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Royal Challengers Bangalore are working on retaining Chris Gayle for the 2012 IPL even though his one-year term with them as an injury-replacement player has expired. Sidhartha Mallya, one of Bangalore’s franchise directors and the owner’s son, told ESPNcricinfo, “There are ways to keep Chris [Gayle]. We are obviously working on it and looking at every possible opportunity.”Gayle was the architect of a complete turnaround for Bangalore in 2011, arresting a four-match losing streak and setting up a record seven-match victory run that eventually led Bangalore to the final.Under current IPL rules, contracts for replacement players last only for a single year on the premise that the injured player will be available the following season. Replacement players such as Gayle must go into an auction where all the franchises would be able to bid for them. Gayle’s explosive performances with the bat – he was IPL2011’s leading run scorer, and had a strike rate of 183.13 – are expected to trigger a bidding war should he be put into an auction.Mallya, however, said the Bangalore franchise had been in touch with IPL management about the possibility of keeping Gayle, but would only know for certain after the Champions League Twenty20 in September whether they can hang on to him. The IPL, Mallya said, won’t give out the guidelines until the Champions League is up. (Sundar Raman, the IPL’s chief executive, did not respond to an email asking if the league was considering new guidelines).Gayle, in 2011, also helped Bangalore’s fans come to terms with the departures of Rahul Dravid and Ross Taylor, two favourites who were not retained by the franchise. “There was a lot of backlash but there was [also] a lot of backlash when Shah Rukh Khan didn’t keep Sourav Ganguly,” Mallya said. “Ross Taylor was a big favourite for Bangalore. The crowd loved him and we thought that would have an effect but when you have players like Chris Gayle and [AB] de Villiers, it was easy for the fans to get over that and they have taken to the new side very well.”Off the field, Mallya said he was not worried by the drop in television ratings this season because, he felt, there was naturally going to be a lag in the wake of India’s successful World Cup campaign. He also felt that shuffling the players every few years while allowing teams to retain a four-man core was a good system. “Then it doesn’t become like an English Premier League where only one or two teams will keep winning. It makes it (the IPL) even and it makes it open.”Mallya also said that he was satisfied with the amount of input franchises had in the running of the league, “We do get a voice. We are heard… After the season finished, Peter Griffiths of IMG came and spoke to us all. He took our feedback on the season. He was more than happy to listen to us about what our feelings were. Because at the end of the day they want to do what’s best for the league, best for us and best for everyone moving forward. “Bangalore were one of the first franchises to embrace social networking and reach out to fans through contests and competitions and now have more than 100,000 followers on their website and over 12,000 followers on Twitter. What they are still working out is how to get merchandising revenue on a firm footing given that such a short season makes it difficult to generate consistent sales. “I know it is difficult to sell premium jerseys because they are a lot of money,” Mallya said. “It is replica jerseys and replica stuff. It is finding a balance of what people want and I think we are still in the process of finding that balance of what people want and going forward I am sure we will be able to give people what they desire.”One potential boost for Bangalore is the Champions League, which gives them a second tournament with which to create fan interest and excitement, as well as pad the bottom line. “It will be huge not only from a financial point of view but from a prestige point of view. I would love to win it. It is the best 10 teams in the world, domestic teams in the world, competing and it would be a great honour for us.”Sidhartha Mallya was speaking as an ambassador of Kingfisher beer

