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Sri Lankan batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan has been signed by New Zealand’s Northern Districts for the domestic Twenty20 competition for the 2009-10 season. This will be a big boost for the domestic team that failed to a win a single game in the State Twenty20 last year.Dilshan was the highest run-getter in the recently concluded ICC World Twenty20, scoring 382 runs in seven matches.Northern Districts Cricket CEO, David Cooper, was excited at the prospect of having Dilshan in the state side. “TM Dilshan is arguably the best Twenty20 batsman going in world cricket at the moment,” Cooper said. “It is a significant move for us to sign him and have him coming out to New Zealand. We believe that his presence will assist our team and our players in much the same way Andrew Strauss did in early 2008. I have no doubt New Zealand crowds will enjoy watching him too.””Tillakaratne is delighted to be joining the Northern Knights,” Dilshan’s manager, Roshan Abeysinghe said. New Zealand national players Daniel Vettori, Tim Southee, Daniel Flynn and Peter McGlashan also represent Northern Districts.

Here’s something Nathan Hauritz didn’t expect to read after his headaches in the opening two tour games in England. “He’s a clever bowler, and he’s no fool. He’s a good bowler that guy.”The speaker was Kevin Pietersen, demolisher of elite spinners and a man who is career-threatening to anyone else who runs off a handful of steps. After the punishment Hauritz received against batsmen significantly inferior to Pietersen in Hove and Worcester over the past fortnight, it’s tricky to decipher what the judgment of Hauritz’s work on the opening day actually means. Cunning England plan or thoughtful, tough and thick-skinned bowler?Hauritz returned 1 for 67 from 19 overs, removed Pietersen with help from a frozen moment in the batsman’s brain and was praised from both sides. This pitch is already turning and England could already be thinking of the dust-free wickets in future matches, where they would want to face Hauritz again. And again. Or he might be in the process of delivering his most important performance in his five Tests spread over three countries and five years. Hauritz certainly did what Australia wanted, supporting the fast men without giving away many boundaries, although it helped having four men in the deep when Pietersen was in.”That guy Nathan Hauritz, he bowled some very good lines today, varied his pace and I commented at tea, saying this guy is a good bowler,” Pietersen said. “He knows what he’s doing. Although he doesn’t have the mystery spin of the Muralis, Mendises, Warnes and all those guys, he’s got good control. He’s a clever bowler.”Hauritz, who bowled from both ends, dropped short a couple of times to Paul Collingwood to be cut for boundaries, but was not taken to by Pietersen. Australia blocked off his boundary areas with the field settings and gave him singles instead. Until he was in his 60s he didn’t seem bothered but on 69, having survived an lbw and a dropped catch, he swept at a ball he could have glided to third man and was caught at short leg off his helmet.Facing a slow pitch, Hauritz preferred the safety of men near the boundary for all batsmen. “Nathan just thought the margin for error was very small,” the coach Tim Nielsen said. “He was very conscious of letting himself be hit through point. The wicket was spinning a lot so he was playing a supporting role for the fast bowlers. To get his 20 overs out at just over three an over and get that important wicket was a good result for us.”Most tellingly for the direction of the game, he turned the ball before tea. England have Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar to twirl in the second and fourth innings and Pietersen was already looking ahead. “Not many Test wickets spin off the straight on day one,” he said. “And the wicket, where [Mitchell] Johnson, [Peter] Siddle and [Ben] Hilfenhaus were following through, has definitely roughed up and there’s a lot of dust and footholes to work with. That keeps us smiling as well.”England reached 336 for 7 at stumps and Nielsen wavered slightly over Australia’s chances of staying in the game when he arrived to speak at stumps instead of all the bowlers he was praising. “It’ll be important that whatever England get, we get close and bat our backsides off in the first innings,” he said. “There’s no doubt the wicket will deteriorate over the next couple of days and batting over the last day-and-a-half will be pretty difficult. We saw when the ball got a bit older the wicket was slow and it became hard to score and get people out.”Johnson, Hilfenhaus and Siddle captured two wickets each as they restricted England whenever they threatened to run into the distance. Nielsen was most pleased with the work of Hilfenhaus, who gave away 61 runs in 23 overs, and swung the ball for most of the day.”He grabbed the bull by the horns, bowled up into the breeze, went well early on,” Nielsen said. “He did a holding job as well as getting wickets. All in all, a very impressive performance, probably his most consistent performance for a full day’s [Test] cricket.”

