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Neil Wagner has been added to New Zealand’s ODI squad to face South Africa later this month after fellow fast bowler Adam Milne was ruled out by injury.Milne, 20, missed the T20s in December after suffering an Achilles problem while warming up for a domestic match and although he was included for the ODI leg of New Zealand’s tour, the problem as flared up again.New Zealand physiotherapist Paul Close said: “Adam sustained a recurrence of his lower leg injury that’s been problematic for him over the last few months. He requires further assessment to determine the severity of the injury but because he is unable bowl without pain the decision has been made to replace him for the ODI series.”Wagner, who qualified to play for New Zealand last year after moving from South Africa, has played two Tests but is yet to feature in either of the limited-overs teams. He could make his ODI debut in the three-match series, beginning on January 19.Mike Hesson, New Zealand’s head coach, said: “While it is obviously disappointing for Adam this gives Neil a wonderful opportunity to join the squad for the ODI series. He’s the ideal replacement for Adam and we are confident he will perform well in the one-dayers should he get the opportunity on this tour.”Earlier this week, New Zealand were forced to replace allrounder Corey Anderson with Grant Elliott, after Anderson suffered a fractured thumb in training.

Graeme Swann, the most successful spinner in England Test history and a driving force behind their recent Test series win in India, has said that it his sense of winning a place in cricket history, rather than setting new statistical standards, which gives him the most satisfaction in playing the game.In an ebullient and revealing interview with Alison Mitchell, Swann made light of the fact that during the India series he surpassed Jim Laker as the leading Test wicket-taker among England offspinners of all time.”I am more interested in history than stats, if that makes sense,” he said. “People who play the game with a desperation to average 40 or desperate to score a hundred against each team, things like that, personally I feel it is a selfish way to go about it.”I love the fact that if your name is known and you are remembered in cricket history then statistics go out of the window. Nobody can tell you anyone’s average, apart from Don Bradman’s because that was exceptional.”Swann jokes that his ability to surpass Laker as the most successful England offspinner in history has something in common with Dynamo Magician, the 30-year-old Bradford-born magician, Steven Frayne, who sprung to fame when he walked across the River Thames in front of the Houses of Parliament two years ago.”It is a lot of smoke and mirrors,” he said. “Everybody thinks if you are not a mystery spinner you can’t take wickets, but if you look at most wickets taken in the world the ball doesn’t do anything ridiculous. There might be one in ten. The batsmen just get themselves out. It’s like a game of chess when you are bowling. You just try to win as many battles as you can.”Swann’s ability to handle the pressure of Test cricket, he believes, also plays a part. “I can bowl at a guy in a county game and freed up from the pressure they are suddenly the best player in the world. If you are not fazed by the pressure it plays into your hands.”I am quite subdued when I bowl. I don’t say anything to the batsman. I don’t try to whip up a storm of excitement around the bat. But I hope they think I am working to a plan.”Swann does become more passionate, though, when errors are made in the field off his bowling, something he often promises to control but suspects he never quite will. “It’s not so much dropped catches I get angry about,” he said. “I get exasperated if a catch is dropped. I get angry if players aren’t watching or are in the wrong place. Bowlers mess up in the field because they are not as athletic but batsmen don’t concentrate.”Swann spends most of his time at slip, where conversation with England’s Test and one-day captain, Alastair Cook, often strays into farming territory. “Me and Matty Prior reckon we could have our own lambing season with all he has told us about putting his hand up sheep’s bottoms,” Swann said.

