Jesse Ryder’s manager believes the batsman is a genuine chance to receive a New Zealand Cricket (NZC) contract and a place in the ODI squad to tour England despite his off-field problems earlier this year. The selectors are meeting in Christchurch this week to decide on the touring parties as well as the group of contracted players for next season.Missing from last year’s list will be Stephen Fleming, Craig McMillan, Shane Bond and Lou Vincent. Based purely on form, Ryder would appear likely to make the cut as he made his ODI debut in the home series against England and averaged 49 from five games.However, it is unclear whether the incident where Ryder punched a window in a local bar, leaving him with a severely injured hand, will be held against him. Ryder’s manager Aaron Klee said the batsman had used his enforced time away from cricket to lose five kilograms in a bid to show the selectors he was improving his attitude.”NZC have to weigh everything up – fitness, behaviour and injury rehab – and I’m sure they’ll weigh risks up along with the opportunity,” Klee told the . “He’s in with a shot. I think they are pretty pleased with Jesse but they’ve given me no indication whether he’s in line for a contract or might get picked for the one-day team.”Klee was confident Ryder would be fit for the one-day portion of the England tour if selected, although his hand will not have recovered in time for the Tests. However, he said while Ryder’s behaviour was improving giving up alcohol was not part of the equation at the moment.”He is 23. You are not going to change Jesse 100%, but if he can learn to make some smarter decision he will get over the line,” Klee said. “Going to a 23-year-old and saying you can’t drink any more is a big call.”He is still wearing a protective splint but he’s pretty much got complete movement back in his thumb and his index finger has three-quarter movement in it, so the medical specialists are pretty happy with it. We think he will be ready for the one-dayers if they want him, then we just need to find a club or a county second XI that he can get some cricket with beforehand.”New Zealand’s general manager Lindsay Crocker said the team management had not yet made a decision on Ryder’s immediate future. “We’ve got a very open mind on the subject, so yes, it will be a point of discussion for the selectors,” Crocker said. If Ryder does receive a contract from NZC he will be on a minimum of NZ$74,000 a year, with the top-ranked player to be paid $174,000.The contract list will be decided before the England trip although the new deals will not officially start until June 1. “Generally speaking, all the players on the tour of England will have got contracts,” Crocker said. “But often their relative rankings are a topic of much discussion among the players so we want to get them out of the way a bit earlier.”
Trevor Penney, Sri Lanka’s stand-in coach, believes his side are as tough as Australia, and can compete with them in all aspects of the game.Speaking ahead of the three-Test series against Bangladesh, Penney said: “[Adam] Gilchrist was the difference at the World Cup. Otherwise, I think we are pretty much level with Australia with our fielding, our bowling and our batting. We’ve got some great talent.”The Australians are brought up tough. They are a tough team. The thing is that we are tough now. That’s the line we’ve got to keep working on, practising hard and playing tough as we proved in England last year, in New Zealand and in the World Cup.”Penney says Sri Lanka’s improvement over the past two years has been noted by Sandy Gordon, the sports psychologist who has often been consulted since June 2005. Gordon was called in for the forthcoming series, too.”He was very pleased with the guys, the way they have matured mentally,” said Penney. “I think that’s important. We’ve had him about six times. He was complimentary about everybody. He thinks there is a massive lift in the mental side of the game.”Penney then talked about the passion he himself brought to the practices. “When you play all the time you need someone to lift you up a lot. When I am training them or practising with them I am keener than they are so I am passionate about every single thing. Fielding certainly comes out the way, the way they are fielding these days.”This is his first full series as coach of a national team, after taking over from Tom Moody who has gone to coach Western Australia. Penney, though, has had experience working under Moody for Sri Lanka.”Tom allowed me a free rein to do a lot of the coaching because often he will be either talking to reporters, attending selection meetings… We both understood each other really well.”Penney believes that trust is a big part of Moody’s legacy. “The players knew they could trust Tom wholly. He would never lie to them. He was always straight up front yet he did it in a pleasant way. He tells you straight, but in the next breath he will be helping you as well. I’ve learnt a lot from him.”Some people want to stay on the fence. They don’t want to say something to a guy even if he is a senior player. It’s been important for us because we had a lot of senior players who had to be dealt with around the bush. Tom just went in straight and levelled the playing field so that all players are actually equal in our team now.”What’s nice about this team is that they stepped up a standard now and they all expect it from each other.”Penney said playing away from home had improved the team’s mental toughness.”It has been a big plus point for Sri Lanka. They are ready to take up the challenge.Mahela [Jayawardene] as captain has been wonderful. He is so strong and he’s got the team right where he wants them.”
