World Series Cricket’s revered place in the history of the game and dressing room lore of its combatants is belatedly going to be backed up by official recognition of the players’ achievements in the Super Tests and One Day Cup matches.To coincide with the day-night Test to be played in Adelaide from Friday, Cricket Australia’s board of directors have approved the inclusion of WSC statistics in the official playing records of Australian participants, including Ian and Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Len Pascoe. CA is also in discussions with other member boards to do likewise for the players signed from the West Indies, England, South Africa, Pakistan and New Zealand.In addition to its enormous push towards the full professionalisation of the game, Kerry Packer’s breakaway competition also fast-tracked countless innovations during its two seasons, in 1977-78 and 1978-79. These included greatly enhanced television coverage, drop-in pitches and coloured clothing, but also night cricket, including floodlit “Super Tests” in the second season, an early forerunner of the match to be played at Adelaide Oval this week.

WSC Super Test statistics

• Barry Richards 5 matches, 554 runs, av 79.14

• Greg Chappell 14 matches, 1415 runs, av 56.60

• Ian Chappell 14 matches, 893 runs, av 35.72

• Len Pascoe 9 matches, 30 wickets, av 32.00

“I think it has got to be recognised, for the quality of cricket it was and for what it has done for cricket,” former Australia captain and WSC batsman Greg Chappell said. “The importance of it in the history of the game [means] it has got to be recognised. It’s a separate entry but it’s got to be there, it can’t be hidden away in the dark.”James Sutherland, the CA chief executive, said the recognition of WSC was well overdue. “World Series Cricket was clearly some of the most competitive, high-performing international cricket ever played,” he said. “Given the quality of the competition, players from that era regarded strong performances in WSC as career highlights.”Such was the impact that WSC had on the game, it has been unjust that records from that competition haven’t been formally recognised. So leading into this first day-night Test where we are thinking about the players who pioneered cricket under lights, we proposed adjusting our own statistical records to include performances from WSC.”Going forward, players from that era will have a standalone line-item in their career statistics recognising their efforts in WSC. Our board has now supported this proposal and we will have discussions with other cricket nations and the ICC in an effort to have them adopt the same position.”The competition, which began as Packer’s attempt to muscle into the world of cricket television rights and then bloomed into something far larger than first imagined, has been depicted in literature (The Cricket War) and on television (Kerry Packer’s War), but had previously been ignored by official records. The new category will not incorporate the matches into Test or first-class statistics, but instead let them stand alone.”I’ve heard people talk about when they’re involved in historical moments they’re not aware of it. I was very aware of it through the whole lot,” Chappell said. “It felt like it was a historical period, it was exciting, it was some of the best cricket I played, albeit on some of the worst cricket grounds i played on in that first year.”But the quality of the cricket and the quality of the commitment on both sides. Kerry had no idea what was coming when he signed up for it, he was hoping to sign the players and then go talk to the board and get an agreement, then all of a sudden he’s got to run a cricket season.”We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but all I knew was it had to happen. Cricket needed this jolt to drag it into the 20th century, and it certainly did that. I think most of what happened during that time was very positive, but it was a very exciting time to be around. The stuff that was going on around the cricket. Prior to that you’d just pick two teams, let’s put them at the MCG and that’s the promotion, whereas all this other stuff was going on around us, it was exciting.”It was an exciting era in Australia, apart from the cricket a lot was going on like the Vietnam War, the Dismissal and so on, all of a sudden people were questioning everything and we were questioning everything. We were a reflection of what was going on in society, not leading the charge. But it was just an amazing period, and we felt like we were doing something that was going to make a difference.”Barry Richards, who faced the first ball bowled under lights from Pascoe in a televised match at Waverley Park in Melbourne, described his thoughts at that moment. They will likely be mirrored when the night session of the Adelaide Test commences after dark on Friday, with the pink ball ushering in a new degree of difficulty for players but also a potentially larger audience for a more accessible game.”For a start the light wasn’t great so it was apprehension,” Richards said. “You don’t know what to expect, you go out there thinking let’s just try to get over the first 20 minutes and see what happens, because it was all quite new. the dusk period wasn’t great. Apprehension and survival were the things going through my mind – even if you do get out, make it look normal.”