Australia appear set to make a late change to their line-up for the second Test in Hyderabad after earlier indications were that they would use the same XI that lost in Chennai. Cricket Australia did not reveal the nature of the change but the most likely scenario is that it would surround the makeup of the attack on a pitch that the captain Michael Clarke said would take turn from the first day but also hoped would offer more for the fast men than the Chennai surface.The backup spinners in the squad, Xavier Doherty and Glenn Maxwell, could be considered, while a pace-for-pace swap involving Mitchell Johnson is another possibility. On Friday morning the indications were that Australia would name an unchanged line-up but Clarke said the selectors would not commit to an XI until after seeing the pitch again during the afternoon.*”I’m hoping there will be a bit more pace in this wicket because it’s a bit harder surface,” Clarke said before the team’s training session on Friday. “I don’t think this wicket will be any tougher than Chennai. That was a really tough wicket, so I think we have seen the toughest of conditions.”The wicket will certainly deteriorate as the Test goes on, so it’s a positive for our fast bowlers that it will be a little bit up and down. But spin from day one will play a huge part in this Test. I’d be very surprised if India played any less spin, put it that way. Looking at it yesterday, it looked like a day three or day four pitch.”Two days out from the match, there were already a few cracks developing but the surface did not have the clay-like appearance of the Chennai pitch. The harder surface should give a little more encouragement to Mitchell Starc, Peter Siddle and James Pattinson, although Clarke said Starc and Siddle would still need to learn from the way that Pattinson used speed through the air as his major weapon rather than relying on assistance from the pitch.”You have to hit the wicket really hard here,” Clarke said. “If you just put the ball there you get nothing out of the conditions, even if the ball is reverse swinging. In Chennai it was really hard to be caught behind the wicket once the ball was 10-15 overs old, so we needed to use our speed through the air. I think Patto did that really well – he ran in hard, hit the wicket really hard and he got more out of the pitch, and more out of the ball than Sidds and Starcy. We’ve certainly spoken about that.”Siddle and Starc are not the only members of the attack who will need to rethink their strategy after struggling in Chennai. Nathan Lyon leaked far too many runs in the first Test and will need to find a way to keep things tighter if he plays in Hyderabad. Clarke said Lyon had shown some encouraging signs towards the end of the Chennai Test.”On grounds in India it’s very easy to go for a lot more runs because they’re smaller and have fast outfields,” Clarke said. “I thought Lyno showed his character in the second innings. I wish we had 150-200 runs on the board because then he would have had the opportunity to bowl in inconsistent spin, pace and bounce on a day-five wicket that I know he would have loved. He’s been fine [since the Test]. He’s working hard every day to try and get better.”I think it’s important for all of us as a team to stay positive and confident. We saw what happened with England over here. For a lot of the guys, it was their first Test match in India and those conditions are as tough as they are going to be for a fast-bowling unit and the batsmen. I think there are a lot of positives we’ve got to take out of the game, we’ve looked at areas we need to improve and a lot of that is about patience with both bat and ball.”Clarke said he was confident that Doherty, the other specialist spinner in the touring party, would offer plenty to the team if he was added to the XI. Doherty’s first-class figures of 122 wickets at 44.56 do not make for encouraging reading, nor does the fact that he has managed only two wickets at 80 this Sheffield Shield season. But Clarke said it was unfair to extrapolate how Doherty might fare in India from how he bowls at home.”He’s bowling at Bellerive (Bellerive Oval, Hobart),” Clarke said. “I think that’s a little bit different to Chennai or Chandigarh. I think if you have a look at fast bowling in Australia compared to spin bowling, because of our conditions in first-class cricket, fast bowling will always outweigh spin bowling. I’m surprised a spinner gets a bowl at Bellerive because the game is nearly over in two-and-a-half days. I don’t think it would be fair on any of our spinners to compare their statistics in Australia to how important their impact could be in the sub-continent.”13.55GMT, March 1: The article was updated following Australia’s practice session on Friday.