Group AAustria beat Gibraltar by six runs in Port Soif, on the first day of the European Championship Division One Twenty20. Having been asked to bat, Austria put up n 141 in 19.1 overs, mainly due to handy cameos from the lower order. Gibraltar fell just short of the target, finishing on 135 for 8, despite an unbeaten knock of 66 from 60 balls by Mark Bacarese.Italy chased down 90 in a tight game against Croatia in St Peter Port, winning by one wicket. Choosing to bat, Croatia’s innings lacked momentum, as they limped to 89 despite having four wickets in hand at the end of their 20 overs. Italy were not convincing in the chase, but sneaked home on the back of a knock of 26 not out from middle-order batsman Damian Crowley. Croatia’s fast bowlers John Vujnovich and Vivek Sharma were impressive, claiming three wickets each in tidy spells.Guernsey registered a comprehensive 10-wicket win against Norway at Castel. Choosing to bowl they shot out Norway for 57, before openers Tim Ravenscroft and Ross Kneller chased down the target in 7.1 overs. James Nussbaumer was the pick of their bowlers, knocking over three top-order Norway batsmen and conceding only seven runs in a 3.2-over spell.In their second game of the day Italy turned out an improved performance, easing past Austria by seven wickets in Castel. Batting first, Austria were bowled out for 105 in 19th over, as none of their top order were able to build on double-digit starts. Peter Petricola did most of the damage with the ball, claiming 4 for 20. Steady batting from Italy in the chase saw them through without much drama.Norway recovered well from their one-sided defeat against Guernsey to beat Gibraltar by a comfortable eight-wicket margin in Port Soif. Batting first, Gibraltar managed only 77 for 8 in their 20. Legspinner Muhammad Butt produced the best figures of the game, 3 for 13, before Norway’s batsmen clicked. Driven by an innings of 35 from 20 balls by Zaheer Ashiq, they knocked off the runs 62 balls to spare.Guernsey remained unbeaten on day one, beating Croatia by three wickets with an over to spare in St Peter Port. Chasing 98, the Guernsey top order was shaky and wickets fell at regular intervals, but a steady 34 from Stuart Le Prevost and a couple of timely lower-order cameos saw them home.Group BBelgium beat France by five wickets with two balls to spare in St Clement. Choosing to bat, France’s innings was hampered as both openers were run out. There were no sizeable contributions from the rest of the order, as they folded for 114 in exactly 20 overs. In the chase, four of Belgium’s top five batsmen got into double figures, ensuring their side began with a win.Denmark eased past Israel by eight wickets in St Martin, chasing down a target of 95 with five overs to spare. Denmark’s ploy of bowling first worked, as their bowlers shared the wickets around in tidy spells to restrict Israel to 94 for 9. The chase was steered by a fluent, unbeaten 44 from opener Freddie Klokker.A solid all-round performance helped Jersey beat Germany by six wickets in St Brelade. Choosing to field, Jersey kept Germany to 99 for 7. Only middle-order batsman Imran Chaudhry was able to launch an attack, scoring 36 off 25, before being bowled by Anthony Hawkins-Kay who claimed 3 for 13. Jersey were solid in the chase. Their top order produced steady cameos, which carried them to a win in the 17th over.Belgium won a nail-biter against Denmark by one run when last man Sair Anjum was caught off the bowling of Faisal Khaliq with two to get and three balls remaining in St Clement. Having chosen to bat, Belgium were bowled out for a modest 104. Bobby Chawla was the pick of the bowlers, taking 3 for 13. Denmark got off to horrendous start, losing half their side with only 19 runs on the board. However, a lower-order resurgence saw them fight back to within touching distance of victory, but Belgium, and Khaliq, eventually had the final say to remain unbeaten after two games.Tony Carlyon starred with the ball and Dean Martin with the bat as Jersey routed Israel by eight wickets in St. Martin. Put in to bat by Jersey, Israel crawled to 87 all out from their 20 overs, with Carlyon taking 4 for 9 in four overs. He was ably backed up Anthony Hawkins-Kay, who took 3 for 16. Martin then made sure there would be no jitters chasing the small total with a brutal, unbeaten 64 from 44 balls, laced with three fours and five sixes, to see Jersey home with eight overs to spare.An allround bowling performance helped France beat Germany by 34 runs in St Brelade. Put into bat, France managed 126 for 7, with Usman Khan top scoring with 36. Germany struggled from the start, losing wickets at regular intervals, and were bundled out for 92 in 18.3 overs. Zika Ali picked up 3 for 17, while Usman chipped in with the ball as well, taking 2 for 22.

