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Digicel, a mobile-phone company, have decided to offer unprecedented incentives in an attempt to drag West Indian cricket out of the morass of mediocrity in which it has been marooned for much of the past decade. The new sponsorship deal will see the players awarded bonuses for victories against top-notch opposition, and comes soon after the West Indies hit rock-bottom, losing at home to England for the first time in 36 years.”We wanted to ensure that we achieved the best performances on the field,” said Roger Braithwaite, chief executive of the West Indies Cricket Board. “We wanted to move to a situation where players were getting rewards,” he added, according to a news report on the BBC Sport website. “There was a feeling that not going down that road had perhaps impacted on the side.”The Board and the players are currently negotiating the terms of the agreement, though Braithwaite ruled out the possibility of fines for below-par performances. It is expected, however, that the team will get bonus payments for victories againt any side ranked higher in the ICC’s Test or one-day championship table. That means just about any victory will be lucrative, with the West Indies abysmally placed at eighth in both tables.The agreement will come into effect next January, just before the team takes on Australia. The five-year deal with Digicel is worth over £10.9million over the next half-decade, and it means that Cable & Wireless, the previous sponsors whose deal expired recently, are out of the picture.

Webmaster – “John, we are six weeks into the season, your first as Hampshire captain, how has it been going”.Crawley – “On the whole the results will say we have not had a particularly good start to the season, two real factors I think are, we have been disrupted quite heavily in the Championship by the rain, which hasn’t helped anything. We have actually when we have got on the field have gone out there and played good stuff, and have been competitive in the matches we have played in, with certainly at certain times chances of winning each of them. That’s one outstanding thing, the others were almost freak wins by Middlesex in the National League and Sussex in the Cheltenham & Gloucester, which were games we had already won and they took the games away from us, that early on in the season is not very easy to come back from. The only game we have played poorly in, I think was the National League game against Lancashire at Old Trafford. Apart from that everything has been going reasonably well. There is obviously room for improvement, but I think on the whole there has been not as much doom and gloom as the results might say.Webmaster – “Scotland coming up at the weekend, then Durham in the Championship, Sunday must have been a big relief”‘Crawley – “Yes, I think we played really well, it was great day for Derek (Kenway), he played really well, he has been struggling for runs, and struggling for form, as an opening batsmen a loss of form is not particularly easy to deal with. The two knocks he played were brilliant really for us and for him. They were two different types of pitches. The one on Sunday was I think, the best pitch I’ve played on here at The Rose Bowl, and it was great for us to play so well on that sort of surface”.Webmaster – “What about your own form this season?”Crawley – “In and out really, obviously I had a good start to the Championship season, and should have gone on really in one of those 4/5 half centuries, I should have gone on to make a big score in one if not two. The One Day stuff started slowly, which is disappointing.Webmaster – “You may not want to talk about it, but, left out of the England squad, a big disappointment”?Crawley – O a hugh disappointment, I think I have not spoken openly about it to many people. I am still pretty bewildered and amazed by the whole thing to be honest, I did have chats with some of the selectors beforehand and they gave me the odd reason. Nobody has spoken to me since the selection has been made, but the reasons that they were putting forward before hand were not really satisfactory from my point of view. In the last eight test matches since coming back into the side, I played a big part in two of England’s wins at the time, helped to save the game against Sri Lanka at Lord’s, and averaged 47 plus with the bat. OK, I didn’t really light up any bonfires in the winter, but there were a lot of other batsmen who didn’t also, and I can take a lot of credit from the fact that I can look myself in the mirror and tell myself in all honesty that I have fought as hard as I possibly could for England. To be dropped after that for not really any reason as far as I can see, is by far and away the most utterly disappointing thing that has happened to me in my cricket career”.Webmaster – “Are you still optimistic that you could get back?Crawley – “Well certainly, the ball is in my court to do so, I’m not sure because as the season goes on and obviously the press is very powerful in this country, and they will be clamouring for more and more young faces in the side, so the pressure will be on the selectors to go that way I think they probably will, whether it is right or wrong they are under pressure, so that is the way it will go, so I will have to perform. I just really have to score double hundreds on more than one occasion.Webmaster – “OK, John that super, thank you very much.

