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New South Wales was the first to do it. Then it was South Australia’s turn. Even Tasmania had done it. So naturally, today was Western Australia’s day. And didn’t the Warriors do it in style!Yes, Western Australia today became the fourth team this summer to grab a bonus point against Victoria when it won the Mercantile Mutual Cup clash here at the Melbourne Cricket Ground with more than eleven overs to spare.The win pushes the Warriors up to second spot on the competition ladder and at the same time ensures the Victorians languish at the bottom a little while longer.Today, it all began with the all-important toss. The Bushrangers were losers even before a ball had been bowled. The MCG wicket has tended to contain a fair bit of moisture through the early stages of matches this summer and this was a toss captain Paul Reiffel could ill-afford to lose. Only last month, Reiffel lost the toss here to Tasmania and watched as his batsmen made a meal of the match. He lost again today and, within half an hour, his two openers were back in the pavilion.After the match, Reiffel was seen having a chat to one of the groundsmen, clearly frustrated at the nature of the wicket. Asked about the conversation later, Reiffel said he was just trying to find out what the thinking was behind producing a pitch that offered a lot to bowlers in the early stages but grew batsman-friendly as the day wore on. Having seen Australia thump West Indies on a benign pitch here last Thursday, Reiffel was ruffled about the importance forced on the toss for domestic one-day matches at this ground."I haven’t won a toss here in the Mercantile Mutual and they’re crucial.”First ten, fifteen overs it’s really hard to bat and I was a little bit frustrated. I saw the international here the other night and it was a belter, wasn’t it? Except we turn up and there’s moisture in the wicket every time and unfortunately, I keep losing the Mercantile Mutual tosses so it’s been a bit disappointing," he said.Coach John Scholes agreed."Without making any excuses, it was probably a little bit more difficult to bat this morning than this afternoon when the wicket had dried out a bit. Not that it was overly moist but there was a bit there for the bowlers this morning," he said.However, both spoke of the need to improve the Bushrangers’ one-day batting. In true 2000-01 Victorian fashion, another batting collapse ensued today, with Brad Hodge (84) offering the only real resistance. Hodge continued his sparkling form, belting nine fours en route to his third one-day fifty and second highest competition score of the summer. Batting to add respectability and substance to the team’s display in less than ideal conditions, Hodge played brilliantly, ensuring the rapid ticking over of the scoreboard."He just stood out, didn’t he? He came in today and was buzzing this morning. He told us he was going to bat all day and play well, so it was interesting to see how we went out there. And he just kept hitting fours. He’s in great form – the one shining light in our batting line-up at the moment," said Reiffel.For the Western Warriors on the other hand, batting was hardly a difficulty, with openers Justin Langer (57) and Ryan Campbell (57) compiling a 113-run partnership for the first wicket. Campbell struck the second ball of the Western Australian innings to the fence, and the Warriors never looked back.Returning to the one-day fold in the absence of Damien Martyn, Langer seemed to thrive on today’s outing, striking seven fours in his stay of two hours. Luck also favoured him today, with the usually scrupulous Darren Berry missing a stumping off Colin Miller early in his piece.Playing his first representative match of the season, twenty-four year old left armer Ian Hewett (3/38) produced a good individual performance, snaring all three Warrior wickets. Reiffel praised his team’s bowling at the end of the match, again ruing the fact that the total was barely defendable. "I thought we bowled really well out there today but there was just no scoreboard pressure," he said.So, having won only one of its six domestic one-day matches so far this summer, Victoria is well and truly in the midst of a limited-overs crisis.Coach Scholes hinted at changes in the line-up for the match against Queensland this Friday, saying the right formula would need to be found pretty soon.Even though the season is pretty much over for the team, Scholes believes his charges need to go all out to try and win the remaining four matches."What we have to do is be very competitive and obviously get some respect back in that form of the game. We want to win every game we compete in and that’s what we’re setting out to do," he said.