Alastair Cook expects England will have to work hard to exert their predicted superiority against New Zealand, but opposing captain Brendon McCullum has labelled the visiting side ‘giants’ of Test cricket as he laid down the challenge to his team.In their Test history New Zealand have only eight wins against England, are currently eighth in the rankings and two matches ago were skittled for 45. Cook’s team, meanwhile, secured a historic win in India before Christmas (something Australia will find tough to match), have a top seven where only one batsman does not average over 40, a pace attack that includes two of the in-form quicks in the world and one of the leading spinners on the scene.”We know this is a huge series, we are taking on one of giants of the Test game and on the back of a tough South Africa series we know the importance of us showing a fighting spiriting for cricket in this country,” McCullum said. “They aren’t one of the best teams in the world for no reason so we know the magnitude of the challenge.”Cook is rightly confident of the players at his disposal, but was not going to be drawn into believing that the series was a foregone conclusion. Events of 2012 for England which, despite victory in India, included seven Test defeats (equaling their worst year) and the problems involving Kevin Pietersen has made Cook aware how swiftly fortunes can change.”If we play to our potential we’re going to be a hard side to beat,” Cook said. “But you’ve got to do that to earn the right to get into good positions to win games of cricket. That’s our challenge, to produce match-winning performances.”New Zealand’s biggest problem has been putting consistently large totals on the board to give their improving bowling attack a chance. If you exclude Tests against Zimbabwe, New Zealand’s score of 412 in Colombo last year (the match they won to level the series) was their first total of 400-plus since the tour of India in 2010.With that in mind, some structural changes have taken place with McCullum returning to the middle order in an aim to stack that area with experience. The comeback of Ross Taylor, whose absence left a massive hole in South Africa, also means that there is a less callow feel about the line-up although, in the endless search of an opening pair, another new combination will be tried at the top. There is a sense that New Zealand will accept being 20 for 2.”We’ve made a couple of changes to the balance of a line up,” McCullum said. “That was what we spoke about after South Africa, playing six batters and strengthening that area so for us it’s about making sure we get some good runs on the board to give ourselves an opportunity with the ball. If we take it as deep as we can you never know what we can achieve late in the game.”We needed to make sure we firm up certain areas and get run production from our batters. Adding that extra batter, and shifting the experience to the middle order, should enable us to score runs later. The bowling line-up has the ability, on their day, to really test opposition.”England have a world-class opener in Cook – one of the most prolific in the game at the moment – but the role of his partner is still to be fully cemented by Nick Compton and provides a small opening for New Zealand. Compton passed 30 in four of his eight innings against India (one of them unbeaten in a small run chase in Mumbai) and Cook believes he has the ability to replicate his hunger for big hundreds in county cricket on the Test stage.”The starts he got there, in different conditions to what he’s used to, show he can adapt his game to international cricket,” Cook said. “I think he’d be the first to admit he got those starts without kicking on.”One of his great strengths, when he plays for Somerset, and the reason he forced his way into this England side was that when he got in he went big. It was slightly unusual that didn’t happen. But I’ve got no concerns about that, because that’s why he got picked.”I think that single-mindedness that he’s got means when he gets in, he’s very hard to get out. I’d just love to see him get in and get that one big score which will get him up and running. He’s definitely got the class to do that at international level.”Although England never name a team before a toss, Cook was delighted with the workload put in by Stuart Broad during the warm-up match and said he got through more overs than had been expected in Queenstown. Broad, who has been troubled by a heel injury since the India tour, is set to regain the third fast-bowling slot but Cook is aware that workloads will be a major issue over the next 12 months which includes 15 Tests.”We know how injury, especially for fast bowlers, plays a very important part. I think we’re very lucky with the strength in depth (we have) in that department, and we can rotate players if we need to or – if someone gets injured – replace them with a guy of very similar ability and class.”Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Test programme continues to shrink with India’s visit set to be trimmed to two Tests. McCullum is determined to show they can still be a force in the longer format. “We were competitive throughout the T20 and ODI series, but Test cricket is where the public want to see, and where we want to show, improvement.”

ScorecardJamaica made it four wins out of four after beating Trinidad and Tobago by 93 runs in a low-scoring encounter in Kingston. Jamaica were on the back foot after being put in, as T&T bowled them out for 147 on the first day. Left-arm spinner Kavesh Kantasingh picked up a five-for and medium-pacer Rayad Emrit collected four, to bowl out Jamaica in 49.4 overs. T&T did worse when they came out to bat. Left-arm seamer Sheldon Cotterrell took 5 for 43 to help skittle out T&T for 121 and give his side a 26-run lead.Jamaica put up a better performance with the bat in the second innings, with Brenton Parchment and captain Tamar Lambert scoring half-centuries and the others chipping in with small, but useful, contributions. Though legspinner Imran Khan picked up a five-for, Jamaica reached 259, a lead of 285 that was formidable given how the sides had performed in their respective first innings.As it turned out, the target proved too much for T&T. Five of their batsmen got starts but only one managed to reach a half-century – Emrit – and it wasn’t enough. Left-arm spinner Nikita Miller bagged four wickets in a collective bowling effort, and T&T fell short by 93 runs, bowled out for 192 in 77.2 overs.

