesterday’s long rain delay, with an extra hour’s play today and tomorrow as compensation for the time lost. Matthew Elliott made 71, the third time in as many innings he has let a century go begging, before Brad Hodge and Jon Moss looked to take control.But Hodge’s dismissal for 100 with the score on 3 for 235 and Moss’s fall for 52 18 runs later sparked a middle-order collapse. Berry originally planned for Victoria to reach 500 and then try to bowl out WA tomorrow. Cameron White scored a quickfire 58 not out either side of tea to close the innings. John Taylor took 4 for 70 and was on a hat-trick when he bowled Berry for a golden duck.Clark said it was entirely up to Victoria to plan their tactics, but made WA’s disappointment clear. “We might have expected it a little bit earlier, to open the game up, but obviously that’s the way they see it, the best way they can win the game,” Clark said. “All I can say is we would have played it a little bit differently. We needed an opportunity to win the game and have time to bowl them out as well. It’s easy to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.”Justin Langer was 53 not out at the close, including a straight six off White which went out of the ground, and Mike Hussey reached 45 not out. Mike Hussey bowled to David Hussey today, the first time since Greg and Trevor Chappell in the 1983-84 season that a batsman had faced his brother in Australian first-class cricket.

One of Zimbabwe cricket’s most respected and dedicated administrators, Peter Keen, died on November 25 at the age of 60 after a long battle with cancer.Keen was a former Zimbabwe Cricket Union board member and chairman of the Mashonaland Country Districts Winter Cricket Association, serving on the committee for about 30 years. Former national wicketkeeper Don Arnott, also a stalwart of Districts cricket, said, "The thing that stands out the most about him was his dedication and his total love of the game."Mr Keen had a degree at the local university and was for years a lecturer at Gwebi Agricultural College not far from Harare, and also Henderson Research Station near Glendale, north of Harare, and these were his contacts with Districts cricket. Gwebi at that time fielded a team in the Lilthurbridge Cup, the Districts competition, although he was a modest player. He later worked for National Foods in Harare.In 1981 he was the liaison officer for the first Young West Indies team to tour Zimbabwe, which was captained by Faoud Bacchus, and he befriended the manager Cammie Smith.The Zimbabwe team wore black armbands in his memory as they took part in the third ODI against West Indies at Harare Sports Club, and both sides observed a minute’s silence before the match.He is survived by his wife, Cathy, and two sons, Gavin and Andrew.

Rahul Dravid fell short of a personal landmark for the second time in the match, succumbing for 92, after his first-innings 49. The first knock was aggressive, coming when India needed to continue building on Virender Sehwag’s 195. The second one was defensive, and came under more harrowing circumstances – a 192-run deficit needed to be erased on a pitch with inconsistent bounce.A noticeable aspect of Dravid’s innings was the waiting game he played. Of the 244 deliveries he faced, no fewer than 202 were dot balls. With the field up and the bowling tight, he waited for the right ball to put away for runs, which is why a high percentage of his runs came in boundaries: 56.5%. When the spinners came on, he negated the possibility of lbw decisions by coming forward and putting bat to ball. Out of Stuart MacGill’s 67 deliveries to Dravid, 55 were played with the bat, while only 2 hit the pad.

A feature of Dravid’s batting throughout the series has been his control over the bowling, and today was no different. He was decisive on both front and back foot, and the few deliveries he edged can be attributed more to good bowling, rather than to the batsman’s indecision. The one bowler who troubled him was Nathan Bracken, who bowled an awkward line just outside off stump on a good length, tempting the batsman to play. Of the 150 balls Bracken bowled, only five were half-volleys, and just 45 runs were taken off his 25 overs.

When Sourav Ganguly returned to the crease after retiring hurt earlier in the day, he started off watchfully, careful to not lose his wicket, but was tempted ever so often by Macgill and Simon Katich’s floaters, as well as the fast bowlers’ wide deliveries.Both batsmen played steadily until India were past Australia’s total, and then opened out to play their shots, particularly Ganguly. With the new ball taken at around the same time India took the lead, Ganguly took charge and played at nearly anything the bowlers bowled. Pulls were mixed with hair-raising swishes outside off stump. Lee was pulled to the boundary twice in an over, once convincingly, and the other time, not so. In all, 35 runs came off the 37 balls Lee bowled to Ganguly.After Dravid’s dismissal Ganguly quietened down, until he inner-edged Bracken on to his wicket. Still, it wasn’t Bracken or Lee who had Ganguly in discomfort. That privilege went to Brad Williams, who hit Ganguly on the head in the morning, and bowled 13 balls to him, of which the batsman was in control for just seven.

