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ScorecardAnother 13 wickets fell on day three at the Rose Bowl and all but one of them to spin bowlers as bottom-placed Hampshire took a perilous lead of 116 into the final day of their County Championship match against Nottinghamshire. The home side will now face an ECB pitch panel on Sunday with the prospect of a points deduction.Hampshire left-armer Danny Briggs took a season’s best 6 for 65 as Nottinghamshire were shot out for 183, providing Hampshire with a slender first-innings advantage of 30. Then Nottinghamshire spinner Samit Patel took the first five Hampshire second-innings wickets aided by a ring of close fielders as the pitch offered him as much turn as it had done Briggs.At the close Hampshire were 86 for 6 with opener and acting captain Jimmy Adams having held firm for 33 from 109 balls, out in the last over to medium-pacer Andre Adams. The first day of an intriguing and closely-fought match was washed out and on the second 13 wickets also fell, six of them to Nottinghamshire spinners Patel and Graeme White.The third day began with Nottinghamshire on 35 for 3 in response to Hampshire’s 213 in which Neil McKenzie used the experience gleaned from 58 Tests for South Africa to make an unbeaten 97. Briggs, one of the most promising young spinners in county cricket, made the first breakthrough when he had Adam Voges caught at short leg in his first over and Nottinghamshire never recovered.Patel and Voges put on 52 for the fourth wicket, which proved to be the highest stand of the innings. Patel followed at 101 leg before, and a similar fate befell Steven Mullaney and Chris Read.White provided some belligerent late resistance with a six and two fours in his 25 while Darren Pattinson also hit Briggs for six in his 17 not out but Briggs was not to be denied and removed White to a catch in the deep as Hampshire struggled to finish off the Nottinghamshire tail.Last man Charlie Shreck lasted two balls before giving another spinner Imran Tahir a return catch in the 82nd over.Hampshire needed to build on their narrow lead but fared no better second time around, losing Liam Dawson, Michael Carberry, James Vince, Sean Ervine and McKenzie, this time without scoring, with only 70 on the board. Patel proved hard to face, sending back Vince and Ervine to leg before decisions and removing the others to close catches.Hampshire were comfortable all the while Adams was there but he fell to his namesake with four balls remaining of the scheduled last over to swing the advantage back in Nottinghamshire’s direction. Patel ended the day with figures of 5 for 36, giving him nine wickets in the match so far, and leaving Hampshire in real danger of losing their sixth match of the season.

ScorecardHarmanpreet Kaur scored 41 off India’s 62 runs•ICC

In a match that went just one way from the moment the coin was tossed, Australia Women trounced India Women by eight wickets with 53 balls to spare.After they were asked to bat, none of the Indian batsmen got past double figures except for Harmanpreet Kaur, who scored 41 off 49 balls, a little more than two-thirds of the team’s score. No other batsman went past four, and four of them made ducks. The Australian attack, led by Sarah Coyte, was miserly with the runs and cut through the line-up with ease.In reply, the Australian batsmen were clinical, wrapping up the chase in 10.2 overs. The Indian attack, with nothing to bowl at, took two token wickets, but couldn’t stop the flow of runs. Leah Poulton remained unbeaten on 31, and Meg Lanning contributed 23 as the game ended early.Coyte, who was named Player of the Match, said Australia did well to stick to their plans. “We showed a lot of patience and bowled to our plans. I was a bit nervous while starting off, but it ended very well,” she said. “The pitch was holding up a bit. There was some swing and movement as well. The weather was windy and I got used to it pretty quickly.”India’s captain, Jhulan Goswami, put the loss down to poor shot selection. “I think the batters were in bit of a hurry. The shot selection was not good,” she said. “Harman [Kaur] played really well and Gauhar Sultana bowled a good spell, so there were some positives for us as well.”

