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Four players from the Zimbabwe squad currently playing the ODI series against Afghanistan – Ryan Burl, Tarisai Musakanda, Carl Mumba and Richard Ngarava – have been picked in the Zimbabwe Academy side that will tour England this summer.

Zimbabwe Academy squad

Ryan Burl, Tinashe Kamunhukamwe, Taffy Mupariwa (wk), Tafadzwa Tsiga (wk), Tarisai Musukanda, Tylor Trenoweth, William Mashinge, Faraz Akram, Carl Mumba, Blessing Muzarabani, Tendai Nyamayaro, Mkhului Nyathi, Richard Ngarava, Kuziva Ziwira, Thamsanqa Nunu, Brandon Mavuta

The tour will be overseen by Zimbabwe Cricket’s selection convener Tatenda Taibu and coach Stuart Matsikenyeri, and Taibu hoped the challenging games on tour would help the players grow further in the future.While left-handed batsman Burl – who has an average of above 40 in both first class and List A cricket – and left-arm pacer Ngarava made their ODI debut in the first match against Afghanistan on Thursday, Carl Mumba and Tarisai Musakanda have been part of the international set-up since Sri Lanka’s tour of Zimbabwe in October 2016. Mumba is the most experienced of the four, having played two Tests and one ODI, taking 8 wickets in his short international career.ZC have not appointed a captain in the 16-member squad, and the responsibility will be shared between players during the tour to allow the selectors to gauge potential leaders. Fixtures against second XIs from Northamptonshire and Worcestershire have already been confirmed while the team is also expected to play against a few ECB Premier League representative sides.”Getting the squad down to just 16 players was an incredibly hard task and there are several players who were very unlucky not to make the cut,” Taibu said. “We have selected a strong group of players, with an excellent mix of youth and relative experience.”These 16 players have demonstrated their cricketing ability but also show potential to become great ambassadors for Zimbabwe cricket in the future. The aim of the tour, which will include some challenging matches, is to help them realise these ambitions.”