Kevin Curran was delighted with Zimbabwe’s performance as they thrashed Canada by 143 runs in the opening match of the Tri-Nation ODI series in Trinidad.”It was obviously important for us to win this game,” said Curran, Zimbabwe’s coach. “Having come from the West Indies tour where we were the underdogs, today we went in as a Test nation against an Associate Member.”We batted well until the last 12 overs where I thought we should have added another 30 or 40 runs. Yes, 220 was a winning score but if we had a perfect batting display we should have made 250.” Curran singled out Man-of-the-Match Piet Rinke for praise, saying he “played very well after a poor tour following good outings in the warm-up matches and the home series against Kenya before that.”We were outstanding in fielding and it was due reward for all the hard workwe have put into it that the first two wickets fell to run-outs. Tawanda Mupariwa and Blessing Mahwire bowled a good length and stuck to their plan. In fact, everyone pretty much stuck to the game plan. Today we got it together in all three departments and played very well.”But Curran was not impressed with the Queen’s Park Oval pitch, which he said was not suitable for a one-day international. “It’s got too much turn and if you get good spinners it could be tricky. On Saturday we will play on the same wicket, and if we face Canada again they have a couple of reasonable left-arm spinners.”
What was turning out to be an exciting series between Sri Lanka A and West Indies A has now been reduced to a damp squib, with the departure of eight players from the West Indies A side to join the ranks of the senior team.The three-match unofficial series was nicely poised at one-all, with everything to play for in the third and final match at the Saravanamuttu Stadium. But the match loses much of its edge and competitiveness with both teams having made dramatic changes. Sri Lanka A have strengthened their side by including two Test players, in Tillakaratne Dilshan and Farveez Maharoof, whereas West Indies A have called upon replacements who are inexperienced and will struggle to compete at this level.Ranaga Herath, the left-arm spinner, has been forced to withdraw due to a strained leg and has been replaced by the offspinner Suraj Mohamed. From the 14 named for the Test, batsmen Michael Vandort, Malintha Gajanayake and Gayan Wijekoon, the allrounder, will be the ones most likely to miss out, making way for Dilshan, Maharoof and Mohamed.Ian Daniel, the opening batsman, and fast bowler Dilhara Lokuhettige will get their first game of the series. Mohamed will play the support role to Sajeewa Weerakoon, the left-arm spinner who, with eighteen wickets in the first two A games, has been Sri Lanka’s outstanding bowler so far.Russel Arnold, the Sri Lankan captain – who has won a recall to the senior squad against West Indies – said that his team would play their normal game and not start thinking about the opposition. “It is not our problem what team they put out for the match. We will play to our potential and try to win.”He said that apart from a few players whom Maharoof had some knowledge of, he was in the dark about the rest of the newcomers. “Not knowing their capabilities makes it more difficult for the opposition to size up the opponents,” he said.The sides face each other again in five one-day matches, the first of which starts on July 13.
Hashan Tillakaratne tendered his resignation as Sri Lanka’s Test captain after they were whitewashed at home for the first time in their history byAustralia on Sunday. Tillakaratne’s 10-match tenure produced only one win and four defeats, and he had been widely expected to stand down.”I am stepping down as captain because it is high time that someone should take over and I can concentrate on my batting,” Tillakaratne, 36, told reporters. “I have spoken to the selectors about how I feel about it and they have accepted my resignation. We lost the series and if someone is going to take over then this is the time to do it with so many tours coming up.”Talking about the Colombo game, which Australia won with just eight balls to spare, Tillakaratne lamented: “I thought we pushed them to the wall, but they fought back and they played very good cricket. We learnt a few lessons down the line. I thought we could have won the series, but that is how the game goes. We need to show a bit of character when the going gets tough, but we were so soft – and I am sure that we could have saved this match. You should be able to play according to the situation but we threw our wickets away at crucial stages.”He admitted: “Fielding is a big concern, and there were some soft dismissals in the first innings.”Marvan Atapattu, the current one-day captain, is expected to take over fromTillakaratne for Sri Lanka’s two-Test tour of Zimbabwe in April and May.Other contenders for the job include Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara and Chaminda Vaas.