New Zealand A have greatly benefited from being part of the Emerging Players Tournament in Queensland, according to team manager Grant Bradburn. New Zealand failed to win a game in the Twenty20 format of the tournament, and won only one three-day match, but Bradburn said the experience would help the players once the home domestic season started.”Playing competitive international cricket at this time of year in those conditions is just absolute gold for their preparation leading into our summer,” Bradburn, who also coaches Northern Districts, told .”All those guys that got experience there will be that much better off for our domestic season.”The EPT also featured teams from Australia, India and South Africa. New Zealand won one of the three T20 games played and finished last on run-rate. They fared better in the three-day format, as they lost one game and drew two, finishing third in the standings. “There were different challenges for us,” Bradburn said. “It was a three-day concept with no first-innings points, so it really created some urgency in terms of thinking about where we wanted to be positioned in the game.”The whole concept gets a big plus in terms of the opportunities players were presented with,” Bradburn said. “There’s clearly opportunities at the Black Caps level and some guys have advanced their standing and taken the chance to put themselves further forward towards that recognition.”Allrounder Doug Bracewell was the standout performer for New Zealand in the T20 format with 91 runs and five wickets from three games. In the three-day format, Dean Brownlie was the second highest run-scorer of the tournament, making 413 runs from three games at an average of 103.25, with one century and two half-centuries.”His technique was impressive, he was very consistent on tour,” Bradburn said of Brownlie. “He’s well equipped to score runs at a higher level.”

India are not far away from being able to name a star-studded injured XI after their casualty list continued to mount on a dank day at Chester-le-Street. Sachin Tendulkar pulled out before play due to a foot injury, putting his tour in doubt, then Rohit Sharma suffered a finger injury first ball when fending off a delivery from Stuart Broad and it would be a surprise if he wasn’t soon on a plane home as well.It added to an already lengthy list of players who have been ruled out of the tour. Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir have all had to depart at various points over the past month as long-standing and fresh injuries disrupted their tours. India’s woes were almost capped off when MS Dhoni nearly joined the list of wounded when he mildly twisted his ankle while training in the middle of the Riverside ground on Friday afternoon. However, he escaped serious problems and the pain subsided by the morning of game.Instead he was left to reflect on the growing assortment of aliments to impact his squad and rue India’s best chance of claiming their first international victory of the tour, as rain arrived after 7.2 overs of England’s chase with the home side wobbling on 27 for 2 chasing a testing 275.In less than two months India have now lost seven frontline players and, even if most of these were injuries suffered on the job, India’s 4-0 series defeat in the Tests and then finishing second in a closely fought Twenty20 match at Old Trafford has brought the issue of injury management once again to the fore.After India lost the first Test at Lord’s, Dhoni said, “everything that could go wrong did go wrong.” It summed up India’s lack of preparation for the tour along with the BCCI’s ignorance of not treating the series as a marquee event. As at Lord’s so in Durham as Dhoni sat on the fence, refusing to take a hard stance on how the injuries could be avoided.”Whatever could go wrong went wrong,” he said once again. “But every match it has been increasing right from Bhajji [Harbhajan Singh] not bowling in the second Test then Gautam [Gambhir] not being able to bat in the second innings, then missing a Test match so all sorts of things have happened. But we are still fighting with whatever resources we have got.”Dhoni added that fielding his first choice XI had become an impossible dream as he is left with what is quickly looking like a shadow squad. “It is really difficult as you would like to always play with your best eleven but at times you don’t get that because of injuries. But this time we have gone down really hard.”Although the media and supporters would like Dhoni to be more forceful over the issue he is in a tough situation with two weeks left to make the most of the players available. However, he did suggest that increasing the size of touring squads might be an option in the future. “It would not be bad idea to travel with 18 players, something which we could look into.”