Shaun Tait has emerged as the big winner from Andrew Symonds’ downfall after Cricket Australia confirmed Symonds’ contract had officially been revoked. Tait has replaced Symonds on the 25-man contract list having been surprisingly overlooked when the initial offers were made.The official removal of Symonds from the Cricket Australia stable was a formality and has all but assured the allrounder’s international career is finished. In 2005, Symonds was told his contract would be torn up if he had any more off-field indiscretions but despite a series of incidents it has taken four years for Cricket Australia to live up to its threat.The decision is good news for Tait, whose ongoing injury battles and his desire to focus on the shorter formats left him as a less attractive option than in previous seasons. However, Tait was chosen for next month’s Australia A series against Pakistan A, and his return to the contract list confirms he is still in Australia’s plans.The chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch said: “With Cricket Australia now withdrawing its previous contract offer to Andrew Symonds, Shaun Tait has moved into a position where he has been offered a CA contract offer for 2009-10 under the rankings system CA uses to offer contracts to players.”Shaun at his best is an important part of our one-day international and Twenty20 make-up. I’m sure he will now seize the opportunity presented to him with this offer of a further Australian contract.”Tait is currently in England and will return home for the Australia A series, which will be held in Queensland. Symonds is still considering his future and whether to pursue a career as a Twenty20 freelancer.

Match facts

April 25, 2009
Start time 16.45pm (14.45GMT)

Big Picture

Chris Gayle has a week left in South Africa, and Kolkata will hope he improves on the form shown so far•AFP

Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders are level on points, having won one and lost two out of three games. Chennai’s two losses, however, have come against strong opposition – Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils – while Kolkata were thrashed by Deccan Chargers and lost in the Super Over to Rajasthan Royals after the match ended in a tie.Chennai will remain upbeat about their form despite the two defeats. They were without allrounder Albie Morkel for the first loss against Mumbai and were blitzed by AB de Villiers in the match against Delhi. They will also take heart from their batsmen, who challenged Delhi’s imposing score of 189. However, the batting and bowling line-up has taken a hit with Andrew Flintoff being ruled out of the tournament with a knee injury.Kolkata will have to forget their gut-wrenching loss against Rajasthan quickly and gear up for their toughest opponents of the tournament so far. They’ve relied on Chris Gayle and Sourav Ganguly to do the bulk of the scoring because Brendon McCullum and Brad Hodge haven’t weighed in with significant contributions. Gayle leaves the IPL in a week’s time so Kolkata will want to notch up as many wins as they can while he’s in South Africa.

Form guide

Chennai: Matthew Hayden is the tournament’s highest run-scorer with 166 runs at a strike-rate of 171 and has given his team excellent starts in the last two games.Kolkata: Gayle has given his team powerful starts so far but Kolkata would want him to make a big contribution. The middle-order has been held together by Ganguly, who’s doing a fine job of proving he’s not unsuited to the Twenty20 format.

Watch out for

Gayle and McCullum v Chennai’s new-ball attack: L Balaji and Manpreet Gony aren’t the most fearsome new-ball bowlers in the tournament but they’ve managed to give Chennai an early breakthrough against both Bangalore and Delhi. They’ll be gunning for Kolkata’s openers, who are arguably the team’s best batsmen.

Team news

Chennai are without Flintoff for the rest of the tournament, and while they have a ready bowling replacement in Makhaya Ntini, the hole left in the batting line-up will be harder to fill. They might consider playing Jacob Oram or the Sri Lankan allrounder Thilan Thushara.Chennai: 1 Parthiv Patel, 2 Matthew Hayden, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 5 Albie Morkel, 6 Jacob Oram/Thilan Thushara, 7 S Badrinath, 8 Joginder Sharma, 9 L Balaji, 10 Manpreet Gony, 11 Muttiah Muralitharan.Kolkata ran Rajasthan extremely close in their previous game and there are no obvious changes to their team.Kolkata: 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Brendon McCullum (capt/wk), 3 Laxmi Shukla, 4 Brad Hodge, 5 Sourav Ganguly, 6 Sanjay Bangar, 7 Yashpal Singh, 8 Ajit Agarkar, 9 Ishant Sharma, 10 Ajantha Mendis, 11 Anureet Singh.

Head-to-head record

Hayden scored 70 off 49 balls to lead Chennai to a nine-wicket victory against Kolkata at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in 2008. The match at Eden Gardens was much closer with Chennai winning by three runs according to the D/L method.

Two more of Bermuda’s senior players have announced their international retirements in the wake of the team’s failure to qualify for the 2011 World Cup.Batsman Lionel Cannand allrounder Janeiro Tucker have both retired, joining larger-than-life bowler Dwayne Leverock who quit after the side’s win over Uganda at the end of the tournament.”I can leave with my head held high,” Cann write in his column in the Bermuda Sun. “Now we have been demoted to Division 2 [of the ICC World Cricket League] it’s really time for the youngsters to come in and rebuild so that we are in a position to qualify when this tournament comes around again in four years time.”The government has invested money in the young players. We have seven or eight of them out here and some Under-19s that are coming through.”

