Denmark booked a spot in the World Cup Qualifier with a three-wicket win over Argentina at the Wanderers ground. Freddie Klokker (54) continued his strong form as Denmark survived an early wobble at 24 for 3 to chase down 169 with 23 balls to spare. David Borchersen, Bobby Chawla and Bashir Shah took two wickets each as Argentina, despite Matias Paterlini’s 51, couldn’t bat out their 50 overs.In a low-scoring match at the Centre for Cricket Development, Gerrie Snyman took 5 for 36 to bowl Namibia to a 27-run victory over Uganda to book their place in the qualifier. Namibia suffered a rare batting collapse to be bowled out for 145 in 45.4 overs with new-ball partners Danniel Ruyange and Kenneth Kamyuka sharing five wickets between them. Snyman, who is tournament’s leading run-scorer with 517, compensated for his batting failure by taking a five-wicket haul as Uganda was dismissed for 118 and now has nine wickets in the tournament.In the dress rehearsal for Saturday’s final, Oman overpowered UAE by 25 runs at the United ground after Adnan Ilyas’ eye-catching 113 propelled Oman to an imposing 298 for 8. Ilyas faced 112 balls and hit six fours and five sixes. In turn, UAE were dismissed for 273 despite Amjad Javed’s 71 and Arshad Ali’s 64.Argentina and Uganda are now relegated but will have a second chance to book a place in the 2009 World Cup Qualifier when they play in the next Division Three tournament – the top two there will also make the qualifier.

Scorecard
How they were out

Sri Lanka were denied victory in Galle when a second torrential downpour ended the final Test with England tottering on 251 for 6 although Alastair Cook’s 118, his seventh Test century, helped keep Sri Lanka at bay. However, when he was removed after the first interruption England’s tail was left with a task that would surely have been beyond them, especially against Muttiah Muralitharan who had triggered an earlier dramatic collapse of three wickets in four balls before lunch.It was hard on Sri Lanka, who deserved a 2-0 scoreline but have the consolation of a rise to third in the world rankings. England travel in the opposite direction, down to fifth from second, a position they have held for three years, although how much those standings really mean to the players is unclear. Despite the draw England can’t take much pride from their performance, although Cook’s hundred at least means they registered three figures once in the series.The highlight of the final day of the series was Muralitharan’s pre-lunch spell which sent England crashing from 200 for 2 to 200 for 5 in four balls. He hasn’t quite been at his incisive best since capturing the world record three weeks ago in Kandy, but sparked into life with the prospect of a few week’s rest. Sri Lanka’s next commitments are not until the CB Series in February.He had already made the first incision of the morning, removing Ian Bell with a delivery which kept wickedly low to hit off stump. Cook, who was dropped early in the day on 54, and Kevin Pietersen responded by adding 72, but Muralitharan was settling into a probing spell. Switching to around the wicket he put Pietersen in a tangle, unsure whether to use bat or pad. He eventually gained his reward when Pietersen carelessly clipped a half volley to Mahela Jayawardene at midwicket.Pietersen did have time to pass 3000 runs in his 33rd Test, equalling the mark set by Herbert Sutcliffe, and he also reached 1000 for the year, but it was the first time he ended a series without at least a half century. England suffered in all three Tests from losing batsmen when they are well set and Pietersen’s departure gave an opening to Sri Lanka. Two balls later Paul Collingwood was bamboozled and left stranded by a doosra as he tried to find the gap at midwicket and Prasanna Jayawardene produced a neat stumping.