Seamer Glen Querl made an eye-catching entrance to Zimbabwean first-class cricket as a match haul of 9 for 101 from him helped set up a nine-wicket win for Matabeleland Tuskers over Southern Rocks at Masvingo Sports Club.Querl grew up in Zimbabwe and played Under-19 cricket for them before heading to England to further his career, and landing a spot on MCC’s Young Cricketers programme. From there, he was picked up by the Unicorns – a team of non-contracted professionals in the English domestic one-day competition – and become an established member of their seam attack.After a couple of speculative matches for the Mountaineers’ B side at the end of last season, he returned to Zimbabwe and won a contract with Tuskers, sharing the new ball with Keegan Meth in the first innings against Rocks. He made a telling start on his first-class debut, his 6 for 38 helping to skittle Tuskers for 148. Half-centuries from opener Terry Duffin and wicketkeeper Adam Wheater ensured a lead for Tuskers, after which Meth’s five-for set a fourth-innings target of exactly 100. Tuskers lost Brian Chari early, but Duffin and Gavin Ewing saw them home with minimum fuss against the struggling Rocks, who are yet to win a first-class match this season.Mid West Rhinos very nearly pulled of a remarkable win in their match against Mashonaland Eagles at Kwekwe Sports Club. Having conceded a first-innings lead, Rhinos seemed to be out of contention after setting Eagles a target of just 158 in the fourth innings. In a remarkable turnaround, Rhinos clawed their way back in to the match and eventually held Eagles to a tense draw, reducing them to 154 for 9 before the match came to an end.Rhinos had reached 321 in their first innings after being put in to bat, thanks mainly to the efforts of the in-form Gary Ballance, who cracked 83, and Solomon Mire’s career-best 96. Eagles captain Stuart Matsikenyeri then underpinned a strong batting effort, his 144 adding to three half-centuries from Sikandar Raza, Regis Chakabva and Peter Moor as Eagles reached 463.Ballance, who has now scored 421 runs in his last three first-class innings, carried the batting once again in the second innings, his his 128 – and Riki Wessels’ 73 – guiding Rhinos to 299 all out. Eagles stumbled through the early stages of their chase on the final evening, but appeared on course during an 81-run fifth-wicket stand between Chakabva and Moor. Once they were parted, however, panic set in and three run-outs reduced Eagles to 154 for 9 in the final over of the day.

Michael Vaughan: “More can be done to try and catch more than just the three we’ve seen in court”•Getty Images

For me, there’s still a lot of questions to be answered because they weren’t exposed by any of the cricketing members; they were exposed by the . I still think the ICC could be doing a lot more than they are doing. Unfortunately, the anti-corruption unit is a pretty toothless tiger. They can’t get into the real depth of it all because they haven’t got the resources available to them. I don’t hold it against them; they’re doing the best job they possibly can. They can’t do sting operations like the , they can’t infiltrate these betting networks. They’ve tried their best.
After this case we can say that we are doing something about it and we don’t tolerate any sort of fixing, be it spot or match-fixing, or cheating. From now on, it is a very good deterrent to players, administrators and people who watch the game and try to manipulate it. I would hate to think that I’ve played in any game that we have won because it was fixed. I would rather hope that we won because we had played better.
This is a sad day for Pakistan cricket, a sad day for the cricketers and their families. I can just imagine what the families are going through. In a society where crime pays… Where this sort of thing goes on, an impressionable young man would have got swayed by it. A message has to go that crime does not pay. I feel sad for the cricketers but I feel that you have to punish crime, so that it becomes a punishment for aspirants of the corruption of cricket that crime does not play.
The real possibility of spending time in prison is a further compelling argument for players to distance themselves from those who seek to profit illegally from the game
I hope it sends a shockwave through the game and I’m delighted with the way it’s been handled. I still believe there are more out there and more can be done to try and catch more than just the three we’ve seen in court over the last few weeks.
The sentences could have been harsher. What saddens me is that the ICC didn’t take a stronger line when they had a chance. When they found these players guilty with their own investigation earlier in the year, they were only banned for five years. I don’t understand that kind of logic. If you get caught doing anything like this you should be banned for life and the ICC should get a wake-up call themselves and be more pro-active in rooting out the problem because it won’t go away without pro-active measures. Players are susceptible when they are young to being lured into this kind of thing so [the ICC] has to get the message through when young.