Often a contest between two equally matched minnows proves as fascinating and surprising as one between the top two teams in the world, and the Bangladesh-Canada Pool B encounter at Kingsmead on Tuesday proved that truism only too well.On the face of it, Bangladesh, with a few years of international experience and a recent World Cup under their belt, would have certainly been considered favourites. Canada, after all, had last been in international cricket in the 1979 World Cup, and with Bangladesh having played in South Africa only recently, the sensible money would certainly have been on them.The opening spells of the Bangladesh medium-pacers looked to bear out that prediction. Mashrafe Mortaza and Manjural Islam bowled tight line and length, affording the Canadian openers little chance to free their arms and go for their shots. Mortaza bowled John Davison neck and crop, and Tapash Baisya dismissed the compact Ismail Maraj caught at midwicket.Desmond Chumney stroked the ball fluently around for singles and hit a few sweetly timed boundaries in his knock of 28 (25 balls, three fours, one six) before he fell, run out after calling for a non-existent single behind square leg.Wickets continued to tumble for Canada. Captain Joseph Harris essayed a sweep to Sanwar Hossain and only succeeded in gloving the ball to Khaled Mashud behind the stumps, while Nicholas de Groot tried to work the same bowler to leg and got a leading edge to Alok Kapali at mid-off.Ian Billcliff, amidst the ruins, stood composed to the tune of 42 runs and 63 balls, hitting six fours in his impressive stay at the crease. He witnessed the dismissal of Fazil Sattaur, leg-before to Alok Kapali, before being run out himself. The end of the innings followed inevitably, but Bangladesh’s spinners, although efficiently restricting the run-rate, could not skittle out the tailenders before they took Canada to 180 all out in 49.1 overs – a defendable total, but moderate all the same.But the runs still had to be made, and Canada showed their willingness to make a fight of it right from ball one, when multiple fielders converged on the ball in the field, backing up sometimes as far as three deep behind the stumps. The bowling, however, was erratic to start with, and the errant line was punished as both openers flicked off the pads and drove through the covers with panache.Davis Joseph was the first bowler to break through, having Al Sahariar caught at mid-on, dragging the ball from outside off. Habibul Bashar departed soon after, trying to force a Sanjay Thuraisingam delivery through the off with minimal footwork and getting an edge through to keeper Ashish Bagai.Bagai had a much easier catch of it when Hannan Sarkar (25, 35 balls, four fours) played a similar shot off Austin Codrington, and at 46 for three, Bangladesh were in some trouble. Ehsanul Haque and Sanwar Hossain then added 30 runs for the fourth wicket before further damage was done. Joseph, in his seventh over of the innings, got one to seam away just a touch off the pitch, and Ehsanul (13, 17 balls) feathered an edge through to Bagai, who took yet another fine tumbling catch.Sanwar followed after another 30 runs were added to the team’s total, playing across the line to a John Davison delivery and trapped in front for 25 (24 balls). An over later, Codrington trapped Alok Kapali (18, 23 balls) in front of the stumps. Khaled Mashud, Tapash Baisya and Mashrafe Mortaza all dismissed themselves, playing loose or indecisive strokes to perfectly playable deliveries.Mohammad Rafique, a sturdy bat in his own right, slammed a couple of boundaries in desperation, but when he pulled Codrington awkwardly to the midwicket fielder inside the circle, he presented the bowler with his fifth wicket. The first five-wicket bag of the 2003 World Cup was just reward for the dreadlocked medium-pacer who on the day kept impeccable control over his line and length, forcing the batsmen to play at almost every ball and taking, in one evening, more than half as many wickets as he had in limited-overs contests till yesterday.Codrington’s performance also sealed the first major upset win of the 2003 World Cup as Canada triumphed by 60 runs over Bangladesh, ironic considering that Bangladesh was at the delivering end of an upset in the 1999 World Cup with their win over Pakistan. Canada, for their part, got a taste of the thrills inherent in World Cup cricket – pulling a team together to defy the odds and on a floodlit night taste victory for the first time.