Rahul Dravid: expected to play in a bid to find his best form © Getty Images

From the frying pan of Trent Bridge, where they prevailed in a feverish Test, India’s cricketers have landed in an easy-chair at Grace Road. In an eight-day gap between Tests, almost a luxury in modern times, they take on Sri Lanka A who are coming towards the end of a highly satisfying England tour.The post-match celebrations have been relatively muted compared to those following away triumphs in the past. Several players have spent time with their wives on tour and there hasn’t been a united we-stuffed-them kind of party. Optimists will point out that an away win is no longer a shock, and the team has got used to winning abroad. As long as they continue winning, the pessimists won’t get a look-in.Either way, the Grace Road fixture should come as a welcome break. Two hard-fought Test matches left many of the team spent and here’s a chance to wind down before heading back to London. It’s a period in which they will work on overcoming a seven-year itch, in which time they have regularly gone down in an away Test immediately after winning one.Statistics inform us that India picked up this poor habit at the Harare Sports Club in 2001, when they surrendered a 1-0 lead to end with a drawn series. Several bitter-sweet combinations have followed – Kandy-Colombo, Port-of-Spain-Bridgetown, Adelaide-Melbourne, Multan-Lahore, Johannesburg-Durban. They even managed to bring that form home with them last time they faced England – from victory in Mohali to defeat in Mumbai – and so all assistance needs to be sought to avoid Trent Bridge-Oval.Less than half of India’s squad had a net ahead of the match and most of the players who’ve been in form will be rested from the encounter. Wasim Jaffer, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Ramesh Powar, Ishant Sharma and Ranadeb Bose were the ones who trained in the nets for about two hours, and it is they who will take the field. Rahul Dravid, who observed proceedings for half an hour without actually having a bat, is also likely to play, in an aim to rediscover his form before the Oval encounter.Mahendra Singh Dhoni needs a game, mainly to get his glovework in order. He’s seen his keeping fall to pieces during the tour, yet hasn’t dropped a single catch in either of the Tests. He’s struggled to come to terms with the late swing and has been more of a football goalie parrying the ball away rather than a wicketkeeper collecting with soft hands.Robin Singh, India’s fielding coach, has been on the case. “It takes time. I’ve been talking to Alec Stewart and others here. I even spoke to Andy Flower, who gave up the gloves in this sort of scenario. The important thing is he’s not lost his confidence and not dropped any catches. In England the ball swings a lot and even their wicketkeeper was struggling a lot. Matt Prior has been keeping in England but he’s not had the best time.”India’s catching, after a butter-fingered series in Bangladesh, has been surprisingly secure. A drop-rate of one per match – Dinesh Karthik’s howler at Lord’s and Sachin Tendulkar’s straight-forward miss at Nottingham – is definitely an improvement. “We’ve been concentrating a lot on our catching,” said Singh. “If you look at the West Indies series earlier, so many catches were dropped. It changes the course of the game. Most of the wickets have been taken by medium-pacers and we’ve taken all the important catches. Our overall fielding has improved. As you know most of the guys are on the older side, if you have a younger side, you’ll probably see a better fielding unit.”Up against the Indians will be a more athletic side from the subcontinent. Sri Lanka A will go into their penultimate game of the tour upbeat, especially after their one-wicket victory over Yorkshire two days back. Thilan Samaraweera’s side have lost just one of their seven matches on this tour so far with Kaushal Silva and Mahela Udawatte stringing together some useful scores. The medium-pacer Ishara Amarasinghe and legspinner Kaushal Lokuarachchi, two bowlers who’ve worn national colours, have also posed plenty of problems for the batsmen around the shires.India (probable) 1 Wasim Jaffer, 2 Gautam Gambhir, 3 Rahul Dravid (capt), 4 VVS Laxman, 5 Yuvraj Singh, 6 MS Dhoni (wk), 7 Anil Kumble, 8 Sreesanth, 9 Ramesh Powar, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Ranadeb Bose

Shoaib proved too much to handle for St George’s club © AFP

Shoaib Akhtar took two wickets and smashed 57 off 31 balls as Berkswell beat St George’s club by 144 runs in the West Midlands. Shoaib, suffering from an ankle injury, played for the village side in a bid to regain fitness in time for the fourth Test against England at The Oval beginning on August 17.”My game for Berkswell was only supposed to be a leisurely return to bowling but I can tell you that I did not hold back on those club players at times,” Shoaib wrote in his diary on Bigstarcricket.com. “I thought I bowled quite fast in my first four-over spell, even though my two wickets came later. I bowled at full speed for a couple of overs but came down to about half-pace later on as I didn’t want to risk a pulled muscle or strain in my first proper bowl in a long time.””I had a good practice. I had fun with the club. I had fun with my team-mates,” Shoaib told BBC Sport. He added that playing a match after a five-month gap had resulted in stiffness.Shoaib’s participation in the game drew a crowd of around 500. Paddy Milnes, a Berkswell club member, said that they would have usually expected ‘one man, a cat and a dog’.Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach, was keen that Shoaib play a few games during his rehabilitation. Woolmer managed to get him to play for Berkswell, whose captain, Dominic Ostler, played under him at Warwickshire.