The ECB has delayed making a decision on whether to tour Zimbabwe next October until the end of February. It had hoped to decide this week, but a lack of any definite instruction from the British government and continuing pressure from the ICC has led to the postponement.Last Wednesday, the board announced that the management meeting this coming Thursday would provide a once-and-for-all ruling. But this was done in the belief that no financial penalties would result from the decision. The ICC, in the form of Ehsan Mani, its president, have been at pains to point out that this is not the case. Mani has repeatedly insisted that the only circumstances under which tours could be cancelled was if a government specifically banned a team from travelling.Speaking on BBC television yesterday, Tim Lamb, the ECB’s chief executive, implied that the government’s letter last Friday was as close to an instruction not to tour as is possible without actually saying so. That does not appear to wash with the ICC, but there will be many discussions in the coming weeks, and ultimately it will come down to the detailed interpretation of the letter.Wisden Comment by Martin Williamson
The ECB’s desire to avoid the last-minute shambles which occurred during the World Cup is admirable, but it reckoned without the intransigence of the ICC. One of the issues is cash, the other is a cultural difference.Many of the powerbrokers in the ICC are from backgrounds where the state and the cricket boards are intertwined. In Pakistan, Mani’s homeland, the board are effectively appointed and operate at the behest of the country’s president. There, and in several other countries, the whims of the government and their boards are one and the same. In England it is not so straightforward.In the kind of democracy operating in Britain, the government does not ban people – sportsmen, businessmen, whoever – from visiting countries. But that appears to be beyond the understanding of the ICC, and will probably lead to stalemate.

David Hussey is the latest Australian batsman to be added to the list of potential signings to fill Nottinghamshire’s second overseas player slot this summer.The 26-year-old batsman, younger brother of former Northants skipper Mike Hussey, is currently leading the 2003-04 Pura Cup averages and his eye-catching performances have helped his state side, Victoria, to the top of the standings.Hussey is now being tipped for a place in Australia’s squad for the forthcoming tour to Sri Lanka, especially following his recent 212 not out in Victoria’s remarkable victory over New South Wales, when they scored 455 for 7 in the fourth innings.Hussey punished Stuart MacGill’s spin severely in that match but with MacGill already confirmed as one Notts overseas player for this summer, they may yet end up as team-mates. Nottinghamshire are looking for a second overseas player following the decision not to offer a new contract to last year’s one-day captain Chris Cairns.Other Australians in the frame include former Test players Matthew Elliott, Greg Blewett, who had a spell at Trent Bridge in 2001, and Michael Bevan.

Australia is the team that everyone country wants to beat and Sri Lanka are no exception. Sri Lanka’s Australian-born coach John Dyson thinks that his team have the ammunition to give Australia a good run in the one-day and Test series, if not beat them.”If everybody plays as well as they can on the day of the big game, the Sri Lanka team has the players and the experience to beat the Australians,” said Dyson, looking ahead at tomorrow’s five-match one-day international series and the three Tests to follow next month.”We have numerous world class players in the team. It’s a matter of the whole team clicking as a unit on the day and everyone performing to their ability. Our guys are prepared for the way the Australians play the game,” he said.”I’ve said throughout the last series that England didn’t try and win. The Australian team will try and win at all costs and at every opportunity. They will play far more positive cricket than the Englishmen. Going back to the Kandy Test, if we had set Australia 368 to win on that wicket with a day and a session to bat, I think they would have said `this is fairly easy’. They may or may not have got them but they would have definitely set after it.””The Australians bat a long way down the order and that makes it extremely difficult for the bowling team. The bowlers have to keep at the job the whole time as well. So have the fieldsmen. It’s just a very, very demanding game,” said Dyson.Dyson said that they had a look at the tapes of the VB one-day series between Australia and India and also the tapes of the last series between Sri Lanka and Australia five years ago.”We just tried to compare what’s happened with their side now and what happened the last time they were here. It was not all that necessary to look at the VB series hour after hour because the wickets Australia are going to encounter here will be vastly different to that they played at home,” said Dyson.”The Australians don’t like playing in Sri Lanka, nor do they like playing in India and Pakistan. The wickets are so different to what they are used to in Australia that they find it difficult. They are quite open in saying `the subcontinent is the last frontier we conquered in the cricket world.’ They’ve set that as an ambition to win in Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan. They’ll be out to do that. It is our job of course to play to our ability and make it extremely difficult for them, and hopefully beat them,” he said.Dyson said that Australia would certainly be thinking of their record in Sri Lanka and wish to change that. “They are not satisfied until they’ve achieved their objectives of winning. It is not good enough just to play well as far as they are concerned. You only play well when you want. That’s what they will set out to do during the series.””Given that, we know its our job to counter that with a similar attitude. We should, and play to win. One of our themes during the England series was that we would play our natural game. We must continue with that theme and extend it. We shouldn’t change our normal game because we are playing Australia. There’s not a lot of adapting needed because we are playing on our home wickets,” Dyson said.The present hot weather conditions, according to Dyson, will definitely be advantageous to Sri Lanka. Dyson added, “Australia has just come off a long season at home and although they are match-fit they must be starting to get physically tired from the amount of cricket that they’ve been playing. Obviously in hot weather it is more physically draining than in cooler weather. The other factors that may weigh against Australia are the lack of pace and bounce on the pitches here.”