Leaders Yorkshire are on course for their eighth CricInfo Championship win of the season as they chase their first title for 33 years.With Darren Lehmann hitting his fifth century of the summer, Yorkshire will start the third day at Grace Road on 267 for three in their second innings, a lead of 376.Lehmann loves playing against Leicestershire. He scored a century against them in the earlier meeting between the sides at Headingley and this was the third time he has reached three figures on this ground in the last four years.After a duck in the first innings he took 24 balls to get off the mark but once he had done so the runs began to flow.He reached 50 off 92 balls with seven fours and his century came up off 160 balls with 14 fours. Along the way he shared a stand of 138 with the impressive Michael Vaughan for the third wicket after Yorkshire had slipped to 23 for two in the first nine overs.Fast bowler James Ormond claimed both wickets, having Craig White caught behind and Matthew Wood taken at gully, but after that it was Yorkshire all the way.Vaughan again looked in excellent form before edging a fine delivery from Darren Maddy into the safe hands of wicket-keeper Neil Burns. Even then there was no respite for the toiling home attack, handicapped by a groin injury to Devon Malcolm and the lack of a specialist spinner.David Byas came out to join Lehmann in a partnership of 106 in 25 overs, and with two days to go Yorkshire will be looking to add more runs yet before declaring.

Western Australian medium pacers Damien Martyn and Kade Harvey have combined to lift their team to a two-run victory over Tasmania in a thrilling Mercantile Mutual Cup encounter between the teams here at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart today. It was a stunning triumph which not only capped another of the cliff-hanger finishes that have loomed large over this season’s competition but which also came after the home team had appeared to be well in command.More than anything else, this will be remembered as a day of heartbreak for the Tasmanians. Plagued by a poor history of results in one-day cricket, and a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, they allowed both maladies to come back and curse them again. Through long periods of the match, they had seemingly held the upper hand; by its conclusion, though, success had escaped their clutches once more.”We should have won the game,” bemoaned home skipper Jamie Cox following the defeat. “They didn’t actually win the game; we lost it.””We had two blokes playing nicely. But for some reason, we didn’t keep our heads … which is really disappointing.”Having amassed what could be described as no more than a competitive score of 8/246 from their fifty overs (on a beautifully true pitch) and then watched as the Tasmanian batsmen made exemplary progress toward the target, the Warriors, by contrast, could barely believe their good fortune. With their opponents only four wickets down and requiring just twenty-six runs off the final six overs, the act of revival engineered by Martyn (2/12 off three overs) and Harvey (1/67 from ten) was little short of spectacular. They conjured a remarkable turnaround which saw Shaun Young (70) and Dene Hills (20) hit catches high into the leg side and permitted only a tentative twenty-three runs to be added to the total. The Western Australians’ jubilation by the end was about as palpable as the gravity of the Tasmanians’ stumble.”It was a bit tense, wasn’t it?” beamed Martyn after the match. “There wasn’t any plan, really; luck was on my side.””We know they’re young guys,” he said of the inexperienced pairing of Andrew Dykes (5* off ten deliveries) and Scott Kremerskothen (6* from eight balls) that was left to attempt to lift the Tigers to victory as the wheels rapidly began to come off around them.”It’s hard batting at the end anyway and once we got the two experienced guys (Young and Hills), we felt we were a real big chance,” opined the current international one-day player.Martyn’s two wickets and Harvey’s concession of six runs from his closing spell of two overs allowed them to walk away with most of the individual plaudits. But the visitors also owed an enormous debt of gratitude to youngster Simon Katich and the experienced duo of Tom Moody and Jo Angel.It had been Katich (73) and Moody (68) who had provided the batting impetus to an innings that had otherwise been devoid of momentum through the morning. Until finally the victim of a mistaken decision to attempt a fourth run from an off drive in the forty-sixth over, the left handed Katich continued a love affair with Bellerive that has seen him amass runs here voraciously over recent seasons. Particularly strong through the off side, his driving from the front foot was a feature.At the other end in their rapid-fire stand of 125 for the fifth wicket, Moody was also in sparkling form. He was more productive off the back foot than his partner but also played a number of crunching cover drives. Crucial in the final analysis was the duo’s capacity to capitalise on a bizarre decision from Cox to throw part-time spinner Hills the ball in the forty-fourth over. In such a tight match, the twenty-one runs that were smashed from Hills’ six deliveries of naked turn assumed critical importance.Around the dismissals of Adam Gilchrist (5), Ryan Campbell (13), Justin Langer (17) and Martyn (31) through the opening half of the morning session, the Tasmanians had in fact held a very firm upper hand initially. Leading an attack which rebounded strongly from the hammering that it received at the hands of New South Wales last week, Young (1/36 off ten overs) and teenage paceman Brett Geeves (1/23 off seven) stood out, but the Tigers’ general accuracy and control was impressive throughout the early stages.Although unable to make any more than one incision – the caught and bowled of Michael DiVenuto (13) – Angel (1/25 from ten overs) later produced his own brilliant spell of bowling, without which the Warriors would well and truly have been on their way to defeat. Relying on impeccable length, the veteran right hander conceded a mere nine runs from the opening seven overs of the afternoon at the River End. At a time when his teammates were being savaged by the likes of Young (70) and Cox (61), it was a performance which did enough to keep the Western Australians in with a glimmer of a chance. And in the end, the lifeline that he had thus thrown his team proved decisive.