Shane Warne caused England familiar problems at Lord’s © Getty Images

England’s fighting display on the first day of this Test had given way to a more familiar procession by the third, as Australia wrenched the game from their grasp, first with a battling tail-end performance in the morning session, and then with an inexorable bowling display in the afternoon. England closed on a ropey 156 for 5, and Marcus Trescothick accepted his team were facing up to failure.”We’re disappointed for sure,” he admitted to reporters after the close of play. “We are going to be on the back foot for rest of this game, but we’ve worked hard for 18 months to get to this point and we’re not going to give in when the going gets tough.”Kevin Pietersen’s bullish 42 not out gave the crowds cause to cheer as the evening drew in, but Pietersen had been at the heart of the most dispiriting aspect of England’s play – dropping three of their six catches in the match as Australia set a tough 420 for victory. But Trescothick refused to point the finger, or press the panic button.”All we can do is keep practising hard,” he said. “You need to relax in the field and enjoy your time while you’re out there, but catches are an individual thing, to be honest. We’ve improved our catching so much over the past year, so let’s just hope this has been a bad day or a bad game.”While the spectre of dropped catches is one that looms large in England’s recent Ashes experience, there was another familiar sight this evening, as Shane Warne spun his way to three wickets in a mesmeric display. He should have nailed Trescothick lbw with the final ball of the second session, but instead had him caught at slip for 44 as England lost five wickets for 39 before the close.”I didn’t pick that lbw appeal,” Trescothick admitted. “I thought I’d hit it, but then I saw on the replay it was close. In series I’ve played, he’s always been a top challenge so it’s hard to judge his performance on one day, but there was a bit of rough in the footholes so we knew his legspinner would turn. But he bowled well, no doubt.”One plus for England was that they saw off the new-ball challenge of Glenn McGrath, who grabbed five wickets in 31 balls in the first innings but went wicketless in 21 overs second time around. “The new ball is obviously a crucial period,” said Trescothick. “The aim is to survive as long as you can, and wait for a moment you can score. But a class performer like him doesn’t give you anything.”I don’t think we play the players anymore,” insisted Trescothick, when asked whether England were still in awe of Warne and McGrath. “We play the situation, and play the ball as much as we can. They are two world-class performers, we know they are going to bowl well at us, but we also know we can score off them and have big partnerships against them.”Australia’s other successful bowler was Brett Lee, who marked his first match for Australia since January 2004 with a fiery new-ball burst and two late wickets including the crucial one of Michael Vaughan, who was bowled for 4. “We are happy with the way the game has gone,” Lee admitted, “But we can’t just expect five wickets tomorrow. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication, and bowling in partnerships.””We said in advance we’d be looking to play hard cricket,” said Lee. “We have come over here to win 5-0. There’s no point aiming to win 3-2. But to do that, it’s going to take a lot of hard competitive cricket. This first Test is the most important, because it sets up the summer.”For Australia, it was a far cry from the opening exchanges of the match, when they were caught cold by an inspired England bowling performance. “They bowled fantastically,” Lee admitted, “but a Test is meant to last five days, and we knew we had a second chance today. I take my hat off to Simon Katich for the way he batted, especially with the tail, and for having confidence in Jason and Glenn.”Australia have not lost a game at Lord’s since 1934, and Lee admitted he was grateful that the ECB had decided to hold the first game of the series at the ground. “Looking at what’s happened in history, we have a very good record here,” he said. “It has so much to offer as the home of cricket, and though we cop it on the boundary, it’s a fantastic crowd and a great place to play cricket.”Especially, it would seem, when you’re winning.

