Stomach bug bugs Kiwis
Hamilton: Illness prevented leading batsman Kane Williamson from training with his teammates Wednesday as New Zealand faced the first major off-field glitch of its World Cup campaign. Williamson is the most-heavily affected of a handful of New Zealand players who contracted a virus after their six-wicket win over Afghanistan on Monday. Grant Elliott and Daniel Vettori, who were also affected by the stomach bug which they may have contracted from food from a visitor to the New Zealand camp, were both able to train to some extent on Wednesday. Fast bowler Adam Milne, who suffered a shoulder injury when tumbling to take a catch against Afghanistan, took a limited part in training and didn’t bowl. Wicketkeeper luke Ronchi provided a graphic description of the symptoms of the illness, but said Williamson was thought likely to be fit to play in New Zealand’s final pool game against Bangladesh on Friday. New Zealand has used the same 11 players in all five of its pool matches to date and has planned to continue that selection policy throughout the tournament unless injury or illness force its hand.
‘pak batsmen must fire’
Karachi: Pakistan batting coach Grant Flower feels the batsmen need to show more spine for the team to progress beyond the World Cup quarterfinals. In a media talk at Adelaide on Wednesday, the former Test player from Zimbabwe felt the best was still to come from the Pakistani batsmen. “They are yet to fire and I would like to think their best is still to come and if not then we wouldn’t go too much further into the tournament,” Flower said. The Zimbabwean has been with the Pakistan team since last year and batting remains a major concern for the greenshirts as they have managed just one total of 300 plus in the World Cup, that too against UAE.
PCB counting on BCCI
Karachi: Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, Shaharyar Khan has said that the PCB is counting on its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Indian Cricket Board to be implemented to earn maximum revenues from its sale of media rights. He also told a news conference in lahore on Wednesday after returning from India that he was not given any “lollipop” by the Indian board with regards to Pakistan hosting India in December as part of the MOU between the two boards. “There is a slight problem in us trying to sell our media rights for next five years but I feel that as soon as we get green signal to play the series in December from the governments it will be a big help to us in selling the media rights for the right price,” Khan said. The former career diplomat was in India for the last five days to meet with the new Indian cricket chief, Jagmohan Dalmiya and other functionaries of the ruling BJP government to discuss the MOU.