As the Big Bash League wallows in praise after another successful year, the financial challenge facing English professional cricket remains as stark as ever as it seeks to increase the capacities of its stadia with an eye to the crowd potential of Twenty20 cricket.That challenge is illustrated by Warwickshire’s financial results for 2015-16, which have just been announced.Edgbaston has become the accepted home of Twenty20 Finals Day and a once unimpressive ground has been transformed into an appealing 24,000-capacity stadium but it has not been without financial pain.Warwickshire have reported turnover of £14.3m and an operating profit of £785,761 for 2015-16. That county cricket has the potential to prosper – admittedly thanks to a hefty central contribution from international revenue – is therefore apparent.But once the paying off of debts, interest, tax and depreciation is taken into account – most of them arising from the £32 million redevelopment of Edgbaston, which was completed in 2011 – the situation is more challenging.Factor in a payment of £1.1 million to Birmingham City Council to service a loan and the situation worsens. Add depreciation charges of £1.4 million, tax and other costs and the bottom line loss is £2.26m. Quite a difference.Warwickshire’s story is far from unique. Durham needed an ECB bail-out. Yorkshire are desperate to fund the replacement of a dilapidated main stand at Headingley and already have debts of £23m.The 18 English counties are indebted to a total of £150m-plus and the ECB is sitting on offshore reserves which rose as high as £73m before falling last summer because Test series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan did not attract particularly lucrative TV deals.Those reserves are jealously guarded. The former ECB chief executive, David Collier, justified the stockpiling as a contingency should the death of the Queen, and a resulting 12 days of mourning, cause heavy financial losses.Even more disturbing for English cricket would be a shift of the balance between international and club cricket. Should that occur, the English counties would have to become more self-sufficient and only a lucrative T20 tournament can deliver that.Warwickshire had a relatively successful year in 2016 season. They won the Royal London Cup and attracted more than 80,000 spectators across five days of England’s Test victory over Pakistan.The club also achieved ticket and hospitality sell-outs for its one-day international – England versus Sri Lanka – and NatWest T20 Blast Finals Day.Off the field, Edgbaston increased its share of the West Midlands’ conference and events market by developing year-on-year sales from £2.2 million to a record £2.5 million. Revenue from commercial advertising also increased.Twenty20 cricket, however, has yet to set Birmingham alight – attendances at Birmingham Bears’ home matches in the NatWest Blast are growing but not spectacularly.That makes it no surprise that the club is strongly in favour of a move to a more marketable new T20 competition based upon the biggest grounds in the country. A 25,000-seater stadium needs to be filled not just for international cricket but for T20, too.Craig Flindall, Warwickshire’s chief operating officer, said: “The 2015-16 financial year was always forecast to be the most challenging in our 2016-2019 financial cycle, and the results are in line with our budgets set at the start of the year.”The quality and volume of our major match days remains the primary driver of revenue and profit and a significant fall in both was expected in 2016 because of the comparative demand for the Investec Test match against Pakistan.”However, the transformation in the business since 2010, when England last hosted Pakistan in a Test at Edgbaston, is reflected in the comparison in the results, with turnover and EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] in 2016 being £6.5m and £2.4m higher than 2010 respectively.”English cricket is pinning hopes over the next few years on a major financial inflow from the Champions Trophy in 2017 and from the 2019 World Cup. If 50-over cricket is conceding ground to T20, the process is slower at international level where T20 international fixtures are deliberately underplayed. The ECB are desperate that this trend persists for a few years yet.Flindall captured that mood. “We expect to see EBITDA and bottom line revenues grow significantly over the next three years as Edgbaston hosts up to 28 days of major match cricket,” he said. “We have an 11-day programme in 2017, which includes five matches in the ICC Champions Trophy, England’s first day/night Investec Test match and NatWest T20 Blast Finals Day.”Beyond the coming season, Edgbaston’s major match allocation includes a Test against India, a T20I and T20 Blast Finals Day in 2018, and an Ashes Test match and five matches in the World Cup in 2019.Financial pressures at Sky TV, however, where Premier League football viewing figures have dropped markedly, will leave the ECB nervous as they conduct negotiations for the next TV rights deal.Measured against the value of those rights is the recognition that cricket’s popularity has waned in the UK as it has disappeared from State schools and free-to-air TV and there has been a shrinking of the amateur game.Filling Edgbaston for a domestic NatWest Blast fixture will remain a challenge unless there is a major jolt to the system.At a time of flux in the broadcasting market, there are new markets to be explored, but until that flux settles, and a new TV rights deal is delivered that can sustain the future of English cricket, disquiet will remain.Warwickshire are an example of that. Most of the 18 first-class counties know the feeling.

ScorecardTom Curran in action for Surrey [file photo]•Getty Images

Tom Curran and Jack Leach combined to spark a spectacular UAE collapse at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium as England Lions took a 2-0 lead in their three-match one-day series.Curran took 5 for 16 to follow a handy 40 with the bat, and Leach ended with 3 for 7 from 6.2 overs as the UAE lost their last nine wickets for 27 inside 14 overs. They face a final match on Monday with the series settled.The home team seemed to be heading for a comfortable win to square the series at 63 for 1 after the Lions had struggled to 190 all out with 15 balls of their innings remaining.But after Lancashire’s Liam Livingstone had broken the UAE’s second-wicket stand with some occasional offspin, as Ghulam Shabber pulled him to Keaton Jennings at midwicket, Leach and his Somerset team-mate Craig Overton piled on the pressure.Leach had Shaiman Anwar caught at the third attempt by Joe Clarke, and Overton then produced an athletic piece of fielding to run out Mohammed Qasim from short fine leg.Then Curran, who had taken the first wicket in a lively four-over opening spell, returned for the 23rd over, and proved irresistible in a burst of 4 for 9 in four overs.”You have some days in your career that stand out and I’ll remember this: taking five wickets for the England Lions,” said the 21-year-old, who is relishing his return to Dubai with the Lions after starring in their T20 victory over Pakistan A last December.”They had a bit of a partnership but we stayed calm, and when I came back for a second spell I had a chat with the skipper and we said let’s go for it.That skipper, Keaton Jennings, will now fly to India to join the senior England squad ahead of the fourth Test in Mumbai.Leach took the key wicket of Rohan Mustafa, the UAE opener who was seventh out for 45, caught off a top-edged sweep.The Lions made five changes from the team who won the first match of the series on Thursday, with Leach, James Fuller, Nick Gubbins and Tom Helm making their debuts.But Jennings lost his second toss as captain, and after losing Gubbins to a top-edged pull in the fourth over the captain fell for 21 in the 11th, edging a catch to the UAE wicketkeeper, the Lions were 48 for 2.Tom Alsop, the Hampshire youngster making his second Lions appearance, responded positively by hitting seven boundaries in an innings of 44 from 46 balls.But wickets continued to fall steadily, with Clarke, Livingstone and Ben Foakes all out cheaply to leave the Lions tottering at 90 for 6.Then Fuller joined Curran in a sensible seventh-wicket stand of 53 in 13 overs that was to prove crucial later on. After Fuller went for 35 from 49 balls, Overton joined Curran to hit 23 from 35 balls including the only two sixes of the innings, before the innings quickly subsided.”I want to make the most of the time out here to work really hard on my batting,” added Curran. “I’ve been given the responsibility of batting at No. 7 and I really enjoyed it. I was just disappointed to get out when I was ready to pull the trigger.”Kevin Shine, the ECB’s fast-bowling coach who is part of the Lions staff in Dubai, praised Curran for “bowling with pace, skill and aggression to turn the game”.Shine also highlighted “an assured debut” for Helm, the Middlesex quick, who was fast-tracked into the Lions team from the Pace Programme having impressed in the nets in Dubai.

