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This season’s Pentangular Cup will be boosted by the presence of most of Pakistan’s big names, with as many 15 Pakistan regulars representing their respective provincial sides.Defending champions Sind will once again be the team to beat, captained as they are by Shahid Afridi and boosted by the presence of Faisal Iqbal as his deputy and Danish Kaneria as his lead spinner. Sohail Khan, the fast-bowling find of the last domestic season on the fringes of the national team, will also be there, while Sarfraz Ahmed, Kamran Akmal’s national understudy, will keep wickets and provide lower-order stability.Fast bowler, Anwar Ali, who took five wickets in the Under-19 World Cup final against India in 2006, will be one of the many players to watch out for after his impressive show for the Pakistan Cricket Academy in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Ali, alongwith Sohail, will form a testing new-ball pairing for Sind, and both are in line for international places.Their main challenge is likely to come from Punjab who can rely on no less than 12 internationals in their 15-man squad. They will be led by Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik, while Mohammad Yousuf, Nasir Jamshed, Salman Butt, Kamran Akmal and Mohammad Hafeez add enviable depth to their batting. Though not as strong as Sind, their bowling will benefit from the inclusion of Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Khaleel, the upcoming paceman Mohammad Talha and Saeed Ajmal and Mansoor Amjad as spinners.Though Younis Khan is absent playing for South Australia, NWFP will still be able to call on Umar Gul and Yasir Hameed as captain and vice-captain respectively. Fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar, Sohail Tanvir, and Rao Iftikhar will represent Federal Areas who were runners-up last season.Baluchistan found themselves at the bottom of the points table last season after losing all their matches, three of which were innings-defeats. They’ll be hoping for a change in fortunes this time under the captaincy of Misbah-ul-Haq, who is among a number of guest players recruited from other provinces to try and beef up a traditionally cricket-poor province. Kamran Hussein, Abdur Rauf and Mohammad Irshad – all three from Punjab – will ensure Baluchistan have a more than adequate pace attack.Sind and Federal Areas, who play the tournament opener on October 25, met in a closely fought game last season, when Federal Areas recorded a one-wicket win. Ten matches were played in the competition last season, with seven outright results.Teams:NWFP: Umar Gul (capt), Yasir Hameed, Rafatullah Mohmand, Aftab Alam, Adnan Raees, Riaz Kail, Zulfiqar Jan (wk), Nauman Habib, Aslam Qureshi, Waqar Ahmed, Junaid Khan, Shakeel-ur-Rehman, Yasir Shah, Aslam Qureshi, Wajid Ali, Shoaib Khan.
Sind: Shahid Afridi (capt), Khalid Latif, Khurram Manzoor, Asif Zakir, Naumanullah, Faisal Iqbal, Faisal Ather, Rizwan Ahmed, Fawad Alam, Danish Kaneria, Sarfraz Ahmed (wk), Sohail Khan, Tanvir Ahmed, Anwar Ali, Naeem-ur-Rehman.
Federal Areas: Iftikhar Anjum (capt), Raheel Majeed, Afaq Raheem, Umair Khan, Bazid Khan, Naveed Quereshi, Usman Saeed, Ashar Zaidi, Umar Amin, Naeem Anjum (wk), Immad Wasim, Shoail Tanvir, Shoaib Akhtar, Yasir Arafat, Yasir Ali.
Baluchistan: Misbah-ul-Haq (capt), Usman Tariq, Saeed Anwar Jr., Shoaib Khan, Naseem Khan, Saeed Bin Nasir, Rameez Alam, Taimur Ali, Kamran Hussain, Abdur Rauf, Azharullah, Mohammad Irshad, Nazar Hussain, Gulraiz Sadaf, Bilal Khilji.
Punjab: Shoaib Malik (capt), Salman Butt, Nasir Jamshed, Mohammad Yousuf, Ammar Mahmood, Mohammad Hafeez, Kamral Akmal (wk), Mansoor Amjad, Abdur Rehman, Saeed Ajmal, Mohammad Khalil, Wahab Riaz, Junaid Zia, Mohammad Talha, Adnan Raza.