When David Boon opened the Australian batting with Geoff Marsh, his job was to play a few shots and push things on a little more than his obdurate partner.Years later, with a similarly stubborn figure as chairman of selectors in Andrew Hilditch, Boon has quit his post on the national panel and in so doing helped to bring swifter change to the system than might otherwise have been the case.The circumstances, and the timing, are apt. Boon’s portly figure is universally respected and renowned, positioning him ideally for the ICC match referee’s role, in which he will have to make unpopular decisions and perpetuate the rule of law in a game where money and political expedience have too often blurred the priorities of its governors.Boon’s selection replacement will be hotly debated, and the modest financial return (about Aus$40,000 per year) will rule out many of the game’s more fiscally-minded. But by his exit Boon has offered the chance for the selection panel to regain a more balanced look, as the ideas of former bowlers or more laterally-minded batsmen can be considered. Merv Hughes was removed from the panel to make room for Greg Chappell in late 2010, turning selection meetings into an exclusively top order club.In that vein, Boon’s influence reflected his batting, as a calming presence and an advocate of continuity of the kind that his generation had enjoyed under the stewardship of the then selection chairman Lawrie Sawle, the coach Bob Simpson and the captain Allan Border. It was not insignificant that he was the selector on tour when Australia enjoyed their most noteworthy result of recent times, defeating South Africa in South Africa in early 2009.The sight of the inscrutable Boon, a decorated veteran of two wildly successful England tours in 1989 and 1993, might have been useful in the strange atmosphere that enveloped the Australians ahead of the final Test of the 2009 Ashes at the Oval. Nathan Hauritz was infamously left out, on a turning pitch, in circumstances that were never fully explained, and the urn was spirited away.Yet Boon’s conservatism, a trait that was learned rather than inherent, did not always make for the best balance of views on a panel also containing Hilditch and another former opening batsman in Jamie Cox. Their dogged decision to stick with the team that lost in 2009, believing it a series they should have won, backfired dreadfully in 2010-11, when the likes of Marcus North, Ben Hilfenhaus, Michael Clarke and the captain Ricky Ponting all failed utterly to do their jobs against an England team that sought far more actively to improve on the 2009 model.Now Boon leaves the team in a state of real uncertainty. Ponting has quit the captaincy but not his batting, and Clarke is leading the team to Sri Lanka and South Africa without nearly enough Test runs behind him over the past 12 months.The Don Argus review into the performance of the Australian team will likely recommend a range of measures to improve the pathway from club cricket to the international arena, while the performances of the out-of-contract Hilditch and the team coach Tim Nielsen are also placed under the spotlight. Neither have indicated any desire to move aside, but Boon, like Ponting, has sensed the time is right to move to step away from decision-making.In late 2009, Boon was the selector on duty for a limited overs tour of India. He spoke of how the dark days of the 1980s had influenced his thinking on the game, and his resolve to ensure they did not return.”I’ll never forget AB and I making a pact when we were selectors together that we’d make every endeavour for that situation not to happen to Australian cricket ever again, because it is devastating when it does,” Boon said. “We’ve seen with the West Indies that they’ve been devastated for a number of years, and they’ve taken a long time to recover which is a shame. So it built a resolve for us to be hard and then once we started succeeding, the resolve again and then the desire to not let that go was a greater sensation and sense among all the teams I played in.”Sadly for both, the bad days have been reprised, though this time the enemies of Australian success are not cynicism and South Africa. Instead they are tangled into the marketing and talent development of a muddled Cricket Australia, an organisation from which Boon stayed at arm’s length while he fashioned his own ideal cricket structure in Tasmania. They now have the Sheffield Shield to show for it.