With less than a week to go before the start of India’s first Test against England, the BCCI and ECB have not signed the Memorandum of Understanding, a standard agreement that details various aspects of bilateral series.The main reason for the delay in signing the MoU is that the BCCI is awaiting directions from the Lodha Committee. A big part of the MoU says the BCCI will bear all the costs pertaining to the England team during the tour. Normally the BCCI would directly approve such expenses, but because of the order passed by the Supreme Court on October 21, the board has to get approval from the Lodha Committee, which has been appointed to oversee all financial transactions of the BCCI.In its response to the BCCI, however, the Lodha Committee said forming cricket policy was not part of its remit, but that directions regarding payments could only be given after the BCCI provided more information about the transactions. The committee has given the BCCI five days to respond with details of various contracts the board said it needed to finalise in the next year to avoid disruption of daily business.But before proceeding with the matter of existing and future BCCI contracts, including the MoU with the ECB, the Lodha Committee reminded the board that an unequivocal undertaking was required from the president Anurag Thakur that the BCCI would implement the court order of October 21.  The court had asked Thakur and board secretary Ajay Shirke to file affidavits in two weeks from October 21 and appear before the committee. As of November 3, Thakur had not given such an undertaking and he and Shirke had not met the committee either.BCCI and ECB officials were not available for comment about whether an unsigned MoU could jeopardise England’s tour of India, but an official from another board said an international tour could still proceed without it. An MoU is only used in case of a dispute between the two boards involved in a bilateral series.In an email on Thursday to BCCI secretary Ajay Shirke, the Lodha Committee asked the board to obey the three orders the Supreme Court passed on July 18, October 7 and 21. “To avoid any hindrance to the cricketing calendar and to ensure the continued enjoyment of the sport by its aficionados, the BCCI would be well advised to comply with the directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in its orders dated 18th July 2016, 7th October 2016 and 21st October 2016,” the committee e-mail said.On October 21, the Supreme Court had directed the BCCI not to distribute funds to state associations until they agreed to comply with the Lodha Committee’s recommendations, which the court had approved in an order on July 18. The court also asked Shirke and Thakur to meet the Lodha Committee by November 3 and placed several restrictions on the board’s ability to enter into contracts.The committee had already sent Thakur an email reminder earlier this week and it told Shirke on Thursday: “The requirement for such an undertaking is not a mere formality. In the absence of the undertaking, the Committee finds it difficult to implement the order of the Supreme Court by issuing necessary directions to BCCI.”On October 28, Shirke had sent an email to the committee, asking for intervention on a “priority basis” because failing to do so would “severely prejudice” cricket operations. Shirke told the committee that decisions concerning a lot of important contracts had been left pending.Among the contracts mentioned was the postponed IPL tender, finalising vendors for the IPL and international and domestic cricket, and title and shirt sponsorships for the India men’s team. Shirke also said the BCCI needed clarity regarding the “threshold value”, above which the contracts needed to go through the Lodha Committee as mandated by the Supreme Court order. The court also asked the committee to appoint an independent auditor to oversee the BCCI’s transactions.Shirke said that since the court had appointed the Committee as the “custodian of revenue and finances” of the BCCI, it should act immediately. The board, Shirke said, feared that the “uncertainty” might have already “devalued” the size of the bids expected for the IPL television and digital rights.In its response today, the committee told Shirke that finalising vendors was not its job. “Please note that neither identification nor appointment of vendors or contractors is the task or function of the Committee. The Committee is only required to fix a threshold value and approving awards of contracts above such threshold value.”In order to “fix” the threshold value and appoint an auditor, the committee asked Shirke to provide details of the contracts such as the value, term, expiry date of existing contract, the nature of the tender process and so on. “It is only on examining the above that the Committee would be able to fix a threshold value and also assess the nature of work involved for appointing the independent auditor and formulating his terms of engagement,” the committee said.In another email, Shirke told the committee the BCCI had to give a commitment to the ECB regarding incurring expenses for England’s tour of India. He asked the committee to set the terms and conditions and the “manner in which” the agreement should be executed. Shirke had also written to the five state associations hosting the England Tests, asking if they had enough funds to stage the matches.The Committee, however, said that framing the MoU was not part of the court’s order. “The proposed MoU between BCCI and ECB concerns bilateral cricketing policy, the formulation of which is not a part of the mandate of the Committee. As far as payments are concerned, if they are to be made directly by the BCCI, no directions can be given by this Committee until relevant details are furnished by the BCCI.”It is understood that Shirke sent the committee the unsigned MoU via email late on November 3 evening, but despite being asked for details the email did not contain what the Lodha Committee wanted.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details4:56

