Lee, Tait in Aus squad for 1st Eng ODI

Sydney: Pacemen Brett Lee and Shaun Tait were on Tuesday named in Australia's squad for the opening match of a seven-game one-day international series against England, raising their hopes of a World Cup berth.

Lee and Tait, who are both returning from injuries, were included in a 14-man squad for Sunday's first one-dayer against the Ashes victors at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The 15-man World Cup squad will be announced on January 19, with chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch saying both quicks were in the frame for the tournament in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, starting next month.

Hilditch said the balance of the World Cup squad "will probably be very much reflected in the team we have just announced" for the first one-day fixture against England.

"But we are still looking at two or three people ahead of that final 15 selection," Hilditch told reporters.

"I don't want to be specific, obviously we know the areas we need to be looking at ahead of the final selection."

Hilditch said Tait and Lee were "both looking extremely fit at the moment".

"Obviously Taity has only had limited bowling coming back but it's all going really well. He's probably fitter than he has been in his life," he said of the pace spearhead, who has just returned from a three-month layoff following elbow surgery.

"But obviously the elbow is an issue. It seems to be going really well. So obviously we're looking at that over the next couple of Twenty20s and the one-day game to make sure he's at his best, but all the signs are positive.

"Brett has had a longer lead-in from injury and we're looking at him to make sure that he's back to his best."

The 14-man squad will be captained by Michael Clarke in the absence of the injured Ricky Ponting.

Hilditch said squads for the remainder of the series against England would be announced after the World Cup squad is named next week.

Squad: Michael Clarke (c), Cameron White (vc), Doug Bollinger, Xavier Doherty, Brad Haddin, Nathan Hauritz, David Hussey, Mike Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee, Peter Siddle, Steve Smith, Shaun Tait, Shane Watson.

Win in SA could push India to top spot

Dubai: With the World Cup just around the corner, India will have their eyes on the rankings as a win in the five-match series against South Africa could help Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men go into the quadrennial extravaganza as the number one ODI team.

Currently ranked second in the ICC ODI rankings, India are expected to face stiff competition for the top spot from top ranked Australia, world number four South Africa and fifth ranked England, and according to the ICC website, any of these four 

teams could start the cricket's flagship event as the number one team.

Even as India lock horns with South Africa from Wednesday, Australia will resume their rivalry with traditional rivals England in a seven-match ODI series starting on Sunday.

Third ranked Sri Lanka, too, could also get to the top spot although pre-event fixtures have not yet been confirmed.

Ind-SA: India start ODI series on a high

Durban: Injury-hit but on a roll after drawing an engrossing Test series and winning the only Twenty20 match of the tour, India now get a chance to try different combinations before next month's World Cup when they take on South Africa in a five-match one-day series starting here on Wednesday.

Dubbed challenging to start with, the African safari has been reasonably successful for Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men, who avoided a Test series loss in the country for the first time

But there have been problems to deal with and they have mostly been about players' fitness.

Already missing key players such as Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, the injury list has only grown longer with the pace duo of Praveen Kumar and S Sreesanth in doubt for Wednesday due to hand and elbow problems respectively.

It is the final ODI series that India and South Africa play before the World Cup starting February 19 and both the sides would look to settle their squads for the big event through these five matches.

The series is a golden opportunity for the likes of Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina to make a case for World Cup selection.

They did well for themselves and the team by guiding India to a fine 21-run win in the Twenty20 match on Sunday with valuable batting contributions.

The absence of biggies such as Sehwag and Gambhir now gives them an opportunity to hog the limelight in the ODIs as well but also creates the pressure of performing and performing consistently.

The series will see the return of the iconic Sachin Tendulkar to the Indian one-day fold after close to a year. The last time he played an ODI, Tendulkar became the first batsman in the history of the game's format to strike a double hundred.

The opposition in that historic match at Gwalior also happened to be South Africa and Graeme Smith and his men would be praying that the champion batsman does not do an encore.

For the off-colour Yuvraj Singh, it is the final chance to convince the selectors that he is the same destructive force which won India many a matches before the stunning slump

of form.

On the bowling front, the ever-reliable Zaheer Khan will spearhead the attack after being rested for Sunday's Twenty20 international but his back-up seems a little weak given the

uncertainty over the availability of Sreesanth and Praveen.

In case the injured duo is ruled out, Ashish Nehra and the rather inconsistent Munaf Patel would be the options for India. Harbhajan Singh will as usual shoulder the spin responsibilities.

