Hazlewood ready for Baggy Green - McGrath

Australia's most successful fast bowler, Glenn McGrath, says it is time Josh Hazlewood, who has been compared with McGrath since he was 17 and made his debut for NSW against the Kiwis in 2006, is presented with his baggy-green cap.

Hazlewood started the summer with a blast, skittling seven South Australian batsmen for 36 runs in the opening match of the domestic one-day competition. He built on the momentum to star for Australia's One-Day team in their series victory over South Africa and is now tipped to play in next month's opening Test against India.

The 23-year-old has needed to grit his teeth to fight back from heartbreaking injuries over the years, including stress fractures, which struck whenever he appeared on the verge of breaking through. However, McGrath, who captured fast bowling's world record 563 wickets, said he not only admired the fellow "bushie's" persistence but he appreciated his skills.

"There's been a lot of players who've been compared to me but I really don't know if it's a compliment or a cross to bear," McGrath said with a grin. "What Josh does well is he's tall, he hits good areas, gets good bounce and he's also a lot more thick-set and stronger than me when I first played [for Australia].

"I guess, in that respect, bowling at that height, hitting the deck, getting good bounce and having pretty good control ... he gets it through at a pretty good pace ...  he does everything right.

"He's ready to be called up," McGrath said. "He had a bit of a sniff at international cricket in the past but got injured. He's come back and looks a lot stronger now. He knows his game a lot better and talking to a few of the NSW guys they say he's bowling very well and getting good bounce on any track.

"His effort in this one-day series has been very good. His spell in the first match [where he took 1/50 in Perth] was so-so but after that [with 5/31 and 3/51] he was great and if given the opportunity I think we'll see Josh is ready to go."

McGrath said India had a few surprise pace packets waiting to unleash on the Australians in Brisbane and warned one of the players he had spent time working with at the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai, Varun Aaron, had plenty of bite.

"He can bowl up around that high 140s km/h, close to 150, and he also  knows how to swing the ball," McGrath said of the 25-year-old Aaron who has played three Tests. "I'll be interested to see how Varun goes out here. India has some guys who can bowl good pace ...  [Umesh] Yadav can get it around the 140 km/h mark."

ARMIDALE EXPRESS

Clarke out of Shield, Test remains unclear

Physio Kountouris addresses media about captain's health

Michael Clarke remains a chance to lead Australia into the first Test against India next month, although his opportunity to prove his fitness would now appear to hinge on a grade cricket appearance the weekend before that series opener in Brisbane.

Bupa Support Team Physiotherapist Alex Kountouris today ruled out Clarke from turning out for his club side Western Suburbs this weekend and for New South Wales in their Sheffield Shield match, which begins at the SCG on Tuesday and is the Blues’ last Shield outing before the opening Commonwealth Bank Test starting December 4.

Shortly after meeting with the Australian captain this morning to assess his hamstring injury and plot a rehabilitation path, Kountouris told reporters in Sydney that the complexity of Clarke’s latest setback meant an accurate time frame could not be fixed to his recovery.

Rather, the re-aggravation to an earlier injury at the top of his left leg near the hamstring tendon had prevented the 33-year-old from being able to undertake any running since he sustained it last Friday and he has been sidelined from competitive cricket until he is able to do so.

“He hasn't started running, he hasn't started doing any of the functional things that we want him to do, he’s not able to bat so he's not ready to play at the moment,” Kountouris said.

“His next (scheduled) game of cricket is a grade game on the weekend, and he's not available for that.

“There's a Shield game starting next Tuesday and he's not available for that.

“So that's as far as we're looking.

“We're still hopeful that he might be right for the first Test because that's two weeks away but we need to review it again next week.

“He needs to start running and start doing things before we make a decision on whether he's OK to play.”

Bupa Support Team Head Coach Darren Lehmann said earlier this week that if Clarke, who took 10 weeks to recover from a more serious injury to the same hamstring prior to the triangular series in Zimbabwe in August, was to be considered for the Test “he would have to play the Shield game” starting Tuesday.

But now that he’s been ruled out of that fixture, and with the squad for the start of the four-Test series against India to be named on Monday, the selectors will need to make a decision based on the probability of him recovering rather than how fit he looks on the field.

If he’s named in the squad and is required to perform at some competitive level before the Test XI is finalised, that opportunity might come on the second day of Western Suburbs’ match against Parramatta at Old Kings Oval on Saturday, November 29.

Before he is cleared to return to the playing field Clarke will undergo a closely monitored testing regimen to ensure he is replicating workloads his body would need to endure in a Test match, as was the case before he was passed fit to play in the recent Test series against Pakistan in the UAE.