Agarkar: Kohli relied on very low-risk shots

Virat Kohli scored his second Test double-hundred and Ajinkya Rahane made 188 before India declared their first innings at 557 for 5 and left New Zealand a tricky nine overs to bat at the end of day two. They managed to survive this period unscathed, as Tom Latham and an aggressive Martin Guptill took them to 28 for 0 at stumps.Kohli and Rahane added 365, India’s highest partnership for the fourth wicket, and subjected New Zealand to three wicketless sessions before Jeetan Patel finally broke through in the first over after tea. Going on the back foot to a quickish length ball, Kohli was lbw trying to work the ball into the leg side.Rahane played his shots as India looked to score quick runs before declaring, hitting Patel and Mitchell Santner for three fours in five overs, before falling to another aggressive shot when he was within sight of a maiden double-ton, nicking to the wicketkeeper while trying to drive Trent Boult away from his body.Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja – promoted ahead of R Ashwin and Wriddhiman Saha – then hustled 53 in 9.5 overs before Kohli called them in. In what turned out to be the penultimate over of their innings, umpire Bruce Oxenford penalised Jadeja for running on the danger area of the pitch, awarding New Zealand five penalty runs. Jadeja had already received a caution and a warning.The pitch, fairly benign on day one, continued to belie its appearance, the multitude of cracks on its surface causing the batsmen only the occasional bit of discomfort, usually when the ball kept low. Kohli nearly played on when he went back to defend one such ball from Patel, early in the day: it hit the toe-end of his bat, then the ground, and then bounced over the stumps. Later in the morning session, Rahane jammed his bat down hurriedly to keep out another ankle-high Patel shooter. Otherwise, there was little in either the bowling or the pitch to worry Kohli and Rahane.Kohli, who scored 200 against West Indies in July, in Antigua, became the first Indian to make two double-hundreds as captain. He also became the first Indian since Sachin Tendulkar in 2010 to score two double-tons in a year. He carried on batting with the same understated authority he had displayed on day one, flowing smoothly along and giving New Zealand no glimpse of a way past him. He hit ten of his 20 fours on day two, including a couple of gorgeous drives down the ground – one, shortly after lunch, off James Neesham, bisected the tiniest of gaps between short midwicket and mid-on – and even a delicate reverse-dab off Santner that sped to the boundary to the left of backward point.There was a sense of inevitability about Kohli’s runs. Three times this series, he has been out to ambitious shots, and in this innings stayed well within self-imposed limits of strokeplay. He only hit one boundary across the line of a full ball, when he was already past 150 and took the liberty of muscling Santner into the gap between deep square leg and long-on. He almost never lofted the ball.That option was left to Rahane, who used his feet superbly to the spinners, either to loft Santner inside-out or to give himself a bit of swinging room and flat-bat Patel back over his head. He played the chip over the covers even against the seamers, bringing up his 150 with that shot, off Neesham.Virat Kohli scored his second double-hundred•BCCI