South Africa, on the other hand, would be, missing prolific all-rounder Jacques Kallis, who is nursing an injury. The veteran has been the rock around whom the South African

batting has revolved as was evident during the drawn Test series.

But the Proteas still have a good batting reserve with skipper Graeme Smith, the explosive duo of AB de Villiers and JP Duminy and the consistent Hashim Amla to anchor the middle-order.

As for bowling, Dale Steyn has been in red hot form and has Morne Morkel and Wayne Parnell as his speed partners.

All eyes will also be on the 31-year-old Pakistan-born spinner Imran Tahir, who is expected to make his debut after getting South African citizenship a few weeks ago.

Teams:

India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain/keeper), Sachin Tendulkar, Murali Vijay, Yuvraj Singh, R Ashwin, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel, Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, S Sreesanth.

South Africa: Graeme Smith (captain), Hashim Amla, Johan Botha, AB de Villiers (wicketkeeper), Jean-Paul Duminy, Faf du Plessis, Imran Tahir, Colin Ingram, David Miller, Morne Morkel, Wayne Parnell, Robin Peterson, Dale Steyn, Lonwabo Tsotsobe.

India win T20 clash against SA by 21 runs

Durban: Makhaya Ntini's farewell match did not exactly have a fairytale ending as South Africa went down to India by 21 runs in the one-off T20 match at Durban's Moses Mabhida stadium at Durban's Moses Mabhida stadium on Sunday.

Chasing 169 to win, South Africa only managed to end up with 147/9 in their twenty overs.

Earlier, enterprising knocks from Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina took India to 168/6 after Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and opted to bat first.

India rested batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar, off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and pacer S Sreesanth.

On the other hand the hosts led by Johan Botha dropped left arm pacer Lonwabo Tsotsobe.

The Proteas were looking to set the record straight as they had lost both their T20 encounters against India at home.

During the 2006-07 tour, chasing a winning target of 127, the Indians won by six wickets of the penultimate ball of the match and followed that up by toppling South Africa in the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 Championships when they easily defended a total of 153.

Bowlers won the Test for us: Misbah

Hamilton: Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-haq singled out his bowlers for sticking to their plans as they ran through New Zealand, dismissing them in a session to set up a crushing 10-wicket first Test victory inside three days at Seddon Park on Sunday.

Pakistan took a 1-0 lead in the two-match series after they bowled New Zealand out for 110 runs in their second innings, meaning they would need just 19 runs to achieve the win, having taken a valuable 92-run first innings lead.

Taufeeq Umar and Mohammad Hafeez quickly rattled through to 21 without loss to achieve the win in 3.4 overs.

Left-arm spinner Abdul Rehman, who probably would not have played had Saeed Adjmal not returned to Pakistan following the death of his father, produced a man-of-the-match performance with a match tally of six for 75 off 45 overs.

Rehman bowled long sustained periods of tight bowling that stemmed the normally free-flowing New Zealanders from scoring runs.

He was ably supported by the pace trio of Umar Gul, Tanvir Ahmed and Wahab Riaz, who had to bowl into a relatively flat wicket that showed, when batsmen were established, it was difficult to get them out.

"I think the bowlers did a superb job; they stuck to their task and did very well for the team." Misbah told reporters.

"I feel that it was really tough, tough wicket to score runs and batsmen could just sit there and face a lot of deliveries without scoring runs.

"So that was the key, just bowl in the right areas, keep the batsmen frustrated and they would make mistakes."

New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori, while bitterly disappointed at his side's second innings batting effort, also praised the Pakistani bowling effort.

"I think there is some credit, too, to the way Pakistan bowled, particularly (Wahab) Riaz," Vettori said.

"He came in and bowled a 10-over spell which really gave them the impetus to come pretty hard at us.

"While we will always be disappointed to be bowled out like that, I think you do have to sit back and say it was a good bowling performance."

IPL Auction: Gambhir costliest buy of day 1

New Delhi: Cricket's biggest carnival - the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction - got underway at Bangalore on Saturday, with 353 players going under the hammer and a total of USD 90 million to be spent.

The number of bidders went from eight to ten as the Pune and Kochi franchise, too, took their seats in the auction room at the ITC Royal Gardenia in the Garden City.

That undoubtedly added to the battle royale, chiefly fought between Nita Ambani (Mumbai Indians), Vijay Mallya (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Subrata Roy (Pune Warriors) and the GMR (Delhi Daredevils).