Chasing just 177 for victory over their East Midlands rivals, Leicestershire had reached 125-3 from 30 overs when bad light suspended play for the evening.Openers Vince Wells and Jonathan Dakin had made a solid start, putting on 36 in eight overs for the first wicket. Left-arm seamer Greg Smith twice had appeals for lbw against Wells turned down but then had pinch-hitter Dakin caught by Richard Logan at square leg as he tried to pull the ball over the infield.Shahid Afridi, on his county debut, began slowly but then reverted to his more usual aggressive style as he lofted AJ Harris for a huge six into the Radcliffe Road Stand.Having taken 2-40 with his leg spinners the Pakistan international was putting himself in pole position for a man of the match award on his first appearance for the Foxes but on 23 he wafted carelessly at Smith and gave Chris Read a routine catch behind the wicket.Darren Stevens failed to get off the mark before losing his off peg to Smith, whose ten-over spell of 3-36 had given Notts a glimmer of a chance.Play was then interrupted once again for bad light but at 7.20pm the umpires considered the conditions were fit enough for a resumption.Vince Wells and Ben Smith put on an untroubled 45 for the fourth wicket in ever-deteriorating light but at 7.55pm the umpires directed that a finish was not possible and that play would be carried over into the second day. Wells was unbeaten on 45 with Smith on 24.Victory should be confirmed for Leicestershire on Thursday morning when they require a further 52 runs to win, from 20 overs, with seven wickets in hand.Earlier Notts, put in to bat, had collapsed dramatically losing their last five wickets for just five runs, with 9.2 overs of the innings unused.Usman Afzaal top-scored with 49 out of the total of 176, a huge reversal in fortune after Darren Bicknell and Greg Blewett had posted 57 for the first wicket in 11 overs.The Leicestershire outfielding was particularly sharp with a contribution of four run-outs, although batting was undeniably difficult as a total of seven stoppages for rain seriously disjointed the innings.
Glasgow Rangers decided to part ways with sporting director Kevin Thelwell after just one transfer window with the club, after joining from Everton in April.
The English supremo brought in a host of new signings and appointed Russell Martin as the long-term successor to Philippe Clement, but his reign lasted just 17 matches.
He was then involved in the process that led to the arrival of current head coach Danny Rohl, but he was let go before having the opportunity to oversee any signings for the German boss.
Kevin Thelwell's worst two Rangers signings
Taking into account the money involved and the output given on the pitch so far, it is hard to look past Youssef Chermiti as being one of the worst signings made by Thelwell in the summer.
Football FanCast recently suggested that Joe Rothwell was the worst signing made by the sporting director, because he was signed as a 30-year-old with experience who is now set to move on, amid interest from Sheffield United, just six months into his Ibrox career.
After the English flop, though, Chermiti was the second-worst signing of the summer because the Light Blues paid a reported £8m to sign him from Premier League side Everton.
Youssef Chermiti’s goalscoring woes
Team
Games
Goals
Rangers
18
1
Everton
24
0
Sporting
22
3
Sporting B
10
3
Stats via Transfermarkt
That fee made him the club’s most expensive signing since they paid £12m to sign Tore Andre Flo in 2000, yet he has not justified that incredible outlay with strong performances.
Chermiti struggled for goals in Portugal, with Sporting, and failed to score a single competitive goal in two years before Thelwell decided to spend the most money Rangers have spent on a player in 25 years to bring him to Ibrox, where he has scored once in 18 matches.
Whilst Chermiti’s goal return makes him look like a poor piece of business on its own, another thing that emphasises how bad this signing has been is that there is a former Rangers defender who is now an even better striker than the £8m man.
The former Rangers defender who is now a better striker than Chermiti
Former Gers boss Michael Beale sold a full-back in the summer of 2023 on a free transfer, only for him to go on to change positions and excel as an attacker in Germany.
Where Are They Now
Your star player or biggest flop has left the club but what are they doing in the present day? This article is part of Football FanCast’s Where Are They Now series.
Some Rangers fans may not even remember the name Mateusz Zukowski. The Scottish Premiership giants signed the right-back from Lechia Gdansk in the summer of 2022, and he played one senior match for the club.
Per Transfermarkt, Zukowski started at right-back in a 3-0 win over Annan Athletic in the SFA Cup, whilst he also started two matches at right-back in the Challenge Cup for the B team in the 2022/23 campaign.
However, after just one season at Ibrox, Beale decided that the defender was not in his plans and allowed him to join Slask Wroclaw for an undisclosed fee in the summer of 2023.
It was with the Polish side that he started to move further up the pitch after being a bona fide right-back at Ibrox. Per Transfermarkt, Zukowski started ten games at right-back for Wroclaw, but he also started 16 games as a left winger and four games as a striker.
The former Beale flop then signed for German outfit Magdeburg in the summer and has started as a centre-forward in all five of his appearances for the club this season, per Transfermarkt, having started the campaign with a foot injury.
25/26 season
Zukowski (2. Bundesliga)
Chermiti (Premiership)
Appearances
4
10
Sofascore rating
7.10
6.50
Goals
3
1
Minutes per goal
113
348
Big chances created
2
0
Key passes per game
1.8
0.4
Assists
1
1
Stats via Sofascore
As you can see in the table above, Zukowski currently looks like a much better striker than Chermiti, having scored three times as many goals in less than half as many appearances, whilst playing at a respectable level in Germany, in a league with some big clubs, like Schalke.