Strang: ‘All the players are very excited’© Getty Images

Paul Strang, who was a Test regular for Zimbabwe in the 1990s, has said that he is very pleased to be involved with the English tour of the “Red Lions”, a team made up of Zimbabwe rebel cricketers, next month. “I’ll be playing for the Zimbabwe World XI,” he said, “which is made up basically of ex-players – players who are no longer in the country or the national side but used to be part of it.”Strang, who’s still only 33, played 24 Tests, scoring 839 runs (including a century) and took 70 wickets with his loopy legspin. He also played 93 one-dayers, in which he took 96 wickets, including 5 for 21 against Kenya (and 4 for 40 against India) in the 1996 World Cup. For the past two years, he has been spending his summers playing cricket in the north of England, for Wallasey in Liverpool. “I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve been playing as well as doing some coaching,” he said. “What’s happening to the Zimbabwe players now happened to me about a year ago. I was sort of phased out. But I am thoroughly enjoying playing my cricket here now.”One of the main reasons for the tour was to raise money to pay for the massive legal fees incurred by the rebels during their altercations with the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, as most of the players have been unemployed since they were finally sacked a few weeks ago. However, during the week-long tour, the players will also be attending fund-raising events, including a special day in aid of two good causes, the Cricketers’ Trust and the Zimbabwe Pensioners’ Trust.”It’s good that they’re doing that,” said Strang. “I’m not sure what the situation regarding legal fees is, but the cost of living in Zimbabwe has just sky-rocketed, and a lot of the old-age pensioners are really struggling, so it’s very good that they’re doing something to help that.”Cricket in Zimbabwe has gone downhill quickly in recent times. The economic crisis in the country, not helped by fuel shortages, had led to a player exodus which hit the first-class game even before the dispute between the board and the so-called rebels. Strang admitted that the last season was “incredibly disorganised”.He went on: “Where the ZCU have gone wrong in one area is that the guys who did the hard yards through the ’80s and ’90s have not really been used for coaching and things like that. They’re not really involved any more. Dave Houghton has been involved a little bit, but there are lots of people who really should have been used to strengthen Zimbabwe cricket, using their experience in coaching, especially at first-class level.”Strang explained that there were several ex-players who would still have something to give to Zimbabwe cricket, if only they were given the chance. “We’re a bit older, we’re not as quick or fit as the young guys, but we still have a lot to give, especially in first-class cricket, which is the base for the national team,” he said. “For the last two years all I’ve wanted was to be involved in Zimbabwe cricket, and I’ve made that clear to them. I would still like to be involved.”Though there is no resolution in sight for Zimbabwean cricket’s problems, Strang is optimistic that the game can be turned around for the better. “I’m always quite optimistic. We’re still the most patriotic guys. We’re optimistic, and you have to believe change is around the corner. But at the moment there is a problem of a lack of trust. They could offer me the greatest job in the world, and I’d still look at it a little cynically.”So far, only three games have been organised for the Red Lions tour, with the second of these, against the Zimbabwe World XI including Strang, in Wimbledon on July 16. “The game is on the Friday, which is a bit of a problem for me because I have to get back up here to play afterwards,” said Strang, “so I can’t be as involved as I would have liked, but I’m very pleased to be playing.”I wanted them to play up north as well. There are a lot of good players up here, a lot of professionals, so I would have liked to have seen them play a game up here, but I guess there are problems with logistics. But all the players are very excited. I just spoke to Doug Marillier and he’s very excited to be playing.”

The official website of the forthcoming 2003 ECC Notts Sport® Trophy has gone live, with new content to be added between now and the tournament. The site will include fixtures and match results for all games, a mailing list to allow people to sign up to receive a daily e-mail bulletin of the tournament’s proceedings, a feature of the 2001 ECC Trophy, also held in Austria, which allowed people from 17 countries to be kept abreast of developments in Austria for the duration of the tournament.The site can be visited at https://ecct2003.austrian-cricket.info/ – feel free to add it to your favourites/bookmarks!