The BCCI’s decision to make the ‘actual’ salaries of retained players in the IPL public – ostensibly as a part of its recent attempts to ensure transparency – has evoked mixed responses from franchises. After the IPL draft held on Tuesday, IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla had said that details of payments made to the players retained will be put up on the BCCI’s website. It is learnt that such information is likely to be available at the end of the first trading window on December 31.If the rule comes into effect, the franchises may have to disclose the actual remuneration paid to the players retained for the first time since the introduction of the retention system in 2010, which allowed teams to sign a certain number of players from their squad ahead of the auction. The earnings of the players on the retention list are not necessarily the same as the fixed price bands they are slotted in. For example, if Royal Challengers Bangalore retain Virat Kohli as their first player, a deduction of Rs 12.5 crore from their auction purse will be made, but they may pay Kohli either the same amount or more or less.The BCCI, by virtue of being a party in this tripartite agreement, is privy to the payment made, but such numbers are not easily available in the public realm, as opposed to the non-negotiable hammer-price for which a player is picked up in the auctions.Kasi Viswanathan, one of the directors of Chennai Super Kings Cricket Ltd, the company that owns the suspended franchise, Chennai Super Kings, felt franchises were loath to disclose the actual payments because of the fear of leaking business strategy. “This is a business proposition,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “Why would they want to let out trade secrets?”Viswanathan, however, said the players retained by Super Kings in 2014 – MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Dwayne Bravo – were compensated in accordance with the prescribed money brackets. Dhoni was paid Rs 12.5 crore, Raina 9.5 crore, Ashwin 7.5 crore, Jadeja 5.5 crore and Bravo Rs 4 crore. Viswanathan also said the subject of revealing such payments had never come for discussion in the past.Another franchise official felt it would create a wedge between the players, and facilitate an environment conducive for horse-trading. “Why should everyone know what price he has been retained?” he asked. “If other franchises come to know of what a player is being paid, they might try to pick holes in the contract and dissuade the player from signing a contract. You know how these things work.”It will also create a lot of unpleasantness in the team. Some foreigner maybe as good or better than a retained [Indian] player, but he might be miffed if he doesn’t get the same amount or more in the auction.” The franchise official contended that Shane Watson wasn’t picked up in the draft by either Pune or Rajkot because they knew he was paid a “huge sum” by Rajasthan Royals, and they had to match thatHowever, two other people involved with IPL teams – one of them a former franchise official – contested this argument and said franchises wouldn’t fret over salary disclosures. He also said the figures were anyway made public to a large extent when the balance sheets were submitted.”The inequalities of salaries exist anyway and are publicly clear to everyone,” the former official said. “These are only four or five cases that are coming from retention. Otherwise everyone else’s salary is crystal clear to everyone. I see no reason [why franchises would have a problem revealing the figures].”The franchise is declaring it in the books – the auditors have to see it anyway – so it doesn’t really kill them. If it is a publicly listed company they will have to open their books anyway.”The former official said the system of payments wasn’t altogether transparent. “It is not transparent to everybody else; at this point it is not. I think the BCCI couldn’t really care if you pay more or less [to the player]. As far as the BCCI is concerned it’s the purse that matters.”If you are retaining a guy that’s when the money is actually written down saying that my cost of retaining for the IPL purse is X but my cost of retention otherwise is Y,” he said.There are murmurs of an undisclosed component being paid to players that is kept off the books, but it could not be independently verified.