ScorecardActing captain Murray Goodwin made the 64th hundred of his first-class career to lead Sussex’s resistance on the third day of their Championship match against Lancashire at Hove. Goodwin’s 113, his 45th century for the county, was not enough to prevent his side from conceding a first-innings deficit of 300 after they were bowled out for 290.But following on, openers Ed Joyce and Chris Nash took advantage of benign conditions and a tiring attack to take Sussex to 147 without loss at stumps, still 153 behind but with every chance of escaping with a draw. Joyce closed on 63, with eight fours so far, while his partner is 57 not out, having hit 10 boundaries.Sussex had resumed on 97 for 4 in their first innings and soon lost nightwatchman Amjad Khan to a slip catch off Glen Chapple, the first of four wickets for the Lancashire captain. But Luke Wright and Andrew Hodd both gave Goodwin support in two significant stands to hold up Lancashire’s bid for a third successive innings victory.Wright, playing his first game since the World Cup because of knee trouble, helped add 81 in 23 overs for the sixth wicket before left-arm spinner Gary Keedy switched ends and immediately had him taken at slip for 33 off a ball which turned out of the rough.Goodwin then added 90 in 27 overs with Hodd (28) but when the latter was leg before to Chapple’s inswinger, soon after he took the new ball, it sparked a collapse which saw Sussex lose their last four wickets in 6.4 overs for just 19 runs.Goodwin had not offered a chance during a watchful innings during which he mixed long periods of careful defence with some typically stylish back-foot shots through his strong areas on the off side. But on 113 he mis-timed a back-foot drive off the persevering Chapple and was caught low down in the covers, having faced 264 balls and hit 11 boundaries.Sussex’s tail didn’t last long, with Keedy also finishing with four wickets when he ended the innings by bemusing Naveed Arif with his arm ball.Lancashire might even have harboured hopes of a three-day win given the brittleness of Sussex’s batting this season but they were soon forced to re-think their strategies as Nash and Joyce dug in after tea.Their cause was aided by Lancashire’s seamers regularly over-stepping. They conceded 30 runs in the first innings and a further 20 second time around, with Sajid Mahmood and Farveez Maharoof accounting for 42 of those runs between them. Sussex had themselves bowled 21 no-balls – 42 runs – in the Lancashire innings.

Simon Taufel and Aleem Dar have been named as the on-field Umpires for the World Cup final between India and Sri Lanka on Saturday. Ian Gould and Steve Davis will be third and fourth umpires, respectively, while Jeff Crowe will perform match referee duties for the game.The DRS has played a strong role in this World Cup – sometimes controversially – but both Taufel and Dar have had largely flawless tournaments, while Gould and Davis have also been generally accurate in their decisions.Two of the younger umpires on the ICC’s elite panel, Taufel and Dar’s umpiring careers have run almost concurrently. Taufel officiated in his first one-day international in January 1999, while Dar’s first international came just over a year later, and since then both have earned reputations for consistently accurate decision-making.Taufel was named Umpire of the Year for five consecutive years from 2004 to 2008, and when he finally lost the title it was to Dar, who won the award in both 2009 and 2010.Both have stood in two previous World Cups, and in 2007 Dar was one of the on-field umpires for the final between Australia and Sri Lanka – although he came in for some criticism after the farcical finale of that match for his role in misinterpreting the rules regarding bad light.Taufel officiated in the final of the 2004 Champions Trophy and as the ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa, where he was an on-field umpire in the thrilling India v Pakistan final. He once joked “if Ricky and the boys slip up eventually I might get the chance to do a [World Cup] final”, and with Australia having crashed out of this tournament after three consecutive World Cup triumphs, he will finally get his chance.Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland welcomed Taufel’s appointment. “The Australian team’s success in World Cups over a long period of time has been to the detriment of Simon Taufel who has never been able to officiate in a World Cup final,” Sutherland told . “It’s fantastic to see him get this opportunity.”