Younis Khan, the Pakistan captain, has said he would have retired from international cricket immediately had he been caught in the kind of terror attacks carried out on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore last month by militants.Younis, in Dubai preparing to play against Australia next week, is due to brief an ICC board meeting with his account of the incident alongside his Sri Lankan counterpart Mahela Jayawardene and other match officials caught up in the attacks. The Pakistan team bus narrowly avoided getting caught in the crossfire, having left the team hotel five minutes later than the Sri Lankan bus and then turned around once the news reached them.The attacks have forced Pakistan’s players to come to terms with even greater security around them. Security was intense when the team practiced at the Gaddafi Stadium before leaving for Dubai, with reports claiming that hundreds of security personnel guarded the squad as they walked barely 200 meters from the National Cricket Academy (NCA) to the stadium itself.Similar levels of protection have been provided to the team in Dubai, both at the ground and the hotel where access is restricted. “When we left for the airport to fly out to Dubai at 2am in the morning there was just so much security around us, it was unbelievable,” Younis told Cricinfo.”We were on the bus and it was on everyone’s minds, so much security for us, in our own country. There was talk among the players that maybe we should have travelled separately,” he said. “I asked Misbah [ul-Haq] what he would do if something like that [attack] happened to us and he didn’t really know. If something like that did happen, in our own country, on us, I would retire from cricket the very next day. How can someone do it to anyone, let alone their own countrymen?”The players – young, old, experienced and inexperienced alike – have all been deeply impacted by the incident, says Younis. “All of us were just shocked that something like this can happen. We have talked about it…you know you read about these unfortunate things in papers or see it on TV, but when it happens so close to you, to sportsmen it is difficult to fully comprehend.”To take someone’s life, or try and take it, is the lowest thing anyone can do and to try and do it to people who are considered heroes around the world, is just impossible to grasp,” he said.

Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus will be rested for Australia’s limited-overs contests against South Africa to protect them ahead of the Twenty20 World Cup and the Ashes. Both bowlers were crucial weapons in Australia’s Test series win, which was sealed in Durban on Tuesday, and will have a chance to recover from niggling foot and back problems.”Both Peter and Ben had significant injuries during the 2008 off-season,” Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, said. “Since returning to cricket they have had a demanding and heavy Australian season and will have completed three back-to-back Test matches in South Africa. The recommendation of the coaching and fitness staff was that they have time off now to allow them to recuperate and then commence a structured training program in ideal preparation, potentially for the World Twenty20 and the Ashes.”The benefactors of the decision are Brett Geeves, the Tasmania fast bowler, and Queensland’s Ben Laughlin. Geeves played an ODI against Bangladesh last year and is with the Test squad in South Africa while Laughlin, the son of the three-Test player Trevor Laughlin, has impressed during a strong domestic campaign. He captured 23 wickets in the FR Cup and and will be part of the unit for the two Twenty20s and the five ODIs.”In addition to his bowling Brett is a potentially explosive batsman and fielder and adds to the versatility of the one-day side,” Hilditch said. “It is a well-deserved opportunity.”Ben has had an extremely good summer for Queensland and was instrumental in their one-day final victory. Ben will add to the versatility of the Australian bowling line-up as we continue to look at options progressing forward to the 2011 World Cup.”Shane Harwood, the 35-year-old Victorian, gets the chance for a second Twenty20 international after being included for the two matches in Johannesburg and Centurion at the end of the month. He played a game in 2007 and has recovered from an ankle injury to take his place in the Sheffield Shield final against Queensland from Friday. David Warner, who holds his Twenty20 spot, will fly home with Harwood after the two matches.Andrew Symonds remains on the outer while the opener Shaun Marsh has not been chosen after tearing a hamstring against New Zealand. Hilditch expects Marsh to be fit for the Pakistan series in late April.Australia squad Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin (wk), David Warner, Ricky Ponting (capt), David Hussey, Michael Hussey, Adam Voges, Cameron White, Callum Ferguson, James Hopes, Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Bracken, Nathan Hauritz, Ben Laughlin, Brett Geeves, Shane Harwood.