The first round began with nine players, starting with the prolific Indian opener Gautam Gambhir who wasn't retained by his former employer Delhi Daredevils. And the first bang of the hammer was heard when Gautam Gambhir was bought for a whopping USD 2.4 millon by Shahrukh's Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), tagging him as sold.

Next up was Sri Lankan Tillakaratne Dilshan with a reserve price of 400,000 and the Royal Challengers Bangalore bagged him for USD 650,000.

Indian speedster Zaheer Khan, who played for Mumbai Indians in the last edition, was bid successfully for USD 900,000 by Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The big-hitting Yusuf Pathan was expectedly sold for a big amount to Kolkata Knight Riders who ended up as the highest bidders for the Baroda player with USD 2.1 million.

The other players to go under the hammer in round one were New Zealand's Ross Taylor, bagged by Rajasthan Royals for USD 1 million; England's Kevin Pietersen, bought by Deccan Chargers for 650,000; Sri Lanka's Mahela Jayawardene, who went for USD 1.5 million to Kochi; Yuvraj Singh, bought by Pune Warriors for USD 1.8 million; and finally South African AB de Villiers who went for USD 1.1 million to Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Round two began with what could remain the biggest surprise, if we may call it that, of the auction. Sourav Ganguly, India's most successful opening batsman and skipper, was brought onto the auction table for a reserve price of USD 400,000. But jaws dropped when not even a single bidder came forward to open his bid. The icon remained unsold!

The Australian representation in the auction began with limited-over specialist and their new T20 skipper, Cameron White. The Deccan Chargers ended up with White in their team for a price of USD 1.1 million.

Jacques Kallis, arguably world's best all-rounder, was the third one to go under the hammer in round two. Kolkata Knight Riders, who seemed to be on a spending spree, once again went berserk and threw open their purse for him, shelling out $ 1.1 mn.

Mumbaikar Rohit Sharma, once tipped as the heir-apparent to Sachin Tendulkar, surprised with a final bidding price of USD 2 million spent by Mumbai Indian's Nita Ambani.

The next buy of the auction was Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh would have had a wry smile on his face when Nita Ambani bagged him for a not-so-bad USD 850,000. It remains to be be seen if the old-time foes Harbhajan and Symonds will become pals under the Mumbai umbrella.

Deccan Chargers couldn't have had a better replacement for Adam Gilchrist when they took home Kumar Sangakkara, who can perform the all three roles of batting, leading and wicketkeeping as well as the Australian. The Hyderabad team had to shell out USD 700,000 for the Sri Lankan skipper.

The outgoing Deccan skipper, Adam Gilchrist, was the next name announced by the veteran English auctioneer Richard Madley. Deccan's loss became Kings XI Punjab's gain who bought

Gilchrist for USD 900,000. That brought out an interesting fact related to Sangakkara and Gilchrist. Both wicketkeeper batsman, both skipper of their ex-teams and both went to each other's ex-employer.

Two other members of India's 'Fab Four' - Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman - were given better treatment by the bidders as opposed to Ganguly. Though they didn't bag a huge amount, Dravid was sold to Rajasthan Royals for USD 500,000 while Laxman went for his reserve price of 400,000 to Kochi.

Robin Uthappa, the star of IPL-3, caused a major tug-of-war between Pune Warriors and a couple of other bidders and was finally snapped up for a staggering USD 2.1 million by the Pune team.

There were five other bids before the lunch interval: South Africa's Johan Botha, bought by Rajasthan Royals for USD 950,000; New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori, sold to Royal Challengers Bangaloe for USD 550,000; Kiwi stumper Brendon McCullum, who went to Kochi for USD 475,000; Indian speedster S Sreesanth, who was bagged by his home team Kochi for USD 900,000; and India's out-of-favour but talented all-rounder Irfan Pathan who took home a handsome USD 1.9 million, paid by Delhi Daredevils.

After the luncheon interval, round three too had a lot of surprises in store and sent expectations for a toss. The big news of the session was that Brian Lara, who hoped to make a celebrated comeback to cricket by way of IPL, remained unsold.

Not even a single franchise came forward to bid for the West Indian legend and that must have broken many a sleeping spells.

However, surprises didn't end with Lara. Jesse Ryder and Herschelle Gibss too remained empty-handed as they didn't lure anyone to shout for them either. But there were some good buys too. Let's take a look at those!