Ravi Bopara completed a depressing pair, and a chastening first Test series, when his urgency to find a run ended his stay first ball. He edged Muralitharan to Jayawardene’s right at slip and the Sri Lanka captain dived, collected the ball and in one motion returned to the wicketkeeper. Bopara had already taken a couple of strides down the pitch and couldn’t turn in time. It was another example of the athleticism Sri Lanka have shown throughout the series, but Bopara’s desperation came from a mind that has been scrambled by recent events.In contrast, Cook’s mind remained commendably focussed after watching from the non-striker’s end and he maintained his composure to reach a century off 228 balls. He now has seven Test hundreds which puts him one behind Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar who had eight by the time they turned 23, and level with Javed Miandad. Cook’s birthday is on Christmas Day. It was also England’s first overseas Test hundred since Cook scored his second-innings century at Perth a little over a year ago.Prasanna Jayawardene dropped a leg-glance off Lasith Malinga in the day’s second over, a rare error for a wicketkeeper who has impressed during the series. Cook played Muralitharan with relative ease and combined with Matt Prior – who had ground to make up after three dropped catches – in a stand spanning 30 overs either side of the rain breaks.The weather caught everyone by surprise by clearing as rapidly as it arrived meaning Sri Lanka had one more chance to push for victory. Muralitharan thought he had Prior twice, firstly with an lbw which Asad Rauf correctly ruled would have slipped past leg stump, then with an edge that dropped fractionally short of slip. Jayawardene claimed the catch and tensions were running high with him not impressed by England’s time wasting.Cook was dropped a second time from a flashing cut the wicketkeeper dives across Kumar Sangakkara, who could only get fingers to the ball at first slip; the reprieve was brief as he fell next ball when Chanaka Welegedara made once bounce outside off stump. Sri Lanka were sensing the kill, but rain began to fall again and this time there was no coming back as the ground was soaked within minutes.However, after beginning the series on the back of a hammering by Australia and rumblings of discontent in the camp, Sri Lanka have shown that in their own conditions they are one of the most formidable opposition in the world.

Lance Shaw had a 20th birthday to remember in the Bradford League knockout final yesterday. Shaw, a member of the Auckland club championship-winning Papatoetoe side, in its first season after winning promotion to the senior grade last season, helped his Bradford and Bingley side to an unexpected victory over Woodlands in the Priestley Cup final.Unexpected because Bradford and Bingley are a second division side who managed to win the League’s open knockout prize. Shaw took 4 for 30 in eight overs to highlight the impact he has made with the club. Shaw, a fast-medium bowler, described by one critic as a “Ewen Chatfield with a bit more motor” is a brother of Auckland representative Gareth Shaw. He has played Under-17 and Under-19 cricket for Auckland, and just missed inclusion in New Zealand’s side for the last ICC Under-19 World Cup which was held in Christchurch.Shaw has taken 65 wickets for the club this season and has been asked back for next year, however, he has declined saying he wants to resume his university studies instead. His best effort to date has been 6 for 21 but probably the effort he cherishes the most is his first-ball dismissal of Pakistan international Ijaz Ahmed in a recent match.Shaw got his chance to play for the club after they approached former Auckland coach Tony Sail for a pace bowler. He wasn’t a well-known player but the club has been very happy with his efforts. The club is keen to be promoted to the first division in the league and at the moment is sitting in second place, with the top two teams to be promoted.The Bradford League is celebrating its centennial this year and the achievement in winning the knockout is one of the more prestigious results for the country club.

Rain has forced the third match of the delicately poised women’s one-day series between Australia and England to be abandoned. The game, which was scheduled for Drummoyne Oval in Sydney, was cancelled following the wet weather in the city over the past week, which made it impossible to prepare the ground.England won the first fixture at the MCG before Australia levelled the five-match series in Melbourne on Monday. The final games will be played at the SCG on Sunday and Monday, with the one-off Test to be held in Bowral from February 15.

Ireland’s hopes of a third successive Intercontinental Cup win have suffered a blow with Boyd Rankin ruled out of next month’s match against UAE. He will also miss the three one-day internationals against Bangladesh.Rankin, who joined Warwickshire on a three-year deal from Derbyshire at the end of last season, suffered a stress fracture in his foot shortly before Christmas, and neither county or country want to risk him returning to action too soon. He is currently spending time with Allan Donald, Warwickshire’s bowling coach, on remodelling his action.”The injury has healed, and I have started back doing bowling drills with Allan Donald, adjusting a few things in my action just this week,” Rankin said. “It was decided between everyone that it would be too soon to be back bowling at full fitness for the Intercontinental Cup match and the ODIs in Bangladesh. I’m concerned that if I come back too soon it might not fully recover and I could break down again.”Phil Simmons, Ireland’s coach, said: “Hopefully with Allan working on remodelling Boyd’s action, we’ll get a fitter and more confident fast bowler.”However, Rankin’s loss is partly offset by the unexpected availability of opening bowler Dave Langford-Smith, who has had a change of heart after initially ruling himself out of contention for the first half of the year due to work commitments.”Dave’s work is going better than he anticipated and thankfully he is able to get the necessary time off,” Simmons said. Ireland take on the UAE in Abu Dhabi from March 6, and play three ODI’s in Bangladesh on March 18, 20 and 22.