Absolutely the decision is a hard one for the families of the three cricketers. Justice has been done and you’ve got to get rid of the corrupt elements from the game. The verdict will act as a great deterrent for future aspirants. These big fishes need to be taken to task.
We’ve played quite a bit of cricket against them throughout the last two or three years as well, with Test series in Australia as well as over in England and some one-day series as well. I definitely didn’t suspect anything of what’s come out over the last year or so. Whether it’s jail, whether it’s a life sentence, there’s no doubt the punishments are very severe for doing the wrong thing.

The lawyer of former Pakistan Test captain Salman Butt told a jury on Tuesday that his client did not need to be in on the fix for pre-determined no-balls to have been delivered in the Lord’s Test last year.In continuing his closing speech on the 15th morning of the alleged spot-fixing trial at Southwark Crown Court, Ali Bajwa QC suggested that teenage fast bowler Mohammad Amir had been heavily involved in the fixing and possibly Mohammad Asif was also – though not Butt.Bajwa attempted to shoot down the prosecution’s allegations that for the infamous fix of three no-balls to have occurred either a crystal ball was needed or that captain Butt had to have orchestrated the cheating, knowing which bowler would be on and when.It was “just part of Majeed’s embellishment to the (undercover) journalist to say ‘the captain is involved’,” Bajwa told the jury, in his efforts to distance his client from the fixing.The lawyer presented evidence to the jury that showed Asif had bowled the tenth over in all the first innings in the previous five Tests on the tour up to that point so Bajwa suggested that Majeed only had to do his research on the bowling order patterns.The lawyer also told of how, even if there was a bowling change, because of live betting trends, bets could be staked (or not) up until ten seconds of an actual event occurring, in this case the start of an over. He cited a comment from prosecution witness Ravi Sawani, a prominent anti-corruption officer who works for the ICC.Bajwa, as he has alluded to in previous presentations to the court, again implicated Amir strongly to the fix and suggested Asif may also have been part of it. The fixed no-balls were the first ball of the third over by Amir, the sixth ball of the tenth over by Asif and, next day after a rain curtailment, the third ball of Amir’s third full over.”Of course Majeed could say that Asif would bowl the tenth over,” Bajwa said. “Since he knows that, it is for him and Asif to arrange the no-ball. That’s for Asif to explain, not Salman Butt. If Asif was involved with Majeed with regards to that tenth over, if Butt was going to replace him Asif would only have to say ‘Please give me one more captain’.He added: “The prosecution say that there was no way the no-balls at Lord’s could have happened without Butt being in on it. We disagree…To say Salman Butt had some influence over Amir is far from the truth. It is possible that Majeed set up the no-balls directly with Amir…This isn’t some naïve and holy innocent teenager. We have seen his messages to a Pakistani number (discussing fixing).”Bajwa went on: “The prosecution doesn’t want the truth to get in the way of a jolly good theory but you have to go on evidence, not suspicion. Guess work cannot play a part in your deliberations.”Bajwa also labelled Asif’s primary excuse for bowling the no-ball “ludicrous”. Asif told the court he was pressured before the delivery because his captain had told him, “run faster f*****, have you slept”.Bajwa explained that of the 8,849 calls and text messages in the evidence bundle handed to the jury, the prosecution have only picked up on three potentially incriminating calls and two texts, which they sought to answer. Most of the those corresponded to conversations over the batting out of a maiden at The Oval Test which did not happen in the event. Bajwa argued that Butt was then just “fobbing Majeed off”.Butt and swing bowler Asif are facing charges of conspiracy to cheat, and conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments, following the Lord’s test in August last year when they allegedly conspired with agent Mazhar Majeed, Amir and other people unknown to bowl pre-planned no-balls. Butt and Asif deny the charges.The case continues.

Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited have finished the group stage with eight wins out of nine matches, after beating United Bank Limited at the Jinnah Stadium. SNGPL now have an extra day’s rest before their December 8-12 final against Peshawar, who are playing Quetta in the final round of matches. SNGPL’s new-ball pair of Asad Ali and Bilawal Bhatti took six wickets between them to bowl United Bank Limited out for 301 in their second innings and set up an eight-wicket victory. Most of the work had been done on the first two days over which SNGPL had established a 266-run first-innings lead. United Bank lost wickets steadily on the third day and were 138 for 6 before Kashif Bhatti’s 88 and Zafar Ali’s 52 helped them get past the 300 mark. It was merely enough to set SNGPL a 36-run target, which they reached in five overs.Peshawar are also on course for a win ahead of the final. They need six more wickets to beat Quetta, who finished the third day on 47 for 4 chasing 407 at the Arbab Niaz Stadium in Peshawar. Mohammad Fayyaz’s 178 ensured Peshawar got to 212 for 8 declared in their second innings, leaving Quetta with a massive target. Fayazz’s innings came off 247 balls and included 31 fours and a six. Twenty-year-old legspinner Shahzaib Ahmed took 6 for 90, giving him ten wickets in the match, but it is likely to come in a losing cause. Quetta’s top order crumbled to left-arm quick Waqar Ahmed in the 16 overs they had to face at the end of the day and it will now take a remarkable turnaround for them to get anything out of the game.Four wickets from left-arm spinner Nayyer Abbas, and unbeaten half-centuries from Saeed Anwar junior and Zain Abbas helped Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) win a low-scoring match against Lahore Ravi at the Lahore City Cricket Association Ground by ten wickets. The win was a convincing one in the end as Anwar and Zain Abbas chased down a target of 132 in just 18.4 overs without losing a wicket. Anwar hit nine fours and a six in reaching 63 not out off 56 balls while Zain Abbas had 12 fours and a six in his 69 off 57 balls. Nayyer has set up the win by helping bowl Lahore Ravi out for 175 in their second innings.Karachi Whites need five more wickets to beat Lahore Shalimar at the National Bank of Pakistan Sports Complex in Karachi despite a bizarre decision from Karachi not to enforce the follow-on and then declare four overs into their second innings. Three wickets from seamer Tabish Khan helped Karachi bowl Lahore Shalimar out for 178, giving Karachi a 373-run first-innings lead. However, their captainAkbar-ur-Rehman did not enforce the follow-on, though his bowlers had only been in the field for 68 overs. Even more strangely, he let his batsmen bat just four overs, in which they reached 21 for 1, before declaring and leaving Lahore Shalimar 395 to chase in a day and around 25 overs. Lahore Shalimar then crumbled to 78 for 5 and look on course for a seventh loss of the season.A century from Naved Yasin offered some resistance but Hyderabad are still favourites to beat Multan at the Bahawal Stadium in Bahawalpur. Yasin’s 122 and Faisal Elahi’s 52 were two of only three double-digit scores in Multan’s first innings, in which they were bowled out for 249. Left-arm spinner Imran Chandio took 5 for 76 as Multan gave Hyderabad a 251-run lead. Hyderabad enforced the follow-on and reduced Multan to 37 for 3 by the end of the day.