Tillakaratne Dilshan, Sri Lanka’s Twenty20 captain, admitted his side’s indiscipline in the field cost them the first Twenty20 international played at home. India won by three wickets with four balls to spare after Sri Lanka had the game under control at the start of the 16th over, with India struggling at 115 for 7.”We bowled too many wides and we were not upto the mark on the field,” Dilshan said. “We should have cut down many runs. In this type of game if you make mistakes you cannot come back after that.”Initially we got a good start, but in the final three overs our batsmen managed only about 23 runs [19 actually]. We were at least ten or more runs short. The bowlers did a good job but they gave away 16 extras. If you take the difference between the two teams the extras made the difference.”Dilshan said five seniors were rested to give the consistent performers on the domestic circuit a chance to impress ahead of the ICC World Twenty20 in June. Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Muttiah Muralitharan, Ajantha Mendis and Farveez Maharoof were the ones rested.”If the five players had played, the result could have been different, but the selectors took this opportunity to give exposure to some of the lesser known players keeping an eye on the next World Twenty20,” Dilshan said. “I am very happy with the way they played. They made some small mistakes on the field and that is why we lost today. If we can rectify those mistakes we can look forward to performing well in England.”When asked why he persisted with his fast bowlers when Jehan Mubarak and Sanath Jayasuriya had four overs left, Dilshan said he didn’t want to bring them on when the left-handers were batting. Dilhara Fernando was brought back into the attack but ended up conceding 25 from his last two overs. Lasith Malinga too suffered at the hands of Irfan Pathan and Yusuf Pathan as he leaked 17 off eight balls.

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

Ajinkya Rahane’s phenomenal first-class season continued on the first day of the Duleep Trophy final against South Zone in Chennai, his unbeaten century handing West Zone a slight advantage. The theme of the day though was South striking every time West threatened to move into a dominant position: the openers with an aggressive start, then with Wasim Jaffer and Rahane’s 77-run stand, and finally after Bhavik Thaker and Rahane had taken West to 297 for 3.With South playing only two quick bowlers, there was a lot of responsibility on the senior medium-pacer Sreesanth, who is striving to win a place on India’s upcoming tour of New Zealand. He was off-colour in the first session though, with opener Parthiv Patel in particular going after him. Sreesanth’s fifth over was particularly torrid as he lost his line and needed ten deliveries to complete the over. He redeemed himself with the second new ball, generating some lovely swing and taking two late wickets, first inducing an outside edge to slip off Thaker, and then polishing Abhishek Nayar with a bouncer.In the morning, the openers gave West a confident start, adding 55 before offspinner R Ashwin trapped Parthiv leg before for 27. Wasim Jaffer was initially content to play second fiddle, but took charge after Parthiv’s dismissal. Ashwin was swept from outside off, and legspinner M Suresh was carted over the long-on boundary. Jaffer’s half-century came up with a straight drive off Sreesanth and he was looking good for yet another ton, but shouldered arms to a straighter one from left-arm spinner Shadab Jakati which knocked back his offstump.Cheteshwar Pujara didn’t last very long, missing out on a chance to impress the national selectors. He became the second batsman to be lbw to Ashwin when on 14, which reduced West to 163 for 3.Rahane and Thaker, though, ensured West retained the initiative with a 134-run stand. There was some assistance for South’s trio of spinners but Rahane, in particular, handled them with ease. He was generally circumspect against them but took toll of the loose deliveries they offered.He really opened out after tea, when West were at a comfortable 223 for 3. He repeatedly swept Ashwin, charged down the track to loft Jakati over mid-on before bringing up his eighth first-class century with a pull off Suresh.Thaker also went on the attack in the third session. He had been lucky to survive when on 33, the short leg fielder grassed a chance. He then tore into Jakati, charging down the track and driving him over mid-on for four, and celebrated reaching his half-century with a couple of sixes off the same bowler.West were threatening to run away with the game when Sreesanth helped bring South back with his late strikes. The other consolation for South is that West have a pretty long tail: Dhawal Kulkarni, their original No. 8, has a highest first-class score of 26.

ScorecardA quickfire 72 from Obus Pienaar sealed the fifth ODI for South Africa Under-19s in Cape Town, claiming the series 3-2 over England Under-19s. The two sides meet again for the first of two Twenty20s on Wednesday at Newlands.After their impressive five-wicket win on Saturday, England appeared to be hitting their straps but today they could only manage a below-par 229, as South Africa’s bowlers maintained a strict line and length. Sam Northeast continued his prolific form to hit his third half-century of the series, and together with Josh Cobb put on 115 for the third wicket. Northeast tops the runs this series with 219 at 43.80.It was England’s most substantial partnership of the innings but thereafter there was little resistance, apart from Cobb who cracked a fine 84. Siyamthanda Ntshona , an 18-year-old fast bowler, finished with 3 for 47 as England were bowled out in the last over.South Africa initially struggled, losing Andrea Agathagelou and Rilee Rossouw in quick succession, but unlike England they formed more than one partnership in the middle order. Mangaliso Mosehle, consistent throughout the five matches, struck 47 from 65 while Temba Bavuma heaved 42, but it was Pienaar who really stood out.Smashing eight fours and two sixes in his 66-ball 72, he made a mockery of the target; lifting Liam Dawson for two consecutive fours and a six, he sealed a comprehensive win and deserved series victory for South Africa.