Scorecard

Sparking half-centuries from Aftab Ahmed and Alok Kapali carried the Dhaka Warriors to a competitive 172, but Deep Dasgupta’s blistering unbeaten 80 helped the Bengal Royal Tigers overhaul that with eight deliveries and eight wickets remaining. Dhaka’s medium-pacers had been unable to tie down the runs in the tournament, and it was yet another disappointing performance. Bengal knocked off the runs with ease, thanks to Dasgupta’s 109-run stand in 12.3 overs with Rohan Gavaskar.By the time Hamish Marshall was bowled by Mosharraf Hossain, Bengal had rattled away 41 in 4.3 overs. Gavaskar was promoted to No. 3 – he hit 30 off 12 balls against the Mumbai Champs recently – and he offered perfect support to Dasgupta, who was aggressive from the off, striking the ball with power and placement. Gavaskar ran the singles well, but it was Dasgupta’s ability to find the boundary that frustrated Dhaka. Either making room to drill the ball over extra cover or rock back to pull the errant deliveries, he was unstoppable.Gavaskar’s first ICL half-century consumed 32 balls and included some soft-handed steers to third man to compliment three sixes. Mohammad Rafique got him lbw for 51 with the last ball of the 17th over, but in the next Klusener had an lbw appeal overturned after it was reviewed by the television umpire. A second six from Dasgupta, effortlessly lifted over midwicket, hastened victory in the same over, and it was all over when Klusener thumped his second six.After electing to field, Bengal struck in the first over when Klusener had Nazimuddin caught by Upul Chandana for 2. Clearly unaffected by his opening partner’s departure, however, Aftab hit Abu Nechim for two sixes in one over, using his feet superbly. Shahriar Nafees chipped Eklak Ahmid’s first delivery to Adams at deep midwicket but Aftab remained in a different zone.He crunched boundaries either side of the pitch and when Chandana was brought on as Dhaka’s 50 came up in six overs, Aftab welcomed him with a six and a four. The third six raised his fifty from just 30 deliveries. A miscued pull ballooned back to Ahmid to cut short a thrilling innings on 61, from 42 balls. Mahbubul Karim swung and missed to be bowled by Ahmid for 4 to make it 123 for 4.A bent-knee six from Kapali only minimally dented Ahmid’s very creditable 3 for 20 from four overs, but that was just the start. A lovely short-arm jab brought Kapali his fourth six in the same direction and he raised his fifty from 27 balls. Adams served up a chest-high full toss and Kapali steered it over third man for six more. Chasing a rising delivery from Klusener, Kapali was smartly stumped by Dasgupta in the penultimate over. His 65, with five sixes, had apparently done plenty of damage, but Dhaka’s bowlers had another poor outing.

Digicel, the main sponsors of West Indies cricket, has refused to allow Stanford to participate in the legal action the telecommunications company has brought against the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in relation to the Stanford Super Series. A Stanford media release said “Digicel claims that to permit Stanford 20/20 such access would ‘disrupt’ the arbitration” which is set to begin on October 3 in the High Court in London.Stanford wanted to be part of the arbitration proceedings “in order to ensure its position was fully and properly communicated to the arbitrator”. The statement said that Digicel’s refusal “appears to make clear that Digicel is adamant on pursuing its legal proceedings at the risk of destroying the event [Stanford 20/20 for 20] and causing substantial damage to cricket in the Caribbean.”The disagreement between Digicel, the WICB, and Stanford is over the status of the Stanford Super Series. While Digicel maintains it is an official WICB event with a representative national team and under the terms of its contract with the WICB, that would give it full branding rights. Stanford insists that it is an unofficial team and, as such, is outside any existing WICB-Digicel agreement.Digicel had proposed a compromise earlier this month but their proposal was met by a counter-offer from Stanford stating they would not bring on board any of Digicel’s competitors, would pay all their costs, and would give the company some branding rights at the 2008 event.However, Stanford’s terms were rejected by Digicel who maintained that it wanted the same branding on Stanford Superstars shirts as it has on the West Indies national team’s shirts for the next five years.