“At the moment he hasn’t run once, so him going and playing tomorrow would be a massive risk,” Kountouris said in acknowledging that any athlete returning from the recurrence of a soft tissue injury was a chance to re-injure it upon returning to competition.

“But if he’s done 10 running sessions and 10 training sessions and done all the things that we mimic he’d do in a game – as much as possible – then that’s the best we can do.

“And we’ve got certain parameters that we can put on it – we know how fast he runs in a game so we can put a GPS unit on him to see how fast he’s running at training and we certainly did that in the UAE and he was running quite fast.

“And we waited 10 weeks before he came back (in the Pakistan series) so I would say he didn’t come back too early.

“We ticked all the right boxes to get him back playing in the UAE and he didn’t get injured there, he got injured playing back in Australia (in Friday’s opening Carlton Mid ODI Series match against South Africa in Perth).

“So we’ve got to get him back to those levels first and then say ‘OK, now we have to prepare him for playing a game’.

“And he’s going to have to play a game, whether it’s a grade game, a Shield game, a Test match or whatever it is – we’re going to have to play him in a game somewhere.”

Kountouris dismissed suggestions that the most recent re-aggravation of Clarke’s hamstring injury would sideline him for the remainder of the Australian summer.

He also confirmed that Clarke’s rehabilitation program would hopefully see him begin running “some time next week” and gave no indication the skipper was contemplating surgery to try and fix the problem even though the problem area is close to his hamstring tendon.

Australia pace bowler Nathan Coulter-Nile suffered a similar run of injuries to his left hamstring tendon last summer and underwent surgery in June which kept him out of the game for three months.

Kountouris said that even though Clarke’s injury was complicated by its proximity to the tendon – where recovery is invariably slower due to lower blood flows – it would eventually heal, though whether that came in time for the first Test remained unknown.

“If it was a new injury and we’d just seen it for the very first time we would say it was a very low-grade injury and we’d be looking at him playing in a couple of weeks, but it’s not,” he said.

“Maybe it makes no difference, maybe we’re jumping at shadows, we just don’t know.

“I’m hopeful he’ll be back for the first Test but we’re still a week away from even considering that.

“He (Clarke) thinks the Test is realistic but it’s not a sure thing.

“It's quite sore at the moment – he’s had an acute flare up of his back as well, which is complicating it.

“But there comes a point where there's no more healing to be done and waiting longer doesn't necessarily give you any more benefits.

“Unfortunately he could rest now for five months and come back and the first time he runs he could tear his hamstring again.

“And for someone like Michael the risks are that he's got a back injury that complicates things and puts a lot of pressure on his hamstrings.

“He's (also) an older athlete and we know that’s a risk factor, and the biggest risk factor for having a hamstring injury is having had one before.

“And he’s had multiple hamstring injuries on both legs so they are all risk factors that we're not going to get rid of – they're there permanently.

“What we can do is get his strength at the right level, make sure that he's running and running hard and running well and tick all those boxes, which we did in the UAE.”

The better news for the National Selection Panel, which will finalise the Test squad over the weekend, is that vice-captain and wicketkeeper Brad Haddin is making “pretty good” progress from the right shoulder injury he suffered in the UAE, according to Kountouris.

He said Haddin would undertake his first training session today since injuring the joint diving to take a catch and that he remained hopeful he would be available for NSW’s Bupa Sheffield Shield game starting on Tuesday in which he had the chance to prove his fitness for the first Test.

CA

Aussies still hunting No.1 spot

Three wins required against Proteas in remaining ODIs

Australia must win all three remaining matches in the Carlton Mid One-Day International Series against South Africa to reclaim the world No.1 ranking from India.

Darren Lehmann's side currently sits third in the Reliance ICC ODI rankings, three points behind reigning ICC Cricket World Cup champions India, who consolidated their No.1 ranking with a 5-0 sweep against Sri Lanka, completed in Ranchi on Sunday.

The Proteas could also still claim the No.1 spot by also winning all three remaining matches, starting with Wednesday's day-night encounter at Canberra's Manuka Oval.

With Australia currently sitting on 114 points, a 4-1 series result against South Africa would see them take top spot by a fraction of a point from India.

The Proteas, currently second on 115 points, would move to 118 if they won the series 4-1.

Winning two of the final three games would not only give the Australians the Carlton Mid ODI Series silverware, it would also see them climb above the Proteas for second spot on the ICC's rankings table.

The three teams will continue to jostle for the No.1 position until the World Cup, which begins on February 14.

Australia and India will face off in at least two ODIs in January during the Carlton Mid One-Day International Tri Series.

That series also features England, while South Africa heads home after Sunday's match in Sydney and will play five ODIs against West Indies in January.