These were the shots of a batsman enjoying himself after a hard struggle to his century. In the morning session, New Zealand’s fast bowlers, as they had done through day one, peppered Rahane with the short ball, looking to exploit the uncertain pace and bounce of the Holkar Stadium pitch to plant indecision in the batsman’s head.Rahane ducked under the first one he faced in the morning, against Henry, and pulled the next one, at the start of his next over, to the square-leg boundary, closing his eyes momentarily but rolling his wrists nicely over the head-high ball to keep it down. Then, two balls later, Henry went around the wicket. Rahane swayed away to account for the angle across him, but it jagged back in off the pitch, followed him, and hit the side of his helmet, just over his ear.The bowler and New Zealand’s fielders came to Rahane to check on his health, but that didn’t mean the bouncer barrage would end. Henry bowled another the very next ball, and Rahane top-edged a hook towards fine leg.Given the discomfort this tactic was causing Rahane, Williamson delayed the reintroduction of the left-arm spinner Santner, who had been ready to come on at the start of the 100th over. Henry bowled another instead – the fifth of his morning spell – and then gave way to Boult.By then, though, Rahane had moved to 99, and got to his hundred off Boult’s first ball, a short one down the leg side that he paddled down to fine leg. This was perhaps the least fluent of his eight Test hundreds, but perhaps also one of the most satisfying, given how much discomfort he had overcome.

Less will be more under the structures currently being proposed for the future of international cricket, which would for the first time place limits on how many matches and series could be scheduled by any one nation.Speaking at the Cricket Australia AGM, which underlined the game’s financial reliance on bilateral tours, the chief executive James Sutherland outlined plans currently under discussion for league structures in ODIs and Twenty20 matches, plus a mooted “conference” format for Test matches.These structures, Sutherland said, would mean that the game’s financial powerhouses like Australia, India and England would play less international cricket than they presently do, while raising the volume of cricket played by other nations. This would be possible due to the increased context and meaning given to each match by league formats that gave players, fans, broadcasters and sponsors a clear idea why each match was being played.”If you bring in some structure around international cricket and you create formats that are a league type arrangement you put limits around that, and any other cricket that’s played outside of that is even more meaningless than other cricket that is played at the moment,” Sutherland said. “From that perspective it would put some really significant structure and limits around the amount of cricket that’s played.”With one day cricket and Twenty20 cricket we are contemplating a 13-team league where everyone plays each other, home and away over a three-match series over the course of a three-year period. That means you play six one day matches away, six at home every year. There doesn’t seem any point playing any more than that because those are the matches that count.”Similar structure for T20 cricket and I think that’s something that’ll be really beneficial for world cricket. Not just in terms of putting those limits in place, but also creating third party interest, making sure there’s real relevance and context to every single match.”The limited-overs league structures would mean each nation in the 13-team competition would play each other in one series, either home or away, over three years leading into each World Cup year, with the home team for that series then playing away in the next cycle to follow. Similarly, the conference structure for Tests would grow out of an ICC event-style draw, with seeded teams and others drawn to play them. A 12-team structure has the added bonus of bringing the likes of Ireland or Afghanistan into the fold.”I think things need to change absolutely and we certainly believe that additional structure moving towards a Test Championship of one form or another, probably on some sort of a two-year cycle would be a real positive,” Sutherland said. “We’re betwixt and between a little bit original suggestions about two divisions, then looking at perhaps a system where people play against each other and we used ranking points to decide who the champions are.”But the one that’s floating around at the moment is two conferences and perhaps matches being played inside of conferences with a little bit of cross-conference activity as well inside that two-year period and then having a champion team in each conference play off in a two-year cycle. I think there’s some real merit in that, I don’t think it significantly undermines some of the traditional series that are played and all in all very positive where every match would count, every series would count and I think it’d be very keenly sought after, the right to play in that final.James Sutherland: “I think things need to change absolutely and we certainly believe that additional structure moving towards a Test Championship … would be a real positive”•Getty Images