One of the biggest talking points of the IPL auction was how Delhi Daredevils spent their money and who they spent it on. They acquired the as yet uncapped Pawan Negi for INR 8.5 crore, the highest billing for an Indian player this year. They paid 40 times Karun Nair’s base price of INR 10 lakh; he too is yet to play international cricket but will earn more than Kevin Pietersen’s INR 3.5 crore this IPL season.Then they went after Carlos Brathwaite, who has played only 2 T20Is for West Indies and 37 T20s overall, to the tune of INR 4.2 crores, and picked up Sanju Samson for the same amount to eventually end up with as many as four wicketkeepers.Overall, Daredevils were responsible for five of the top 13 buys in the auction and are the only team to reach the maximum stipulated squad strength of 27. It could be that a number of these players may not even get a game. But Hemant Dua, the Daredevils CEO, mounted a sturdy defence of what he called a “strategic shift.””We have invested definitely in younger talent. We have bought the bigger names in the past and you know what has happened,” he told ESPNcricinfo.After much deliberation over the last year, Dua said the Daredevils franchise, which has never won the IPL, decided to do away with the star system and put youth first. This shift in thinking has had a lot to do with the success they had with Shreyas Iyer last year.”We have banked on stars in the past and it has not paid off. We banked on a guy like Shreyas Iyer, and he was proving us right by being the emerging player [of the tournament]. Gave us a lot of confidence.”We spent a lot of time analysing various players and scouting. In the past we have done everything and we haven’t gone where we should have.”Dua also said Daredevils weren’t entirely devoid of a core of senior players. “You look at seniors in a different way. We look at them differently,” he said. “I think Quinton de Kock is a senior player. He has done well for South Africa, especially in Indian conditions. JP Duminy, Zaheer Khan and Mohammed Shami are very senior players. What we have done is we now have performers.”He also justified the price paid for Negi and the other young players as decisions based on their knowledge of local conditions, and also as an investment for the future. “Even the Indian selectors have seen something in Pawan Negi to pick him in the World T20 squad. We were not the only team bidding for him. Obviously we spent what we did also because the other team had bid for him up to a point.”The youngsters we have taken, a lot of them are youngsters with IPL experience like a Samson or a Karun Nair. They know what they have to do. Like a Negi or a Rishabh Pant, they are Delhi boys. [Pawan] Suyal again is a Delhi boy. It gives us a Delhi story. They know and understand the field they play on.”Dua was unconcerned about the possibility that most of these players may be stuck warming the bench, and that with the big auction in 2018 only a handful of them would be retained. “A couple of years is far away. I don’t know what the rules will be. We don’t know what is going to happen,” he said. “I need to perform in the next few years. You think why I have picked a [Mahipal] Lomror or a Khaleel [Ahmed]? The reason is very simple: they will learn from masters like Zaheer Khan.”We might end up retaining guys like them. A Mahipal Lomror knows he will never get to play. They don’t get frustrated at 16 years. People who get frustrated are the 30-40 year olds.”There is a strong imprint of Rajasthan Royals in Daredevils’ choice of players – Samson, Nair and Chris Morris have, in fact, played for Royals in the past. Added to that were rumours of Rahul Dravid being roped in as the team’s mentor, but Dua categorically denied Dravid’s hand in their auction strategy.”If you think there is an RR influence, yes we had hired Zubin Bharucha, who has worked with the Royals in the past,” he said. “So he has brought this influence. But this is a collective influence. There was Sunil Valson, Zubin, [Sridharan] Sriram, [TA] Sekhar and [Pravin] Amre who scouted extensively for talent.”All sorts of speculation has been going on [about the appointment of Dravid as mentor]. But I can tell you that there are three or four coaches we are evaluating and they are all in the mix. We will make a decision by the end of the month.”Dua said he was satisfied with the way the auction had panned out, and was confident that the results would justify their approach. “Simple catch: youngsters are more hungry than older players. In the past, Moneyball has worked for a lot of teams. I am confident it will work for us. Not a single boy we didn’t get except Nathu Singh, for whom we went up to Rs 2 crore.”When we spent Rs 16 crore [on Yuvraj Singh] were we asked why we did it? Now, when I spend Rs 8.5 crore on Negi, again there is the same question. In the past, our thought process has been different. At the end of the day, when the boys do well on the field, people will understand [our decisions]. Everything will fall in place.”

Dasun Shanaka will be Sri Lanka’s T20I captain until the end of the forthcoming T20 World Cup. The move to replace Charith Asalanka as captain in the format had been floated by the previous selection committee under Upul Tharanga, whose term expired this month. But new chief selector Pramodya Wickramasinghe confirmed that Shanaka would lead the team as he announced the preliminary squad for the tournament.”We decided that Dasun Shanaka should be captain until the end of the World Cup, after talking to head coach Sanath Jayasuriya as well,” Wickramasinghe said on Friday. “The previous committee had chosen a list of 25 players. We spoke to Jerome Jayaratne, the head of the high performance, as well as Sanath Jayasuriya. We decided to announce that same 25 as a preliminary squad for the World Cup.””We are looking at Dasun as an allrounder. We’ll have to talk to Sanath Jayasuriya and work out what is required of him.”Shanaka had been made stand-in captain for the tri-series in Pakistan last month, after Asalanka was sent home from that tour to recover from an illness, although standard protocol is to keep unwell players within the team for a minor illness of the kind Asalanka had. Sri Lanka had lost to Zimbabwe through the course of that tournament, but managed to earn qualification for the final, in which they were comfortably defeated by Pakistan.”For now we’ve got to continue with what the previous committee was doing,” Wickramasinghe said. “They had been following a plan. If I were to come in and change a lot of things, that would not be ideal. My plan is to keep this team together for the World Cup, and then see how best we can build after that.”Although sacked as captain, a job he had been doing since the last World Cup in mid-2024, Asalanka remains in the squad. It has been his modest form in the format that had helped prompt his ouster. Asalanka had hit 156 runs at a strike rate of 122 from 12 innings this year, and he has not had a history of being an outstanding T20I batter, with his overall strike rate at 126. He remains among the new selectors plans, according to Wickramasinghe.The preliminary squad also opened the door for the return of Niroshan Dickwella, who last played for Sri Lanka back in March 2023, and that in Tests. But Wickramasinghe said the wider squad wanted for a top order batter who could keep wickets, which has seen Dickwella come back into contention.Sri Lanka preliminary World Cup squad:Dasun Shanaka (Captain), Pathum Nissanka, Kusal Mendis, Kamil Mishara, Kusal Perera, Dhananjaya de Silva, Niroshan Dickwella, Janith Liyanage, Charith Asalanka, Kamindu Mendis, Pavan Rathnayake, Sahan Arachchige, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dunith Wellalage, Milan Rathnayake, Nuwan Thushara, Eshan Malinga, Dushmantha Chameera, Pramod Madushan, Matheesha Pathirana, Dilshan Madushanka, Maheesh Theekshana, Dushan Hemantha, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth and Traveen Mathew.