With doubts lingering on whether Jagmohan Dalmiya, the new Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) president, would attend the BCCI’s working committee meeting tomorrow, the focus now shifts to discussions on fresh qualification norms to pick the new selection panel.It’s learnt that Dalmiya, who staged a comeback to cricket administration with a West Bengal election win last month after being ousted from the BCCI in 2006, will send one of his joint secretaries instead. In the event, the new selection norms are expected to be the key subject of debate tomorrow, apart from a review of the Indian board’s accounts for the last calendar year, its budget for the next year, and the agenda and dates for its annual general meeting (AGM) next month.After the 2007 AGM, the board had decided to constitute a paid selection panel from September 2008. Some of the members’ term in the present selection panel, chaired by Dilip Vengsarkar, comes to end on September 30. Even then the working committee had debated on putting into place a centralised selection system where a selector needed to fulfill certain criteria.The proposal was that the senior selectors should have played at least five Tests or 50 first-class matches and the junior selectors a minimum of 25 first-class games and should not be members of any association’s managing committee. That proposal never got passed as the board decided to do away with the eligibility criteria and allowed the selectors to be part of the managing committees of their respective associations. It said that the working committee could lay down the criteria whenever it needed to without making it part of the constitution.In the past there was also a proposal to appoint a centralised selection panel comprising three selectors based on certain qualifications instead of picking one from each zone, but there was no consensus then and it seems highly unlikely that proposal will see the light of the day even now. But some of the members on the committee feel it is time to once again have a debate on the issue. “Without changing the original system of allowing one selector to be nominated from each of the five zones in the country the board wants to revamp the process by which a selector is picked”, a BCCI official pointed out.

Regardless of the outcome of the third and final Test between Sri Lanka and India, the astonishing bowling of Ajantha Mendis will be a highlight of the series. His meteoric rise and popularity have pleasantly surprised his captain Mahela Jayawardene.”When we saw him we knew we had to develop him in the right manner,” Jayawardene said on Thursday. “We never expected him to be this successful early in his career, probably because he hadn’t played that much of first-class cricket. We thought he’d take a bit more time to settle in.”But he has surprised a lot of us, as well as other people, in showing what he is capable of doing. He’s got a very good head above his shoulders, he thinks quite well, listens to what we need to do and he adapts well, which is a good sign. It means he will definitely improve as a bowler because that’s what he needs to do at this level and be very competitive.”Mendis is the leading wicket-taker in the series with 18 wickets from two Tests, which is two more than Muttiah Muralitharan and six more than India’s best bowler Harbhajan Singh. He needs just six more wickets in the final Test at the P Saravanamuttu Stadium to break Muralitharan’s bowling record of 23 wickets for the series achieved in 2001.For the past decade or more Sri Lanka had to rely on the bowling skills of the veterans Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas, and Jayawardene sees Mendis’s sudden arrival as a blessing.”It’s a definite advantage to have a guy like Ajantha to back up Murali and Vaas,” Jayawardene said. “That’s where we lacked somebody, that strike option apart from those two guys.”Unfortunately the other strike bowlers are injured Lasith (Malinga), Dilhara (Fernando) and (Farveez) Maharoof. That’s something we can’t control right now. Hopefully these guys can come into the set up, so that’s going to give us a potent attack. We’ll have a lot of options.”Not only has Mendis struck fear into the hearts of the opposition batsmen but he has suddenly become the most sought-after sports personality in Sri Lanka. In the past fortnight he has been signed up by the country’s leading bank – Bank of Ceylon, a leading supermarket chain Cargills and the mobile phone company Dialog as their brand ambassador.Asked whether such financial attractions would take Mendis’ focus away from cricket, Jayawardene said: “I don’t think he is going overboard. You need to give the guy a break. These opportunities don’t come that often. If the sponsors are willing to sign him up then I’m quite happy that he is getting all these opportunities. I am sure Ajantha realises what his priorities are. He hasn’t missed any practice sessions, or any training sessions or any treatment. His priorities are pretty much straight-forward. He knows he needs to do a lot of hard work to be at this level and be consistent.”

India A wrapped up the series 3-0 after captain Jaydev Shah and Ashok Dinda shared eight wickets between them to bowl Israel Invitational XI out for 129 in Ashdod.Wriddhiman Saha’s unbeaten 85, supported by Cheteshwar Pujara’s 48, took India to 235 after the match was reduced to 40-overs-a-side so that the Indians could catch their flight home.Shah managed impressive figures of 4 for 4 in 3.2 overs with his offbreaks and Jason Molins top scored for Israel with 35 as they were dismissed with eight overs to spare. It was a disappointing series for Jonty Rhodes – dismissed for three – who aggregated 17 in the series.Despite the one-sided nature of the matches, Stanley Perlman, the chairman of the Israel Cricket Association, declared the series, organised to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary, a “brilliant success”. “We created history,” Perlman told the .

Scorecard and ball-by-ball commentary
How they were out