“It also really exposes performances as well and the opportunity to bring a couple of countries into Test cricket would be a real positive as well.”Sutherland admitted that in the current environment, it was impossible to apply equal priority to every international series, as shown by the recent tour of South Africa or the near convergence next year of the Test tour to India with the T20 home series against Sri Lanka. The IPL, of course, blocks out more than a month of the year for most nations.”We make decisions from time to time in the best interests of a player, to make sure they’re available at the times that we see as the most important for them to be available,” he said. “There’s absolutely no doubt that at times we have to prioritise certain events, series, matches ahead of others.”Certainly for the bowlers it’s just not possible for them to play all of the time. If you include IPL in there as well there are prioritisation discussions that need to be held all the time. they can be long-term planning discussions but they also need to be short-term planning according to how the player is dealing with injuries, niggles and also mental health.”However Sutherland pushed the vital importance of making sure international cricket remained the top priority for the game ahead of domestic Twenty20, a point he has pressed home at successive ICC chief executives committee meetings in recent times. The example he can point to is the Big Bash League, devised to run alongside the international season and succeed without Australia’s best Test players.”I’m not sure my point of view is seen to be agreed to by everyone in international cricket, but our perspective here is that IPL is unique and then there’s all the other domestic T20 competitions around the world. As far as I’m concerned international cricket comes first, and is the absolute priority. We’ve been true to that word in the way we’ve scheduled the BBL. People said the BBL couldn’t be a success without Australian players playing in it.”The facts of the matter are that it’s a great success, and it’s scheduled during the middle peak time of our Australian summer. International cricket needs to be the priority and you cannot schedule international cricket around domestic T20 competitions as far as I’m concerned, and that will be one of the things we need to work through. Some countries may try to massage the program in such a way that they can do that, that’s up to them. But first and foremost we need to be fully committed to international cricket for it to be sustainable.”The proposed changes to the international game are due to be discussed in further detail at the next round of ICC meetings in February, and Sutherland said the hope was for a fully rejuvenated model to kick in beyond the 2019 World Cup in England.”I would say certainly within five years,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a lead time because of preexisting contracts and things like that, but certainly the planning is very heavily focused on a line in the sand around the World Cup in 2019. We see that post-that there’s an opportunity to roll into a new structure for the three formats.”

ScorecardDavid Miller scored his third score over fifty in six innings in this tournament•Getty Images

A solid all-round showing from Theunis de Bruyn helped South Africa A clinch third place in the A-team quadrangular series in Australia without much bother. They bowled out Australia’s National Performance Squad (NPS), which had chosen to bat, for 207, before cruising to their target with 11.4 overs and nine wickets to spare. De Bruyn first took career-best figures of 2 for 37 with his part-time medium pace, before batting through the chase for 90 off 119 balls.David Miller also fired for South Africa A, hitting his third score over fifty in the tournament to power the team home in an unbroken stand of 135 with de Bruyn.But most of the damage to the NPS was done in the first innings, when only three of their batsmen got into double-digits. Things looked bleak for them when they lost both openers cheaply and also lost Sam Heazlett on 35 to injury, but respectability was added to the total courtesy fifties from middle-order batsmen Sam Harper and Matthew Short. For 19-year-old Harper the knock of 60 was a second successive fifty, while for 20-year-old Short his 70 was his maiden List-A half-century. There was no support offered from the lower order, though, and the team was bowled out in 48.3 overs.Alongside de Bruyn, fast bowlers Dwaine Pretorius and Andile Phehlukwayo also picked up two wickets apiece, but Pretorius was the most economical of the lot.