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In fact, the Polish striker has scored three times as many goals this season as the Portuguese flop has managed since the start of the 2023/24 campaign, as the Rangers man failed to score a single goal for the Toffees.
Therefore, Zukowski’s impressive start to life in Germany, now playing as a striker, suggests that he was misprofiled at Ibrox and should have been utilised further up the pitch.
His goalscoring form also further illustrates how much of a waste of money Chermiti has been for a whopping £8m, on current evidence, because there is value in the market, as evidenced by the fact that a defender they let go is now an even better striker than him.
Diomande upgrade: Rohl pushing for Rangers to sign £5m "sensation"
Danny Rohl is keen for Glasgow Rangers to sign this young star who could be an upgrade on Mohamed Diomande.
Anil Kumble has been ruled out of the opening match of the Indian Premier League, Rahul Dravid, the captain of the Bangalore Royal Challengers, has confirmed. Kumble’s absence is the latest blow to a side still uncertain about the availability of some of its international stars.Kumble, who missed the third Test against South Africa in Kanpur, is yet to recover from a groin injury. “He will miss the first game definitely but we’ll see how it goes as we go along,” Dravid said in Bangalore. “Anil is keen to play and we hope in about 4-5 days he should be able to play. The physio at the National Cricket Academy – Paul Close – and the franchise physio are both in discussion and we’ll take a decision on that.”There has been some uncertainty over players’ availability for the Bangalore franchise. Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher were expected to leave for the South African domestic Twenty20 competition but will now stay back. Dale Steyn, though, won’t be available for the early stages and both Misbah-ul-Haq, the Pakistan batsman, and Abdur Razzaq, the Bangladesh left-arm spinner, will miss the opening clash because of the ongoing series in Pakistan.”There’s been a lot of uncertainty over who is available,” said Dravid. “We were waiting to see whether the South African players will stay back, Anil and [Nathan] Bracken miss out because of injury – Anil hopefully only for a game, Bracken maybe till May. We have [Ashley] Noffke and Ross Taylor till end of the month. And now we have Kallis and Boucher for more. Steyn’s arrival will depend on how his franchise does in their Twenty20 competition back home. As for Misbah and Razzaq – a series is on. So they can join only after that.”The franchise wasted little time in getting a replacement for Bracken, the Australian left-arm seamer, who was ruled out for at least four weeks. “Bracken was unavailable till his injury situation, maybe the first week of May. Opportunity came up to sign up Noffke, only for the first four games, after which he goes back to Australia. We looked at him as a good allrounder potential. He’s had a good season with Queensland.”The good news, though, comes in the form of another left-arm seamer, Zaheer Khan, recovering from injury. “Zaheer is coming on really well,” Venkatesh Prasad, the coach said. “He was not really 100% before the start of the series which we played [against South Africa] but now he’s coming along quite well. He’s been bowling 90-95% in the net sessions. We’re playing a practice game and it will give us a good indication.”Bangalore kick off the tournament with a home game against Kolkata on April 18.
Piyush Chawla, the Uttar Pradesh legspinner, and Pankaj Singh, the 22-year-old Rajasthan fast bowler, have been asked to join the five-day bowlers camp in Mysore starting on June 4th. Former India seamer Venkatesh Prasad, who was the team’s fast bowling during the recent visit to Bangladesh, would assist the 14 bowlers.Chawla was to leave last night for Australia where here was scheduled to train at the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane along with Tamil Nadu medium pacer Yomahesh and Saurashtra batsman Cheteshwar Pujara.It was also speculated that Chawla had been advised to cancel his Australian sojourn since he could be named in the Indian squad for the one-day internationals against South Africa and Pakistan later this month. That team was to be picked on June 11.Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh, who were part of the originial list, would not take part in the camp as they would be playing in the Afro-Asia Cup. Sreesanth, who has been included in the Asia squad for the lone Twenty-20 International against Africa on June 5, would join the group the following day. The camp would be held at Infosys Complex and stringent security has been put in place.The batsmen’s camp would be held from June 9 to 12 at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore.The 14 bowlers to train at the camp: Anil Kumble, Ajit Agarkar, Rudra Pratap Singh, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Ramesh Powar, Vikram Rajvir Singh, Ranadeb Bose, Ishant Sharma, Rajesh Pawar, Piyush Chawla, Pragyan Ojha and Pankaj Singh.