Big PictureChennai Super Kings’ exceptional run of form has been built on the principle of unity, a theme also visible in the other team led by MS Dhoni. While most sides used the 2011 auction as an opportunity to clean out the closet, Chennai focussed on minimising churn. The four best players were held back, and the franchise fought hard to repurchase the likes of R Ashwin, Doug Bollinger, Mike Hussey, Shadab Jakati and S Badrinath from the auction pool. With a solid bunch of performers at their disposal, and the added advantage of familiarity among their ranks, Chennai are primed for another good season.On-field success is only one half of Chennai’s story, though. Chennai is arguably the most successfully branded IPL franchises, with their PR campaign capturing the very essence of cricket on the streets and beaches of the city. Year after year, they come up with the most endearing promos, with everyone from Dhoni to Bollinger joining the Chennai layman in the chorus. The party will resume in full force at Chepauk when they stride out in their yellow jerseys on Friday.Key playersUntil famous bat-twirl after the winning six in the World Cup, the most enduring MS Dhoni image was the uppercut he landed on his own helmet after whacking Chennai into the 2010 IPL semi-finals. It was a rare show of emotion from a man who seldom loses his composure on the field. As wicketkeeper-captain, Dhoni is the team’s brains and the nerve-centre rolled into one. His perceptive use of R Ashwin with the new ball, and positioning of a very straight mid-off to snare Kieron Pollard in the 2010 final are now part of IPL folklore.Michael Hussey is an unusual choice at the top, yet Chennai’s decision to open with him ensures stability and a solid foundation for the muscular middle order to launch from. After a personally fulfilling Ashes, Hussey was laid low by a serious hamstring injury that kept him out of the initial stages of the World Cup. With Matthew Hayden missing in action this year, Hussey should face no hindrance in resuming his alliance with M Vijay at the top of the order. He will, however, join the party a little late after Australia’s one-day tour of Bangladesh.R Ashwin‘s prowess with the new ball, bowling to fields that are pulled in, is based on his accuracy. He may not be able to bowl six different balls in an over, yet he can get each one of them to land them on the same spot, and get the odd one to surprise the batsman by going away. Having picked up the carom ball by watching Ajantha Mendis bowling in Chepauk before he became an international sensation, Ashwin has become as lethal in its use as the inventor himself. Ashwin’s biggest strength, though, is not his variety, but his reluctance to over-use it.Big name inChennai have picked wisely in including Nuwan Kulasekara and Tim Southee for the new season. Their bowling attack in past editions often included three spinners, but this time they have two high-quality seaming options to fall back on. Both Kulasekara and Southee rely on exemplary seam position, and while Southee’s stock ball is the outswinger, Kulasekara specialises in mixing legcutters with huge induckers. Bollinger and Morkel are likely to be the first-choice fast bowlers, but Southee and Kulasekara could come into the picture as the tournament wears on.Big name outTwenty20 was clearly not Muttiah Muralitharan‘s format, yet he found a way to be effective, by going round the wicket and twirling his offspinners and doosras from the same spot around middle and off. He formed a formidable tweak-trio with Ashwin and Shadab Jakati, and Chennai – the team and the city – will miss his presence and personality, as much as his immense skills.Below the radarS Badrinath‘s India days might be behind him, but year after year he turns in stellar middle-order performances for Chennai. Badrinath’s methods will not fill up the stands – his high elbow, straight bat and along-the-ground shots are incongruous in this format, but he is the kind of man Dhoni backs. Badrinath’s domestic record speaks of a man whose appetite for runs borders on gluttony. He provides the stability in a middle order that features attackers like Raina, Morkel and Dhoni himself. Expect more of those typically unsung, unnoticed but invaluable gems from Badrinath this season.Last three seasonsChennai have been the most consistent IPL team, having made the semi-finals in each edition of the tournament. Not once was their passage into the last four straightforward – at one point in the 2010 season, they were languishing at seventh in a field of eight teams – but each time they managed to find a game-breaking performance to see them through trouble. In 2008, they had the upperhand for most of the final against Rajasthan before losing off the last ball. Their 2009 campaign was halted at the semi-final stage by Bangalore, powered by a cool innings from Manish Pandey. Chennai were unstoppable at the business end of the 2010 edition, and easily trumped a nervous Mumbai in the final.

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Luke Pomersbach guided Western Australia with 82•Getty Images

Consistency in batting from Western Australia and a similar effort from South Australia’s bowlers ensured that honours were even at the end of the opening day of their Sheffield Shield encounter at the WACA. Luke Pomersbach top-scored for the hosts with 82 and was backed up by steady contributions from the rest of the line-up, particularly the lower order, to set up 324.However, the South Australia bowlers kept chipping away at the home team despite the batsmen getting starts and threatening to build substantial partnerships. Pomersbach added 71 with captain Marcus North, and 44 with Adam Voges but lost both to the offspin of Nathan Lyon, who, on first-class debut, finished with four wickets. Tom Beaton, Luke Ronchi and Michael Beer fell within a space of 18 runs but Nathan Coulter-Nile (46), along with No.10 and 11 Ryan Duffield and Michael Hogan, took the score past 300.For South Australia, Lyon was supported by the seamers, Rob Cassell and Jake Haberfield, who shared five wickets. In their response, the visitors lost opener Daniel Harris early and ended the day on 15 for 1.