Ricky Ponting provided the highlights, but it was a host of lesser lights who steered Tasmania safely to stumps and first day honours in the Pura Cup cricket match at the WACA today.After stumbling to 5-108 just after lunch, the Tigers lost just three more wickets for 208 and will resume tomorrow at 8-316.Pace duo Damien Wright (41no) and David Saker (17no) frustrated the Warriors attack for the final 45 minutes in a valuable 40-run partnership.Veteran all-rounder Shaun Young led the resistance with a gritty 169-ball 67 that included 11 boundaries.But he was ably supported by former Queenslander Shane Watson, who dug in for 56 before edging Gavin Swan (2-60) to Damien Martyn at first slip to take thescore to 6-147.Wicketkeeper Sean Clingeleffer contributed 47 runs in a 98-run partnership with Young, before he presented Martyn with his fourth catch and Jo Angel (3-52) histhird wicket.After winning the toss and sending the visitors into bat, Warriors captain Adam Gilchrist would have been pleased with the state of play before lunch when Ponting was sent back to the pavilion with the score at 3-90.Ponting made a blistering start, but failed to capitalise and was out for 58 after giving Martyn his second catch at first slip off Angel.The Australian first drop batsman came in with the score at 1-9 and immediately began to plunder the WA attack, clubbing nine fours and two sixes off just 48 balls.He arrived at the wicket in the seventh over when Dene Hills was caught by Martyn at first slip off Brad Williams for four.Williams (3-84) bowled with good pace but too often strayed short, especially to the damaging Ponting.Hills’ opening partner Jamie Cox batted patiently for 57 minutes for seven before he edged Swan to Gilchrist behind the stumps.Swan claimed the scalp off just his second ball and his economical bowling helped slow the Tigers’ run rate.Cox’s dismissal brought Watson to the crease to partner Ponting and the pair put on 40 runs before the captain departed.Former Warrior Michael Dighton then strode to the middle for his debut for Tasmania.The elegant right hander batted cautiously for 25 minutes but was out for two off the last ball of the morning session when Gilchrist took a freakish leg side catch off an inside edge off Williams.Tasmanian coach Greg Shipperd admitted he would also have opted to bowl had he won the toss and said he was pleased with the way his batsmen handled adifficult WACA deck.”I thought it was a great fightback, especially after the way the ball was darting around early,” he said.”To end up with 316 was excellent, after where we were at lunch I thought anything in excess of 200 would have been a good result.”To get above 300 showed a lot of character from some of our younger players.”He paid particular tribute to second year players Clingeleffer and Watson.”They’re becoming very important middle order batsmen for us,” he said.”It’s not a surprise to see them leading a fightback, we’re beginning to expect solid contributions with the bat from them.”

Australia’s team performance manager Pat Howard concedes it is a “fair question” to ask whether the Ashes tourists underestimated England ahead of and during a series Michael Clarke’s side were widely expected to win. That they have not, despite dominating the Lord’s and Oval Tests, will cause Howard to review events closely.However Howard defended the selectors Rod Marsh and Darren Lehmann for a range of decisions including the omission of Brad Haddin after he withdrew from Lord’s for personal reasons. He also backed up the choice to give Haddin and Shane Watson only one Test in England before being discarded while ignoring Peter Siddle’s English expertise until the Ashes urn had gone.Even so, Howard was unable to say that the players fully understood and accepted the various contentious selection decisions that had been made across the tour. The public utterances of Mitchell Johnson and Chris Rogers, among others, strongly suggested they have not, while on the third evening of the Oval Test Peter Siddle expanded on his own dismay at being left out in conditions he has always thrived in.

Pat Howard on:

The Haddin decision: “I was part of conversation, the lead up, I absolutely 100% support what the selection panel did. I understand the emotion involved, I understand to a certain extent. Hadds is a great bloke. There is an emotional attachment there but they have also got to make decisions in the best interests of the team and Lord’s the team played really, really well and as a consequence they decided to keep that team together. I am very comfortable with that.”
Dropping Watson and Haddin after one Test: “They were given a chance. Over a period of time, and I back exactly, I know all the conversations had with selectors, we had all the contract meetings leading up to this, so those conversations were had about the expectations. Lets take that last six months in context. It was pretty tumultuous, into the World Cup, into there, the opportunity to lead guys through and talk to them a lot was had. I can guarantee you that I was aware of some meetings, I was in other meetings that happened where ‘here is the expectation, you need to deliver, here are your chances’ so I absolutely support exactly what the selectors did.”
No allrounder at Trent Bridge: “They [the selectors] made a decision collectively that they needed an extra batsman and to be fair to them it was tough batting conditions so you understand the decision. If you go down to each individual decision everyone has a view but you can’t ever go and argue the other side because you never know if you would have been better or worse without the other person. The reality is when we’ve scored big runs, we’ve had something to defend, we’ve bowled well together and the team has worked well.”
Being bowled out for 60: “Funnily enough, my first game involved with Cricket Australia was at Cape Town and at nine for 21… One of the things you learn from that is you don’t panic, you can turn it around very quickly if you’ve got the capability and talent. We do have the capability and the talent and I’m really excited about what this team is capable of, not only here – they’re showing that – but also in the future.”