Bangladesh batsman Nasir Hossain has said the team will have to handle the weight of expectations on them in Zimbabwe, their closest rivals in Test cricket, and played down the lack of training at home ahead of the tour. Bangladesh leave for Zimbabwe on Wednesday, about a week after returning from Sri Lanka on April 2.”When we play a team like Zimbabwe, we always have that pressure of trying not to lose,” Nasir said. “If we can overcome that pressure than we will be able to play normal cricket. When we play against a big team there is nothing to lose for us and we can play 100% without any pressure.””I think Zimbabwe is a very difficult opponent in their own backyard. They are well prepared to give us a hard time, but we are confident we can beat them.”Nasir recently scored his maiden Test hundred and had a fruitful tour of Sri Lanka, which included a match-winning innings in the third ODI and a half-century in the first game of the series. Like many in the team, he has been playing constantly since the start of the domestic season in October. As a result, he doesn’t think a few days of practice ahead of the departure for Zimbabwe would have made any difference.”We just had a tour of one month so we are not [out] of practice. In Zimbabwe we will get a few days before the start of the series and that would help us to recover.”It is due to the prevailing condition in the country as we opted for safety first. Even if we had done it [trained], it would not have been anything more than two days and I don’t feel that we could have made a huge difference in this short span of time.”Nasir was in the Test squad when Bangladesh last played against Zimbabwe, but he didn’t get a game. He made his international debut in the one-day series there, and has established his position as a middle-order batsman. He will again be expected to play a key role in the Test series, as he had done in Sri Lanka when the team was without some big names.

Left-arm spinner Harmeet Singh has chosen to switch allegiances from Mumbai to Vidarbha in first-class cricket. The bowler, who was a part of the Under-19 World Cup-winning squad, is believed to have taken the decision after being ignored by Mumbai’s selectors. The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) issued a no-objection certificate (NOC) last week, to allow Harmeet to switch over.MCA provided differing reasons on Harmeet’s switch. “Last year too, his father had approached me to let his son play for another domestic side (Haryana),” MCA joint secretary PV Shetty told . “I was able to convince him that we would give him opportunities here. This time they insisted again, and we relented because we have the boy’s future in mind. If he gets an opportunity to play somewhere else, it will be good for his career.”MCA’s joint secretary Nitin Dalal said the presence of other left-arm spinners made picking Harmeet difficult. “With so many left-arm spinners around (Iqbal Abdulla, Ankit Chavan and Vishal Dabholkar), he was not getting an opportunity to play for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy,” Dalal said. “He also suffered from an injury last year and couldn’t play much. His father, too, is shifting to Nagpur so we had to give him the green signal.”Harmeet Singh made his Ranji trophy debut for Mumbai in 2009, where he took seven wickets against Himachal Pradesh. In five-first class games, Harmeet has taken 25 wickets. He also led the Mumbai U-19 team to the Cooch Behar Trophy in the 2011-12 season. The bowler was part of the India U-19 squad and picked 6 wickets in four games at an economy rate of 3.02 during the Under-19 World Cup last year.

England will return to the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua for the first time since their Test against West Indies in 2009 was abandoned after 10 balls due to a dangerous outfield consisting largely of sand.Alastair Cook, who opened the batting with Andrew Strauss in that match, will take his ODI team to West Indies for three ODIs beginning at the end of February all of which will be held at North Sound. Three Twenty20s then follow, which will be staged in Barbados, as preparation for the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh which is due to start in mid-March.The Sir Vivian Richards Stadium returned to the international scene in May 2010, 14 months after the abandonment involving England, after the outfield was relayed for a second time and has since held matches in all formats.The brief tour of the Caribbean is part of a period full of ODI and Twenty20 cricket for England in the early part of 2014 following the conclusion of the Ashes in Sydney in early January.