Possible outcomes for Australia from the Carlton Mid One-Day International series

- Australia become No.1 if they beat South Africa 4-1
- South Africa become No.1 if they beat Australia 4-1
- A 3-2 win to Australia would see them climb above the Proteas to No.2, with India remaining No.1
- A 3-2 win to South Africa would see them remain No.2, with India keeping top position.

CA

Chris Cairns charged with perjury

             NZ allrounder faces seven years in prison

British prosecutors have charged New Zealand cricket great Chris Cairns with perjury.

The charge relates to a 2012 libel action that Cairns successfully brought against former Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi over a tweet accusing the allrounder of match-fixing during his time in the now-defunct Indian Cricket League (ICL).

While Cairns, 44, has been charged with one count of perjury, a friend who appeared as a witness at the libel trial, lawyer Andrew Fitch-Holland, has been charged with perverting the court of justice.

The two men were formally charged on Thursday after attending a central London police station and are due to appear before a court in London on October 2.

Cairns could face seven years in prison if found guilty.

The Metropolitan Police said that two other people arrested over the investigation, a 33-year-old woman and a 36-year-old man, had been released without charge.

Cairns, who won STG90,000 ($A164,000) in the libel action against Modi, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Speaking after Britain's Crown Prosecution Service confirmed he was to be charged with perjury earlier this month, he said: "I'm obviously extremely disappointed.

"However, at least there will now be an opportunity to face my accusers in an open forum, with some rigour and proper process around that, so that I can clear my name once and for all."

Fitch-Holland, 49, was previously involved in a case against the England and Wales Cricket Board when they banned players who had appeared in the ICL in 2008.

Cairns's former teammate Lou Vincent, who was banned for life earlier this year for match-fixing, has alleged that a world-famous international dubbed 'Player X' lured him into a murky world of corruption that included offers of cash and sex to rig matches.

Cairns has said that he believes he is the player to whom Vincent was referring, but has questioned his accuser's credibility, describing the allegations he faces as "absurd, bizarre and scary".

Cairns retired from international cricket in 2004 after becoming one of only 12 players in Test history to complete the 'double' of 200 wickets and 3,000 runs.

CA

Crowded field of contenders with five months to cricket’s World Cup 2015

After what at one stage this month looked like a vast game of musical chairs, reigning champions India ended up topping the world rankings when the five-month countdown to the 2015 World Cup started last week.

With just three rating points separating the top four nations, the 11th version of the quadrennial showpiece of 50-overs cricket, which is being co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, looks like being one of the closest ever.

Here is a look at how the 10 Test-playing nations (in order of world ranking) are shaping up 154 days before New Zealand meet Sri Lanka in Christchurch to launch the February 14-March 29 tournament.

INDIA

Led by MS Dhoni and boasting some fearless strokemakers in their ranks, the top-ranked ODI side in the world look serious contenders to defend their title.

A much-improved fielding side, India appear to have benefited from the Indian Premier League, which has given their players the opportunity to play regularly against the leading bowlers in the world.

Even the most junior batsman in the Indian side has faced bowlers such as Dale Steyn and Mitchell Johnson in the Twenty20 tournament and gained enough confidence to hit them out of the park when the need arises.

With their pace bowling underwhelming, India will again build their attack around their spinners, who had a big impact in their World Cup win at home in 2011.

A lot will depend on how Ravichandran Ashwin and the plethora of part-time spinners fare on the relatively bouncy pitches in Australia and New Zealand.

SOUTH AFRICA

Recent series victories in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, where they played a triangular tournament involving Australia, have boosted the confidence of the Proteas, even if both were achieved in conditions they will not find at the World Cup.

Their strong batting line-up has been solidified by the emergence of Faf du Plessis at No 3, coming in after proven openers Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock.

In AB de Villiers, they have arguably the best one-day batsman in the world, but there is concern over their one genuine power-hitter, David Miller, who is out of form.

The South Africans also lack an all-rounder to bat at seven, with this duty shared in recent times by Ryan McLaren and Wayne Parnell with mixed success.

Steyn remains the linchpin of the bowling line-up and rarely has an off-day, and JP Duminy and Imran Tahir present genuine spin options.

SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka will be hoping next year is third time lucky after being beaten in the final of the past two World Cups, and the 1996 champions seem to have the resources to finish the job this time.

Mahela Jayawardene, 37, and Kumar Sangakkara, 36, got a fitting 20-over farewell when Sri Lanka won the World Twenty20 title in Bangladesh in April, but winning the 50-over event in Australia would be a better parting gift.

Sri Lanka’s compact batting side is complemented by a balanced bowling unit, which is likely to include the mercurial Lasith Malinga, whose yorkers, delivered with his sling-shot action, can make him almost unplayable.