Dyson admitted that in one-day cricket Australia have just continued winning.”Steve Waugh’s departure has made no difference to that team at all. It’s been a very smooth transition from his captaincy of the one-day side to Ricky Ponting’s. Ricky has shown that he was groomed for the job and handles that job extremely well.””In the Test arena we won’t know until they start playing Test cricket here. This will be viewed as a difficult series because of the reasons I have already stated. It will be a good test to see just how well Ricky handles the team in the Test arena and how the team responds to him. I expect this transition too will be extremely smooth.”The series against Australia is what Dyson has been longing to win ever since he was appointed coach of the national team six months ago. “Just because I am an Australian and I’ve played for Australia doesn’t mean that I don’t want to win the series. I am here as the Sri Lankan coach and I am working with the team. I wish to win the series. It’s not being disloyal to my country it’s just that I am a professional cricket coach and I am employed to do a job here,” he said.Dyson is extremely happy with how the team played against England and he expects them to lift their game a level or two higher against the Australians.”I think the players reacted well during the England series to a number of pressure situations. In each of the Tests there was probably an occasion where if we had crumbled, we could have been placed in a position to lose the Test match. But each time we fought out of that situation. It was different players throughout the series who fought it out.”In the England series, the batsmen to impress were Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Sanath Jayauriya, while the bowling was in the reliable hands of Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas.The one-day series against Australia commences at Dambulla tomorrow and the Test series starts at Galle on March 8.

Western Province 217 and 260 for 6 (Duminy 89*, Henderson 53*) lead KwaZulu-Natal 187 by 290 runs
Scorecard
At Newlands, Western Province extended their lead to 290 with foursecond-innings wickets in hand as Jean-Paul Duminy, with a mature five-and-a-half-hour knock, and Claude Henderson, playing his last first-class game in South Africa, put on 126 for the sixth wicket.Starting the day at 62 for 1, Province lost two quick wickets, both on 84,and then found themselves struggling at 126 for 5 when Henderson joined Duminy at the crease. When they finished, 210 minutes later, they had taken the score to 252 and out of KwaZulu-Natal’s reach.With two more days to go, their will be no thoughts of a declaration and Natal face an uphill struggle to get back into the game.

Kabir Ali will miss the start of the season after undergoing surgery to cure a double hernia problem. He is expected to be out of action until the middle of May.Worcestershire will also be without Andrew Hall and Gareth Batty for the first few weeks as both are on international duty.”This is obviously a big blow to us as a team, and Kabir personally, as he has been one of our main strike bowlers and key players over the last few seasons,” said Tom Moody, the director of cricket. “Having said that we have good strength in depth in our squad and Kabir’s injury will give someone else an opportunity to make a big impact at the start of the season.”I think Mark Harrity will have a good year this time after taking time in 2003 to adjust to the English conditions. In addition we have got Andy Bichel back and everyone knows what he has done for Worcestershire in his past spells at the club.”I have no doubt that Kabir will come back fitter and stronger than ever in a few weeks’ time and show the form we all know he is capable of.”