	Richie Richardson: “This law seems to be made by somebody in an office somewhere who wants to be in control” © Getty Images

Former West Indies captain Richie Richardson has criticised the ICC for banning Marlon Samuels for two years and wants the relevant law to be amended. Samuels was found guilty of breaching the ICC’s Code of Conduct for “receiving money, or benefit or other reward that could bring him or the game of cricket into disrepute.”The violation, which occurred during West Indies’ tour of India in early 2007, carries a minimum two-year ban which came into effect on May 9. Richardson was part of the West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) disciplinary committee that recommended a suspended sentence on account of Samuels’ good behaviour.”We aren’t the ones who banned Marlon for two years,” Richardson told Caribbean Media Corporation. “We wouldn’t have done that and we will be issuing a statement to indicate that law needs to be revised because it is unfair.”The committee said they had also written to WICB president Julian Hunte “expressing concern about the propriety of prescribing mandatory minimum punishments” for the nature of Samuels’ offence.”I’m very disappointed I’m involved. I wish I wasn’t because it is unfair. This law seems to be made by somebody in an office somewhere who wants to be in control.”I can understand the problem we are having in the game with match-fixing and all of that. I can understand that they want to be severe. If somebody willingly and deliberately based on information, gives out [information] to a bookie or anything like that I can understand that ban.”But Marlon naively befriended this guy or this guy befriended him and I haven’t seen anything to prove that Marlon either deliberately gave out information or deliberately received funds from anyone.”Acting ICC president Dave Richardson had earlier justified the ban saying, “minimum penalties were agreed by the ICC Board, including all Full Members, and they reflect the seriousness of the issues at hand.”

Veteran midfielder Patrick Vieira will stay at Manchester City for another season after signing a one-year contract extension at Eastlands.

The 33-year-old France international joined the Citizens on an initial six-month deal from Internazionale in January.

The deal contained an option for the 2010/11 season should both parties be keen to continue the agreement and Vieira has now signed up for another year.

The former Arsenal captain made 14 appearances and scored one goal after being brought back to the Premier League by City boss Roberto Mancini.

The pair had worked together at Inter and Mancini was believed to be keen to bring an experienced head into the dressing room.

"The club is delighted to confirm that Patrick Vieira will be staying with City after taking up the option of a one-year extension to his contract," confirmed a club statement.

FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast. Subscribe FootballFanCast General Stay ahead in the world of football analysis, commentary, and fan insights with FootballFancast.

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News of Vieira's extension follows the release of three experienced first-team players.

Out-of-contract trio Martin Petrov, Benjani Mwaruwari and Sylvinho were all shown the exit door at the City of Manchester Stadium on Tuesday.Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email

England boss Fabio Capello already knows his starting XI for Saturday's World Cup opener against the United States in Rustenburg.

Capello was believed to be still considering which of his 23-man squad to play in a couple of key positions in the Group C curtain-raiser.

Which of his three goalkeepers in David James, Joe Hart or Rob Green should start the tournament as number one, who could partner John Terry in the centre of defence following the injury to Rio Ferdinand, whether to rush Gareth Barry back from injury to start in defence and who should play alongside Wayne Rooney up front were all believed to be selection issues.

However, the Italian coach has revealed he already knows the make-up of his first starting line-up, subject to nobody picking up injuries during the final few training sessions.

Asked whether he knew which goalkeeper would start against the US, Capello replied:"Yes, I've decided, I know.

"I know the 11 that will play Saturday and I hope the next two days, during the training, all the players will be fit."

Meanwhile, Capello claims he is in relaxed mood ahead of the tournament despite snapping at photographers before a training session at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Complex base on Wednesday morning.

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"I'm relaxed," he added."I can understand the pressure because in every moment we walk around you can see the security, the journalists, you can see when you move to golf, to safari, you need to police a lot of this.

"I understand that this is a really, really important moment for the country."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email