Mr. Cricket Mike Hussey got the money-spenders off the block in the third session when he was lapped up by Chennai Super Kings (CSK) for USD 425,000. Punjab chose to buy back Australian Shaun Marsh and got their purse lighter by Rs 1.94 crore.

Among the big names on the table in this session were JP Duminy, David Hussey, David Warner, Brad Haddin, Angelo Mathews and Dwayne Bravo. And here is the detail of where, to whom and for how much they went.

JP Duminy (USD 300,000, Deccan Chargers), Shikhar Dhawan (USD 300,000, Deccan Chargers), Saurabh Tiwary (USD 1.6 million, Royal Challengers Bangalore), David Hussey (USD 1.4 million, Kings XI Punjab), David Warner (USD 750,000, Delhi Daredevils), Parthiv Patel (USD 290,000, Kochi), Wriddhiman Saha (USD 100,000, Chennai Super Kings), Dinesh Karthik (USD 900,000, Kings XI Punjab), Naman Ojha (USD 270,000, Delhi Daredevils), Brad Haddin (USD 325,000, Kolkata Knight Riders), Tim Paine (USD 270,000, Pune Warriors), Davey Jacobs (USD 190,000, Mumbai Indians). James Hopes (USD 350,000, Delhi Daredevils), Ravindra Jadeja (950,000, Kochi), Shakib al Hasan (USD 425,000 Kolkata Knight Riders), Stuart Broad (USD 400,000, Kings XI Punjab), Abhishek Nayar (USD 800,000, Kings XI Punjab), Angelo Mathews (USD 950,000, Pune Warriors), Dwayne Bravo, (USD 200,000, Chennai Super Kings), Steven Smith (USD 200,000, Kochi) and James Franklin (USD 100,000, Mumbai Indians).

Australian Graham Manou, England's Matt Prior and Luke Wright and South African Mark Boucher found no bidders.

Next up were pace bowlers, out of whom Praveen Kumar suprisingly bagged the most bucks (USD 800,000) to play for Kings XI Punjab, while Australian pace machine Brett Lee got favour from KKR who bagged him for his base price of USD 400,000.

Other bowlers auctioned in this round were Ishant sharma (USD 450,000, Deccan Chargers), Ashish Nehra (850,000, Pune Warriors), Brett Lee (USD 400,000, KKR), Morne Morkel (USD 475,000, Delhi Daredevils), Ryan Harris (USD 325,000, Kings XI Punjab), Dirk Nannes (USD 650,000, RCB) and Doug Bollinger (USD 700,000, CSK).

Dilhara Fernando's name invited no bidders among the franchisees.

The pack of spinners was led by world's highest Test wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan, who made himself richer by USD 1.1 million, paid by the new entrant Team Kochi. The surprise package turned out to be Piyush Chawla who remained in Punjab's scheme of things, going for a whopping USD 900,000.

But another shock was in store when one of world's leading offie Graeme Swann joined the list of snubbed players as he too drew a blank.

Here's how the rest of the spinners fared: R Ashwin (USD 850,000, CSK), Ajantha Mendis (not sold), Pragyan Ojha (USD 500,000, Deccan Chargers), Murali Karthik (not sold), Amit Mishra (USD 300,000, Deccan Chargers), Nathan McCullum (USD 100,000, Pune Warriors) and Romesh Pawar (USD 180,000, Kochi).

The auction was rounded off with probably the snatch of the day in terms of English sensation Eoin Morgan for a mere USD 350,000, with KKR being the beneficiary.

And the players who brought curtain down on day one of the most-awaited auction were Chamara Kapugedera (not sold), Aaron Finch (USD 300,000, Delhi Daredevils), Brad Hodge (USD 425,000, Kochi), Tamim Iqbal (not sold), Callum Ferguson (USD 300,000, Pune Warriors), Manoj Tiwary (USD 475,000, KKR), Cheteshwar Pujara (USD 700,000, RCB), S Badrinath (USD 800,000, CSK) and Paul Collingwood (USD 250,000, Rajasthan Royals).

If day one was anything to go by, there is plenty in store on the final day on Sunday, when each of the franchisees will try to elbow each other and make that one last push to gain a psychological edge before the action shifts to the playing arena come April.

It's also not the end of the world for the big guns who missed out on the party on Saturday. Ganguly, Gayle, Swann, Lara and all the other unsold players will be back to stake a claim on day two as the franchisees take a final call on their respective teams.