Sri Lanka have one important target in their minds ahead of what could be a series-decider in Bloemfontein: to put at least 250 runs on the board. After being shot out for 43 in the first ODI, they recovered admirably to post 236 in the second, but still fell short and face defeat in the five-match series sooner than they would have expected.Vice-captain Angelo Mathews said if they can just get over the five-runs-per-over mark, they could be in with a chance. “With two new balls, 250 plus is a very good score,” he said. “We need to try and put up a 250-plus score to give the bowlers a chance.”Sri Lanka lost two early wickets in the last match and scored at a run-rate that hovered around three for the first half of their innings. Still, Mathews believes they did well to avoid a collapse and reach a respectable score. “After the setback from the first one-dayer we were trying to build partnerships, so that’s why we were a bit slow at the start,” Mathews explained. “We tried to catch up but we were about 20 or 30 runs short.”The defeat has left Sri Lanka staring a fourth consecutive series loss. The fact that nine months ago this team played in the World Cup final shows how far they have fallen. Despite their troubles, Mathews said they have worked hard to remain upbeat, something that was evident at the East London airport on Sunday. The players appeared jovial, several of them cooed at Lasith Malinga’s baby and others chatted casually in small groups. Mathews said the mood in the camp has not fallen, but admitted that defeat in Bloemfontein could change that.”We’ve had a very tough past few months, but we always talk positive. We want to flush the negatives out off the team,” he said. “It is still there, in all of the players, that we want to do well all the time. We need to try and avoid the situation where we lose the series [on Tuesday].”Like many of his team-mates, Mathews cannot pin-point the exact reason for Sri Lanka’s free-fall. “We haven’t had a good series since the World Cup,” he said. “And we haven’t played good cricket since [the second Test in] Durban. We need to play positive cricket. We know it is going to be tough, the conditions will be tough and playing South Africa in South Africa will be very hard. But we also know we are a good team and we can beat any team at any given opportunity.”Some have argued that a leadership vacuum has been one of the causes for Sri Lanka’s poor showing, with none of their senior players standing out in the current series. The same also applies to the two men in charge, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Mathews.Mathews has not had the best tour, scoring a solitary half-century, which came in the third Test, and bowling to a minimum. His recovery process – from a back and quadricep injury – has been lengthy and Mathews said he has not had the time he needs to get bowling fit.”I’ve just started bowling again and it’s going to take a while for me to bowl 10 overs in a match,” he said. “I’m going to bowl in short spells, because in between games we haven’t got enough time to allow me to train myself to bowl more overs. I will bowl six or seven overs per match, maximum, to give my body a chance to cope with the pressure and the workload.”

South Africa are set to continue being flexible with their batting order against New Zealand, with the aim of sending in the batsman best suited to the state of the game. In the five-ODI series at home against Sri Lanka, South Africa used three batsmen – AB de Villiers, JP Duminy and Faf du Plessis – at No. 4 to keep their opponents guessing.”We’ve got six or seven totally different batters out there and we’d like to get the best player in the right situation for the team,” de Villiers said on the eve of the first Twenty20 in Wellington. “We’ve got a few big hitters and some guys that can knock it around. If we need a few boundaries, Albie [Morkel] might go up the order. Gary and I like to keep the guys on their toes.”On paper, the line-up has Colin Ingram at No.3 followed by de Villiers, Duminy, Justin Ontong and Morkel, but de Villiers made it clear that could change. In the ODIs against Sri Lanka, de Villiers moved the most, batting everywhere from Nos. 3 to 6. He is in a rich vein of form and said he was enjoying the ability to give everything for his team.The three-match series will be de Villiers’ first as captain in the Twenty20 format since he took over the leadership in June 2011. He expected a stern of character against New Zealand, a team ranked two places above South Africa in the Twenty20 ratings. “Tomorrow will be a high pressure game, there’s a lot of expectation around but we are just going to go out and enjoy it.”South Africa began their tour by beating Canterbury in a warm-up Twenty20 game, but their performance was not clinical. There were a few fumbles in the field – Canterbury’s top scorer Matt Henry was dropped – but de Villiers said he was pleased by the commitment his side showed.”I’m not a captain that harps on the mistakes we make, mistakes are always there. What I really liked is the presence we had in the field and the energy,” he said. “You are going to drop catches, the best in the world drop catches sometimes. I don’t mind that, we really fielded well and the guys are switched on.”Tomorrow’s match is the first of 11 that South Africa will play before the World Twenty20 in September, a tournament they are putting many resources into winning. They have introduced new players – opener Richard Levi, middle-order batsman Justin Ontong and fast bowler Marchant de Lange, who will probably sit out the first game – and are trying new strategies as well.”I’m expecting to see a lot of these faces there [at the World Twenty20],” de Villiers said. “That’s definitely part of the plan, to get these boys ready for the big tournament later in the year. We’ve got bigger goals like the World Cup but this is a huge series for us and we’d love to win it.”