The Bangalore team is perceived to be full of people who are more conducive to Test cricket than Twenty20. What’s your take?
There is a propensity for the perception that we are here to play five-day cricket! To me, they are very classy, stylish, intelligent cricketers. There are no egos, no controversies surrounding them. They are going to be very solid citizens and it’s the kind of players we want our group to be represented by.This is the Twenty20 royal team of the championship. We are going to behave like that, play like that and that describes the bunch we have.So has the way you play influenced the branding or has the branding influenced your planned style of play
It starts with the name: Royal Challengers. It’s a very regal term and I am sure it was by design the kind of people we chose for the team. Rahul had the vision, he wanted this sort of player and that’s why he asked me to come in with this kind of role.You won’t see us play wham-bam cricket, you will see an intelligent and well-organised kind of cricket.My role will be to help the youngsters think out of the square and fit in with the vision. It’s a branding exercise, it’s a marketing exercise and people have to come in to watch not a region but a city franchise. I will be the intermediary between sponsors, team and the fans.What exactly is your job description?
I am the chief cricket officer which means I am sort of overseeing the way the team is operating in terms of its thinking, how it can win the tournament and how can it connect with its fan. So it will involve marketing and branding as well. I will work closely with Rahul Dravid in putting strategies in place. It’s a group of varied people coming together for the first time and trying to play consistent cricket to win 14 games and qualify for the play-offs.You said your job will involve marketing. Can you elaborate?
This is a new exciting concept with a city franchise and not only we want to connect this group of players with the local fans but we want the Royal Challengers to be known all throughout India as a side that is intelligent, classy, stylish and calculated. That will be our brand core. I will be the intermediary between the franchise as a whole, the team and the message from the team to the fans as to how we want them to embrace us.What can a coach do in a Twenty20 format and over a 44-day period?
I am not big on coaches. That’s why I am not the cricket coach here. I am a big believer in the captain. This will be Rahul’s team. Venkatesh Prasad will look after the nets and physical [aspects], while I can help the batsmen, it’s going to be a strategic role for me. Prasad has proved himself as a team coach and I will let him handle that side of the things.

I got a real passion for Twenty20 having done Cricket Max in New Zealand and I have some ideas of how this game can be played. You need to treat this as a scientific project. It’s not like a Test match, it’s not about durability and concentration over long periods. It’s about having lots of small goals and getting everyone strategically positioned. Our aim will be to get more wickets than the opposition. That would mean swinging the ball, great fielding.What is going to be your cricketing strategy?
To put simply, it would be to take more wickets than the opposition. Build partnerships, throw in some great fielding, our general attitude and win by our all round skills. In a nutshell, with a scientific approach. The first six overs, with the field up, is when you really get your runs, the next eight overs are the middle overs while the last six will be the death overs.What is the future of Twenty20 and will its success mean the death of 50-over cricket?
The game is here to stay; it is the future. What we are seeing a correction in 50-overs cricket. We had a over-saturation of that form, lots of meaningless cricket was being played. This Twenty20 would offset that.I see 50-overs cricket being played over four innings. Four Twenty20 innings and I see this happening in ten years time. One-day cricket would become a mini Test match. There fore Twenty20 becomes the precursor to that eventuality. As of now we have Twenty20 and Test cricket while the one-day game is going through an identity crisis.