The rise of Thisara Perera and Dhammika Prasad have eased the pressure on Malinga but Sri Lanka have been forced to have a fresh look at their spin options after off-spinner Sachithra Senanayake was banned for an illegal action.

AUSTRALIA

Australia relinquished the No 1 ranking, lost their captain, Michael Clarke, to injury and fell to Zimbabwe on their recent trip to Harare, but that will do little to dent optimism that they can win a fifth world title next March.

With the likes of openers David Warner and Shane Watson to return to the side before the World Cup, Australia can afford to be circumspect about the setbacks experienced by an understrength and experimental side in Zimbabwe.There remain concerns, not least about whether Clarke’s back will be up to the amount of cricket he will be asked to play during the next five months, and whether they will ever unearth another world-class spinner.

On the plus side is the prospect of Johnson and his fellow pacemen renewing their often lethal relationship with Australia’s hard and bouncy decks. Coach Darren Lehmann has laughed off talk of a split with Clarke over selection and will be satisfied that the likes of all-rounder Mitch Marsh have given him more depth in his squad should he need it next year.

ENGLAND

England go into the World Cup, which they have never won, with minimal expectations after a dismal run of form in the 50-over game.

The lowest average net run-rate of all Test-playing nations in recent times, an outdated approach to the format and huge question marks over the captaincy and make-up of the team do not inspire ­confidence.

Former spinner Graeme Swann said recently the team have “no chance” of winning the tournament, and there is a strong case for replacing Alastair Cook as captain because of doubts about his leadership style and limitations with the bat. England do have talented one-day players: Alex Hales is a destructive opening batsman, Eoin Morgan a specialist finisher, wicketkeeper Jos Buttler a flamboyant middle-order player and Harry Gurney a potentially imposing death bowler. With Test batsmen Joe Root and Ian Bell skilled in the one-day game there is a solid core, but the approach needs to change because 240 metronomic runs do not win 50-over matches at international level in the modern game.

PAKISTAN

A bunch of talented but unpredictable players with a tendency to implode inexplicably, Pakistan received a huge blow to their preparations when spinner Saeed Ajmal was banned for an illegal bowling action earlier this month.

Ajmal has five months to correct the action and seek a reassessment, but whether he will ever again show the form that has made him the top-ranked ODI bowler in the world, only time will tell.

The 1992 champions are also grappling with a captaincy dilemma. Misbah-ul-Haq has remained a rare stable figure in a volatile dressing room, but his modest sub-74 strike rate is no longer tailor-made for the format. After last month’s ODI series defeat in Sri Lanka, the clamour has grown to replace him with all-rounder Shahid Afridi, whose batting and personality are the polar opposite to Misbah’s.

NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand’s batting has been settled for several years with Martin Guptill, Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor and captain Brendon McCullum likely to fill four of the top-five positions. The biggest issue is finding a new opening partner for Guptill, with few expecting hard-hitting batsman Jesse Ryder to be recalled to the side because of his behavioural issues. Tim Southee, Kyle Mills, Trent Boult and Mitchell McClenaghan are likely to be the main pace bowlers, with young quicks Adam Milne and Matt Henry vying for the fifth spot.

Former captain Daniel Vettori, who is still one of the most economical bowlers in limited overs cricket and a handy lower-order batsman, is also likely to be included, if fit.

WEST INDIES

West Indies are without a coach after the sudden departure of Ottis Gibson last month, and caretaker Richie Richardson could still be in place when they warm up for the World Cup with trips to India and South Africa.

A series of top-order collapses in recent limited-overs matches mean the fitness and availability of the often brilliant opener Chris Gayle would appear to be vital to the hopes of the twice champions enjoying any success at the World Cup.

Likewise, persuading mystery off-spinner Sunil Narine to put West Indies before lucrative Twenty20 contracts would further bolster an otherwise solid bowling unit.

BANGLADESH

The 50-over format remains Bangladesh’s best chance to impress at the world stage, but their growth as a force in world cricket has stagnated.

The team rely heavily on spinners, who might find it difficult to ply their trade effectively in the seamer-friendly conditions in Australia and New Zealand.

Bangladesh also have had their problems with all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan over disciplinary issues, but the former captain remains their best bet to surprise higher-ranked opposition and cause an upset during the World Cup.

ZIMBABWE

Zimbabwe showed they can be competitive in the recent home triangular series against South Africa and Australia, where they defeated the latter and came close to upsetting the Proteas.

The batting line-up could be described as flaky at best, but they do have decent hitters and, in Brendan Taylor, who relinquished the one-day captaincy to Elton Chigumbura last month, a player to build an innings around.

Consistency in performance with bat and ball has been elusive and that is not likely to change between now and the World Cup.

The National