Cricket

6:25 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Former Pakistan first-class cricketer Zafar Sarfraz has died after testing positive for covid-19. The 50-year old who made his debut back in 1988 had been on a ventilator in the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Peshawar for the past three days. Sarfraz, a left-handed middle-order batsman, made

1:58 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff They may be defending champions but West Indies won’t be “overwhelming favourites” at the men’s T20 World Cup slated to be held in Australia in October-November according to chairman of selectors Roger Harper. In 2016, Darren Sammy’s West Indies became the first team to win two World T20 titles (they’d

7:25 AM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Gautam Gambhir has liked what he has seen of KL Rahul as a wicketkeeper-batsman in white-ball cricket. The former India opener reckons Rahul is the “apt replacement” for MS Dhoni in the shorter formats, particularly in T20 cricket, going forward. Dhoni, 38, hasn’t played any serious cricket since India’s semi-final

3:02 AM GMT AB de Villiers has not made a firm decision on his availability for the T20 World Cup yet, but indicated that the likelihood of him playing would decrease if the tournament is postponed. In an interview with the Afrikaans weekly Rapport , de Villiers said that while form and fitness would be

6:30 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Facebook Twitter Facebook Messenger Pinterest Email print The County Championship season was due to start on Sunday, April 12, but with the coronavirus pandemic sending the UK into lockdown, things had to be done a little differently… Middlesex openers Sam Robson and Nick Gubbins were due to start the season

5:08 AM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff They don’t play anywhere near as frequently as most of their Full Member counterparts do, but 2020 was supposed to be different for Zimbabwe. They began the year with a home Test series against Sri Lanka, followed that with a full tour of Bangladesh, and were set for a lot

2:20 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Eoin Morgan has been making “the best out of a bad situation”, enforced by the coronavirus pandemic, spending time with his three-week old baby. Had things been normal, Morgan would not have been at home, he would have been part of the Kolkata Knight Riders squad in the IPL. Reflecting

5:25 PM GMT Sri Lanka 303 for 9 (Jayawardene 120, Jayasuriya 51, Wells 2-30) beat England 302 for 3 (Hick 126*, Fairbrother 78, Jayasuriya 1-42) by one wicket Once again, all eyes were on Muttiah Muralitharan. Just as they had been at the beginning of a foul-tempered and engrossing contest, and again during a seminal

4:34 PM GMT West Indies Test captain Jason Holder wants his team to “make amends” for their 2017 defeat in England, should their planned Test tour for this summer go ahead. Holder is confident that he and his men now have the experience as well as confidence to win a Test series in England, a

4:52 PM GMT Director of domestic cricket Haroon Rasheed and chief curator Agha Zahid will leave the PCB at the end of their contracts. Rasheed’s contract concludes at the end of this month, while Zahid’s ends on May 31. The duo had been working on a rolling contract and held prominent positions within the setup

3:37 PM GMT Jason Holder has admitted that it was “tough” for him to “transition” back to being a player in the ODI side after Cricket West Indies replaced him with Kieron Pollard as the white-ball captain last September. Although Holder remains the Test captain, his performances in ODI cricket post the 2019 World Cup

4:46 AM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff Australia were “out of control” well before the ball-tampering scandal two years ago according to former international umpire Ian Gould who has recalled his role in the infamous Newlands Test. Gould, who retired from the international game after last year’s World Cup, was the TV official during the Cape Town

6:07 PM GMT Nicholas Pooran, Shimron Hetmyer and Shai Hope. These three men from three different islands in the Caribbean are the reason Michael Holding can see “light at the end of the tunnel” for West Indies cricket, which he feels can once again become a global force if the young talent is nurtured properly.

5:11 PM GMT Ashley Giles, England’s director of men’s cricket, has said that “everything is on the table” when it comes to staging international cricket in the UK this summer, even as it looks increasingly unlikely that the Test series against West Indies will be able to go ahead as planned in June. With the

8:28 AM GMT Big picture It’s taken England longer than most countries to wake up to the fact that Sri Lanka aren’t just here to make up the numbers any more – but you get the impression that the penny might finally be dropping. For twice in the space of the last three years, Arjuna

3:27 PM GMT ESPNcricinfo staff The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) has agreed to reallocate £1 million of domestic prize money towards player contracts for 2020, after reaching an agreement with the ECB and the 18 first-class counties in response to the COVID-19 outbreak that has already delayed the start of the county season. Following discussions

1:22 PM GMT There’s no cricket on the horizon, yet, for Pakistan’s players, but lockdown or no lockdown, they’ll have to keep their fitness levels up. That’s the message from the PCB, which will conduct fitness tests for over 200 of its contracted domestic and international players, via video link, on April 20 and 21.

7:59 AM GMT International cricket of some kind in the next Australian summer is probable, the domestic Big Bash League and WBBL are highly likely and even the men’s T20 World Cup remains a chance of happening. These are among the views that may be drawn from a report issued to Cricket Australia and the