Overall, the major question confronting Howard is whether Australia’s players, coaches, selectors and planners underestimated the difficulty of winning in England and the degree of adaptation required. The shot selection of the batsmen and the composition of the bowling attack seemed to suggest an attitude that the Australian way would prosper, something utterly repudiated by the scores in Birmingham and Nottingham.”That’s a really fair question,” Howard said when asked if Australia became complacent about England due to recent success. “Last time we won here was 2001. There’s some pretty good teams that have come here that haven’t won. We’ve won the World Cup many times since we’ve actually been here and won.””You have to play your best against the big teams away. In South Africa we’ve had some success, because I think it’s similar conditions, but particularly in the subcontinent and in England we have to adapt and adjust. When we haven’t done it… we haven’t got the results.”Ultimately, in the first Test, third Test and fourth Test when we had opportunities to put some good runs on or fight harder or score even a reasonable total we didn’t. When you get down to the core of that, that becomes our capability issue – and we didn’t turn up.”We definitely have capability. That is why we run Australia A – and we saw some good success from those guys in there – to try and build capability to adapt, and rewarding that ‘adaptability’ for want of a better term. We don’t want to underestimate anyone in foreign conditions, because we’ve obviously got to be able to turn up and adapt to playing in Chittagong and Dhaka, because we’ve seen other countries go there and Bangladesh are improving.”Australia have been trying to work on adapting to foreign climes ever since the changes wrought by the Argus review in 2011, and as part of that the Australia A team’s touring schedule has been ramped up. They were in England in 2012 and the following year, and this year have been in India. Howard said Australia’s Ashes pratfalls had to be addressed quickly, given the likelihood of similar conditions in New Zealand next year.”We know we’re going to get these same wickets in New Zealand come the end of the summer, so they’re going to come again,” he said. “We’re going to have to play better against them, and we’re going to have to continue to improve. It’s about getting opportunities to improve, because in between those two Tests we’ve got eight in between, and getting yourself prepared during that whole time to be able to focus on different formats and different conditions.”Our adaptability is something we genuinely acknowledge that no matter where we are in the world we’ve got to get better at, and that’s something that all countries need to deal with. The teams that adapt best away are highest in the rankings. We’re second in the world, but that’s not acceptable and we accept the criticisms that go with it.”Howard denied that Australian cricket now needed a repeat review on the scale of that conducted by Don Argus four years ago, but acknowledged that coaching, support staff and selection all needed to be reviewed, as they were following a heavy defeat against Pakistan in the UAE late last year.”I don’t think a wholesale review, but we do need to critically analyse because we need to have done some things better, we didn’t adapt well enough,” he said. “I will have to review and report on this series and work with the team to do that. Considering where we are ranked in the world in all formats , we’ve won a World Cup, I think you’d have to say that the overall system is in good shape, we play well at home but we do not play well enough away and that is where we have to adapt and improve.”Ultimately if the board decides to go for a big review that’s fine but the first bit is we review internally we have got some external guys we use to add to that and then we make decisions. Ultimately the next time we come back here is 2019 and that’s off the back of a World Cup and we will have to put things in place for that.”Howard, Lehmann, his support staff and the selection panel are all under contracts of various lengths, most concluding in either 2016 or 2017. Most were awarded extensions in the wake of Australia’s 5-0 home Ashes sweep two summers ago, but Howard must now consider whether different staff and approaches are needed to generate success on shores both familiar and foreign.

Crystal Palace had a rather busy previous summer transfer window, not only seeing numerous players come in and out of the south London club but also with Roy Hodgson ending his spell in charge and being replaced by Patrick Vieira.

With 26 Premier League games played, the Eagles have managed to rack up a mixed bag of results with six games won, 11 drawn and nine lost, putting them in 11th place in the league table with 29 points on the board.

Despite their spotty run of results, one player that has been consistently impressive for Vieira’s side this season is midfielder Conor Gallagher.

Since making the move to Selhurst Park on a loan deal from fellow Premier League side Chelsea, the 21-year-old has played more minutes than any other Palace midfielder or attacker, showing how highly rated he is by the Eagles boss.