Scorecard

The Kolkata Tigers squeezed past the Delhi Giants in Gurgaon to move into the semi-finals of the ongoing Indian Cricket League tournament. Lance Klusener carried his bat through for the Tigers, before the spinners choked the Giants to claw out a thrilling one-run win.In a virtual quarter-final, Craig McMillan chose to bat, and the Tigers’ openers – Deep Dasgupta and Klusener – gave their team the upper hand with a 50-run stand in seven overs. Dasgupta fell for 35 off 21 balls, but Klusener anchored the innings with an unbeaten run-a-ball 62.However, despite having wickets in hand, the Tigers could manage only 142; for the Giants, Shane Bond gave away only 15 runs in 3.4 overs before he was taken off the attack for bowling two beamers.Avishka Gunawardene and Monish Mishra blazed away during the Giants’ reply; after six overs, they were going at ten an over, and with nine wickets in hand. However, the Tigers cut down the run-rate in the next few overs, with spinners Upul Chandana and Shibsagar Singh scalping five wickets in six overs to leave the Giants stuttering at 105 for 6 after 16 overs.Chandana conceded only 15 for three wickets off his four overs, while left-arm bowler Shibsagar took two wickets for the same number of runs in three overs. It finally came down to 13 off the final over. Klusener added to the drama by bowling a no-ball on the penultimate ball – Bond ran two after holing out to deep midwicket, and smacked the free hit that followed over cover to make it three off one.They could manage only one leg-bye though, as the Tigers pulled off another nail-biting win, having pulled off a stunning one-run win over the Mumbai Champs in their first game of the tournament. They will face the in-form Lahore Badshahs in the semi-final on April 3, while the other semi-final will be contested between the Chennai Superstars, the defending champions, and the Hyderabad Heroes.

Venkatesh Prasad, the coach of Bangalore Royal Challengers, has asked for patience and trust in those who are managing the team after the Indian Premier League’s second-richest franchise sacked its chief executive following a string of poor performances in the inaugural season of the Twenty20 tournament.Terming Charu Sharma’s dismissal as “unfortunate”, Prasad feared it could send the wrong signal. “It was the management’s decision to sack him,” Prasad told Cricinfo. “Having known him, he is a fantastic individual. But it was unfortunate and it could send a wrong signal to the individuals.”The hire and fire policy might work in the corporate world, probably,” Prasad said. “But we are building a team which came together two days before the tournament. So what is very important is to have a lot of faith in the team and build the trust and faith factor. You need to show patience and trust the people who are managing the team.”Asked about pressure from the franchise on the team, he said, “I understand the franchise has put in loads of money and for them what is important is the performance, the outcome basically. You can’t do anything when performance is the key and so much is at stake.”Prasad also said that though he was the designated coach of the team, he effectively “started handling the duties of the bowling coach as Martin Crowe, the Chief Cricket Officer, and Rahul (Dravid, the captain) handle the team selections and all the other duties”. He revealed that he had briefly thought about resigning from the job following media reports that the franchise wanted to sack him too.On Tuesday, the Bangalore franchise replaced Sharma with Brijesh Patel, the secretary of the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA), which runs the game in the team’s home city. A Royal Challengers spokesperson said that the CEO had stepped down due to personal reasons, but Sharma said that he was dismissed by the franchise, which is owned by Vijay Mallya, the chairman of United Spirits Limited. Mallya later clarified that he had complete confidence in Prasad, the “bowling coach” and the team.”There was confusion in terms of my role and how to define it,” Prasad, the India bowling coach, said. “But both Rahul and Martin have supported me throughout. My job was more about making sure specific strategies were being worked out during the net sessions while they took care of the overall running of the team.”Prasad said that he was upset over the media reports which suggested that he was being sacked, too.”The thought (of resigning) did cross my mind when the rumours surfaced. But I didn’t want to take a decision in haste. I did chat with Rahul and the support he and the team showed in me was tremendous,” Prasad said. “I was angry as the fingers were pointed towards my commitment and integrity which I’d built over a period of a time. And now suddenly I was in the middle of this. As I said, there is a lot of money at stake but for me what matters more than the monetary aspect is being committed and organised. And as far as I’m concerned, I do it to the best of my ability.”Prasad, a former India swing bowler, admitted that it was “extraordinary” that the Challengers have not been able to get their act together in the tournament – the team lost to Kolkata Knight Riders by five runs on Thursday and is at the bottom of the table with just two wins from eight games.”With the players we have, we don’t belong to the bottom of the table,” Prasad said. “In fact, we should be in the first two for sure. It’s extraordinary that we are not getting our act together as a team, even if there have been a few individual performances which doesn’t help much in a team game. We need to get our act together. Our bowlers have done well and we have one of the best bowling units in the IPL with five international bowlers.”The Royal Challengers will take on Kings XI Punjab in Mohali on Monday.