The player draft of the second Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) season is scheduled for July 14 in Colombo and is expected to contain several international players, including a strong South African contingent, according to the league’s chief executive officer, Ajith Jayasekara. The league is scheduled between August 10 and September 7.”We have the entire South African squad with the exception of Dale Steyn and Jacques Kallis lined up to take part,” Jayasekara said. “Pakistan has also shown their intention to send their present lot of cricketers but the participation of most of their key players depends on whether their tour to Zimbabwe takes place.”South Africa are due to tour Sri Lanka from July 20 to August 6 for five ODIs and three T20s and there is a possibility that members of the visiting team will stay back to participate in the league.”With the exception of England and India, players from all the other Test-playing nations have shown interest in participating in the league,” Jayasekara said. “Even a top performer like Chris Gayle has expressed his intention to take part once the Caribbean Premier League ends on August 24.”Other West Indian players like fast bowlers Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor, as well as Australians such as Doug Bollinger, Brad Hodge and Shaun Tait are among those who are expected to participate. The list also includes Mushfiqur Rahim, the Bangladesh captain. Jayasekara also said the franchises would reveal the list of players they are releasing by July 8.The draft rules allow a franchise to pick a minimum of 19 and a maximum of 25 players. If they stick to 19 players, the franchises have to pick seven international cricketers, nine domestic cricketers and three under-21 cricketers. If the squad comprises 25 members, the numbers change to 10, 11 and four respectively.Last season, 56 international players, mostly from Australia and Pakistan, and 90 local players were drafted in the league.Jayasekara brushed aside reports of problems with player payments in the first season. “We are perhaps the only league in the world to pay the players fees on time. Even the IPL has faltered on its payments. Some of the players who represented Kochi Tuskers Kerala have yet to receive their money and most of the players who took part in the Bangladesh Premier League have not been paid.”Like last season, officials of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit will monitor all matches of the second season of the SLPL. SLC is also looking to increase the number of venues this season and matches are scheduled in Hambantota, Galle, Dambulla and Kurunegala, apart from the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo and Pallekele stadium in Kandy. Jayasekera said the SLC was also exploring the possibility of hosting matches at Moratuwa and Matara.”We want to take the matches to the provinces that are being represented in the tournament,” Jayasekera said. “Some of the matches will be day games because the venues do not have facilities for night matches.”The SLPL was set up by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) to generate steady revenue to improve their wavering financial position after the 2011 World Cup. SLC signed a 15-year agreement with a Singapore-based company, Somerset Entertainment Ventures, to host the SLPL under an equal profit sharing arrangement.Jayasekera indicated that in the inaugural year, SLC earned as much as SLR 285 million, a figure which they approximately expect to receive each year over the next 14 years.The number of teams participating in the league this year is the same as last season: Uva Next (defending champions), Nagenahira Nagas (runner-up), Kandurata Warriors and Wayamba United (losing semi-finalists), Ruhuna Royals, Uthura Rudras and Basnahira Cricket Dundee.

JP Duminy and Wayne Parnell have been given opportunities to push for Test recalls after being included in South Africa’s A-team to play their Indian counterparts in two four-day matches this month. Duminy has not played a Test since rupturing his Achilles’ tendon in November last year, while Parnell has not featured for South Africa in over three years.Neither player will have any doubt that they are on trial, as Duminy will effectively be going toe-to-toe with Dean Elgar for the No.7 position in the batting line-up, while Parnell will be looking to push himself ahead of Rory Kleinveldt, Kyle Abbott and Marchant de Lange for the reserve bowler’s spot.Duminy’s chances of featuring in the Test side would seem higher, having already established himself in the batting line-up with a century against New Zealand on his comeback in March 2012, and making handy lower-middle order contributions during last year’s tour of England. He was also part of the team which prevailed in Australia in December last year, and was due to take on a bigger role as an offspinner, but could not take part in the match after the first day as he suffered an injury.”I had initially planned to play some four day cricket for Surrey for a couple of months but that fell through because of my contractual obligations with the Hyderabad Sunrisers who are playing in the Champions League T20 in September,” Duminy said*. “This is the perfect opportunity for me to get back into the feel of four-day cricket after a long time on the sidelines,”A six-month rehabilitation program saw Duminy miss the entire summer, which gave Faf du Plessis an opportunity to shine, as the latter emulated Duminy’s series-winning century at the MCG in 2008-09, with a match-saving 110 of his own, that earned him the right to a sustained run with the senior team.If Duminy were to make a comeback, it would most likely be at the expense of left-arm batsman Dean Elgar, who had staked his own claim in the side with an impressive 268 against Australia A in Pretoria.Parnell, on the other hand, will only be battling for a spot on the bench, even as Vincent Barnes, the high performance manager and coach of South Africa A, told ESPNcricinfo that Parnell is “back to his best” after battling through groin and leg injuries recently.Parnell, who bowled particularly well at the death in the Twenty20 matches during the tour of Sri Lanka, has now been earmarked for the longer version as well.”Wayne came through the Sri Lanka tour without any injury setbacks so he has now been added to the squad. He has had a lot of injury problems and needs to play as much four-day cricket as possible,” Barnes said. Impressive performances from Parnell could see him preferred over a long line of back-up bowlers.Kleinveldt is one of them and he was also due to play in this series, but a severe cut on his toe has ruled him out. He played only one match in Sri Lanka which he finished with a bloodied boot because of a gash that re-opened.De Lange is also injured after picking up a rib niggle during the matches against Australia A, and will be monitored closely as the new season approaches. As a result, Abbott is likely to be Parnell’s only competition and as both are playing in the series, seemingly for the same spot, it has given a whole new interesting dimension to the upcoming matches.* August 14 2pm GMT: This story has been updated with JP Duminy quotes