In his 22 league appearances, the youngster has also shown what an asset he can be in front of goal by scoring a hugely impressive eight goals and providing three assists along the way, which is more goal contributions than Wilfried Zaha has managed to produce.

The Englishman, who has been described as a “star” by Noel Whelan, has also shown how useful he can be from a defensive point of view in midfield by racking up 54 tackles, 17 clearances and 18 interceptions.

In terms of his overall performances, WhoScored have him listed as Palace’s highest-rated player with an overall rating of 7.31/10, which interestingly also makes him the eighth-highest rated player in the entire Premier League this term behind the likes of Mohamed Salah, Bernardo Silva and Kevin De Bruyne.

Having been tipped to be an “important player” for the Eagles by Vieira at the start of the season, Gallagher has certainly lived up to that title with his impressive performances on the pitch in 2021/22.

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Taking all of this into account, it’s safe to say that Steve Parish pulled an absolute blinder in getting the Chelsea youngster to Selhurst Park for this campaign and would surely have the fans erupting if he then manages to secure the player on a permanent transfer once his loan deal ends at the climax of the campaign.

In other news: Forget Mateta: CPFC’s “silent assassin” with 75% duels won stole the show vs Watford – opinion

Kirstie Gordon, the 28-year-old captain of Blaze (Nottinghamshire) in English women’s domestic cricket, has committed her international future to Scotland, more than six years after her last appearance for England.”It’s always been in the back of my mind in the last couple of years to return to Scotland, and it has helped having Craig Wallace [Scotland head coach] in my ear! He’s been on the phone a few times and I feel like I’ve really connected with him and his vision for the team. If you couple that with the chance to play again with two of my best mates in Kathryn and Sarah [the Bryce sisters, her team-mates at Blaze], it feels like it’s the right moment to come home,” 28-year-old Gordon, who played 60 times for Scotland between 2012 and 2017 before switching to England, said in a Cricket Scotland statement.Left-arm spinner Gordon, born in Huntly in Scotland, made her international debut at 14 but opted to pursue a full-time career as a cricketer in the English professional system in 2018. She was subsequently selected for England and featured at the 2018 T20 World Cup as well in the one-off Test match against Australia in 2019.”I made my Scotland debut very young, and I was fortunate to go to the first global qualifiers in Thailand in 2015, so I had some awesome experiences with Scotland at that time, but I was really keen to try and take my cricketing career as far as I could,” Gordon said. “Going to Loughborough for university, the opportunities and avenues to play at a higher level really opened up from there. I eventually decided to stop my Scotland career and become a local player in order to play for Loughborough Lightning.”I guess I did that while not really knowing what the prospects were, but I then was selected for England at the World Cup in the West Indies. It was probably always on my radar that I wanted to play at the highest level, so I absolutely loved it, and I’m really grateful for those opportunities.”Craig Wallace: “The most pleasing thing about her decision is that it shows the strength of our squad, that somebody of Kirstie’s ability is wanting to come and challenge to compete for a place in the team”•ICC/Getty Images

Gordon is currently rehabilitating from a back injury but aims to recover in time for the start of the 2026 domestic season. Thereafter, she will be available for selection for future Scotland squads.”It’s exciting to hear Kirstie is now available for selection for Scotland and we are delighted to welcome her back home. She’s obviously a top-class player and an excellent person and having got to know her I’m looking forward to the opportunity to work with her,” Wallace said. “I think the most pleasing thing about her decision is that it shows the strength of our squad, that somebody of Kirstie’s ability is wanting to come and challenge to compete for a place in the team. We have created a strong group and culture on and off the pitch, and it’s fantastic that she wants to join it and be part of the journey.”Scotland are currently preparing for the T20 World Cup qualifiers, to be played in Nepal in January 2026.”The standard [of Scotland cricket] now is much higher, and there’s real competition for places, and I absolutely think it’ll be a great place to be part of,” Gordon said. “There’s also a number of young spinners pushing through and I’m keen to help them if I can, so that when I eventually leave the game, I’ve added some value to help improve Scottish cricket even more.”I’m hoping like everyone else is that the team will be successful in Nepal and qualify for the World Cup in the summer, but this decision is not about the short term – hopefully for a number of years, I can be a part of Cricket Scotland as a player as well as supporting the younger players coming through. Whatever that looks like, I’m eager to get involved.”