As England’s visit to Australia passes the 100-day mark with the final match of the trip looming in Perth carrying a distinct end-of-term feeling, Andrew Strauss has called for future tours to be switched around so that the one-dayers precede the Test matches.The series has been comfortably wrapped up by the home side with both teams stripped of key players through injury and rotation and Strauss believes that ODIs can act as the perfect curtain-raiser to a full tour rather than being tagged on at the end. This is particularly relevant to contests such as the Ashes where it’s the five-day game that carries most meaning.”Wherever possible I think that’s a better way of doing it,” he said. “I’ve been involved in a lot of tours where the one-dayers at the end have been hard work. Not just for us but the other teams as well. In some ways it’s quite a good way to whet the appetite for the five-day matches coming up. That’s something the administrators can look at and I think it makes for better cricket personally.”Strauss drew the comparison with the 2005 Ashes where the two teams went head-to-head in a month of one-day action before the Tests, which helped build the anticipation ahead of what became one of the great series. The final of the NatWest Series was tied at Lord’s before a closely contested three-match series was won by Australia.It allowed the mini-battles and themes to build up, such as the confrontation between Simon Jones and Matthew Hayden at Edgbaston and the decline of Jason Gillespie, which were then taken forward into the longer format.Along with the structure of the tour the length of the one-day series has also drawn criticism. Mitchell Johnson said he felt seven matches were too many and it’s a view long held by Strauss. “I personally think that five one-dayers is enough, but there are a lot of other considerations to take into account,” he said. “The administrators have to think about the future of the game and funding the various initiatives that they have. It’s always a difficult one to answer. The crowds have been pretty healthy and apparently it will be a full house here tomorrow so that’s a good thing.”However, this one-day series has been played in the lead-up to a World Cup which should have given it extra context with both teams looking to fine-tune their planning. But the injuries have meant frequent changes and disrupted preparation although Australia have responded better to the set-backs than the tourists.On Friday, England team director Andy Flower said he wanted coaches to have more say in tour itineraries to try and prevent the overload of fixtures that threatens player burnout, but while Strauss would also like input he doesn’t think it will happen with the structures put in place many years ahead.”Ideally, yes, but these schedules are in place for four or five years into the future. I think we’ve come to the realisation that we’re not going to have a lot of say on it. That’s the reality. All we can do is manage our resources as well as possible and that’s where some sort of rotation system, resting players now and again is vitally important. And how you do it, how you manage it, if you do it effectively it’s an opportunity for you to get ahead of the opposition sides. Schedules are what they are and they will continue to be so.”Despite the injuries, tiredness and just a brief three-day stop back home before leaving for Dhaka next week, Strauss is determined to finish the tour on a high, even though it will always be remembered as a success regardless of this result.”We are very determined to do so,” he said. “It’s the last game, it’s the last opportunity we have to give a good account of ourselves. I think the guys are very excited about it; finishing the tour on a high and then heading for a few days off before the World Cup feeling good about our prospects. That’s a very exciting time in any cricketer’s life and it’s just around the corner now so the juices are starting to flow on that and they will do over the coming days even more so.”

ScorecardAndrew McDonald picked up 3 for 1, and a calf injury•Getty Images

Andrew McDonald made a terrific comeback from a broken hand, only to pick up a calf strain as Victoria took the advantage on the opening day against South Australia in Adelaide. McDonald picked up 3 for 1 as the Redbacks were knocked over for 168, and by the close of play Victoria were within sight of first-innings points.The Bushrangers went to stumps on 3 for 141, with Aaron Finch on 25 and Cameron White on 38, with McDonald set to bat with a runner after his injury struck. He had skittled the middle order of the home team with three wickets, all caught by David Hussey in the slips, before the calf problem ended his spell after 21 deliveries.It was an eventful return for McDonald, who had missed nearly a month after his outstanding start to the summer was cut short when he broke his hand. John Hastings chipped in with 4 for 37, including the last two wickets as South Australia struggled having chosen to bat on a pitch usually renowned for runs.Callum Ferguson did his Test hopes no help by making a second-ball duck, one of the men who edged McDonald, and Tom Cooper (53) was the only man to post a half-century. In reply, Rob Quiney (42) and Michael Hill, who made 34, gave Victoria a solid start before Ben Edmondson picked up two wickets, including David Hussey for a golden duck.