ScorecardFile photo – Tanwir Afzal clobbered two fours and three sixes in his 42•Graham Crouch/IDI/Getty

Hong Kong cruised to a comfortable four-wicket win after chasing down 163 in the last over against Afghanistan in Abu Dhabi. Tanwir Afzal blitzed a 22-ball 42, an innings that featured two fours and three sixes, to swing the momentum in Hong Kong’s favour after they were stuttering at 89 for 4 in the 12th over.Hong Kong’s chase began slowly and the team soon also lost Kinchit Shah in the third over for 2. Though they managed to stitch substantial partnerships thereafter through brisk contributions from Babar Hayat (35 off 18), Mark Chapman (22) and Nizakat Khan (26), frequent wickets meant Afghanistan were still in with a shot.Afzal and Nizakat added 55 for the fifth wicket in just 30 balls as the match drifted away from Afghanistan, and an equation of 24 off the last four overs was easily achieved in the end with two balls to spare. Karim Sadiq, Aftab Alam and Rokhan Barakzai picked up two wickets apiece.Earlier, Afghanistan lost both their openers within the first four overs after choosing to bat. Asghar Stanikzai (51) then struck a counterattacking half-century and combined with Sadiq (22) and Samiullah Shenwari (34) in stands of 34 and 63 respectively to set up a strong platform for a late surge. Shafiqullah provided the required impetus late in the innings with a 16-ball 30 to lift Afghanistan to a score of 162 for 6.

ScorecardAhead of their two Twenty20 matches against England next week, West Indies slipped to a humiliating 51-run defeat at the hands of Derbyshire at the County Ground, with Ant Botha and Tom Lungley each picking up four wickets.To further compound West Indian woes, their team today was far stronger than the mishmash they put out against the England Lions last week, when five players from English league cricket were drafted in. Dwayne Smith, Austin Richards and Lendl Simmons were all included today, but it had little positive effect as their batsmen capitulated to 84 all out in the 16th over, chasing a modest 136.Chris Gayle was first to go, bowled by Lungley for 4 and the same bowler trapped Marlon Samuels, the very next ball, for a duck. Simmons only lasted nine balls, but Richards at least held one end up in his fighting 25, cracking three fours and a six. He received encouraging support from Dwayne Bravo (12 from 12) and Smith (13 from 15) but, neither could partner him for a lengthy period. From a precarious 67 for 4, West Indies lost their last six wickets for 17 runs.The defeat is all the more concerning, not simply because the team they fielded was so much stronger, but for their brittle batting after a promising effort with the ball. Only Derbyshire’s captain, Simon Katich, with an industrious 31 from 28 balls, threatened to take the attack to West Indies’ bowlers, their spinners – Samuels and Gayle – taking three wickets in six overs between them. Chris Taylor, who ended unbeaten on 28 (from 25) also provided good support, but the restrictions West Indies imposed on Derbyshire’s first 10 overs hampered their progress.In the end, 135 was more than enough. Their next and final warm-up match, another Twenty20 against a PCA Masters XI on Tuesday, now takes on an even greater significance.David Moore, the West Indies coach, slammed the team’s batting performance after the game. “It is very disappointing,” Moore said. “We committed the cardinal sin to not bat our 20 overs out. We lost six wickets in four overs, played poor shots, it was very poor batting.”