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Former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan hit a team of amateur players for six when he donned a fat suit, wig and mask to take part in a village match.

The 36-year-old turned out for Goldsborough Cricket Club 2nds and successfully fooled members of opposition side Dishforth as he scored 28 runs.Goldsborough had hit the headlines in 2006 after suffering the worst ever score in the modern English game against North Yorkshire Nidderdale League rivals Dishforth.

Then they were bowled out in 12 overs for a record low of just five runs – with all ten batsmen going for a duck and the runs coming from four byes and a leg bye.

But Vaughan, who had scored 5,719 runs in test matches at an average of 41, helped his new teammates to an unlikely win in the rematch with just two balls remaining.

Having used the assumed name of Gary Watson, Vaughan then took off his disguise and revealed his true identity to shocked opposition players.

The stunt was arranged by NatWest Cricket Club, as part of its campaign to generate GDP 20m worth of additional support for the game at community level.

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By NVONews Sports Correspondent,

So finally India won the first match of England tour by beating Sussex rather comfortably. This shows that when it comes to shorter version of the game, India still has that wining touch.

India have been beaten in four test matches very badly by a resurgent England side. The Indian team that came as the top test team has been hammered and reduced to the number three after England and South Africa.

This was beyond anyone’s imagination when the team India, fresh from World Cup win and impressive West Indies tour landed in London. Many said that it would be a fight of two equals. But such expectations came a cropper when Indian side wilted under impressive cricketing show by English team.

Besides the 4-0 test whitewash Indian team failed miserably in two other matches against local sides. So the first win in England must have given immense pleasure to Indian captain Dhoni and his teammates.

Indian side, helped by impressive show by Virat Kohli, Parthiv Patel and Rohit Sharma, was able to beat a very confident looking Sussex side. The match was decided by DL method due to the fact that rains disrupted the game on several occasions. From Sussex side Machan 56 and Brown 48 runs were the top contributors with the bat.

From Indian side Virat Kohli was top scorer with 71 runs while Rohit Sharma scored 61 runs.

RP Singh was the most successful bowler from the Indian side. He scalped four important wickets and gave away only 45 runs.

But beating Sussex and taking on mighty England cricket team that has just thrashed Indian team so badly will be a different ball game altogether. England are in the best form and their whole team seems to have been woven together in some great sync.

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The England cricket team were concerned observers of the trouble which spread to Birmingham last night as they prepared for the third Test against India.

The team, led by captain Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower, are staying at a city centre hotel ahead of the five-day match which is due to begin at Edgbaston tomorrow. England are scheduled to practise at the ground this morning.

Batsman Kevin Pietersen last night reported the hotel’s doors had been locked, as disorder continued on the streets of the city.

Send your UK riot pictures to pics@mirror.co.uk

Police in Birmingham arrested around 100 people after rioters and looters rampaged, mirroring the chaotic scenes in London.

Hundreds of youths gathered in the city’s main retail area close to the Bullring shopping mall, which closed its doors early in anticipation of violence.

West Midlands Police said the arrests, for offences including violent disorder and aggravated burglary, came after shops were damaged and property stolen in the city centre and some surrounding areas.

Pietersen said in a Twitter message to former newspaper editor Piers Morgan: “they have just locked our hotel in Birmingham mate… Riots just started here.. Insane!!”

England bowler Tim Bresnan wrote: “Just seen the rioters in Birmingham fleeing down the main street followed by a load of police in the full get up. What’s going on?”

All-rounder Stuart Broad added on the social networking website: “Police vans all around Birmingham where we are right now.”

Spinner Graeme Swann added: “Goodnight England. Good luck to those surrounded by the carnage. Be safe.”

Cllr Paul Tilsley, deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, said: “We are appealing to people within the city to remain calm and allow the police and others to do their job in bringing these incidents under control.

“To help achieve this it is important that as many people as possible leave the streets. We urge all parents within the city to get in touch with any children or young people not currently at home asking them to return.”

Birmingham riots: 100 arrests as youths bring chaos to Bullring area

Bristol riots: 150 bring copycat violence as people warned to stay clear of the city centre

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Kevin Pietersen will be restedduring the England cricket team’s one-day series with India .

Pietersen, who plays all three formats of the game, will bepart of the Twenty20 squad to face India on Aug. 31 inManchester. He’ll then sit out the five-match one-day seriesthat starts Sept. 3 in Durham.

“The decision to omit Kevin Pietersen from the one-daysquad is in line with our policy of managing player workloadsand will give the opportunity to another batsman to test himselfat number four,” Geoff Miller, England cricket’s nationalselector, said in a statement.

Jos Buttler and Alex Hales were named to the Twenty20 squadfor the first time. Ben Stokes, who made his debut inyesterday’s win over Ireland, was also included.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:Bob Bensch at bbensch@bloomberg.net

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Long-term England cricket supporters can be forgiven if they are in a state of shock at the moment.

They have been faced all week with headlines like “On Top Of The World” and “Simply The Best” and don’t really know how to handle it. England cricket fans can handle defeat in their stride _ after all, they’ve been brought up on heroic failure. But give them success and they’re not sure how to react.

After decades of frustration, exasperation and despair they have finally got a team that is officially number one in the world in Test cricket.

England deserve it too, having thrashed previous world champions India 4-0 in the recent series _ three times by an innings _ and perhaps more impressively, overwhelming Australia in the last Ashes series Down Under.

It was unfortunate that India were so disappointing, apart from the heroics of Rahul Dravid. They simply looked worn out, something that England must also guard against.

Dravid had every reason to be weary. In the final Test he carried his bat for a magnificent 146 not out in six and a half hours at the crease. And if that wasn’t enough, in the follow-on he marched out to open the batting again and lasted another 55 minutes. Above and beyond the call of duty.

It was pleasing to see the English spectators give both Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar standing ovations for their efforts, recognizing two of the all-time greats in Test cricket. In fact the biggest cheer of the day would have been for Sachin had he reached his 100th hundred, but alas he fell nine short

England fans won’t get too carried away, however. Over the years they have suffered some really shambolic performances and know how easy it could be to slip back into the Dark Ages.

Apart from one epic Ashes victory in 2005, the last two decades have been pretty grim for English cricket fans and players alike. After all, England were the team that turned the dramatic batting collapse into an art form.

England reserved some of their worst displays for the World Cup. In the 2007 edition in the West Indies they were spectacularly awful, prompting such headlines as “Shambles”, “Flops” and “No Hopers” _ and those were the kinder observations.

Things got so bad the Daily Mail commented: “The end of England’s World Cup campaign finally came last night, it was not so much an elimination as a mercy killing”.

It was in that World Cup in which the England captain Andrew Flintoff, in a state of inebriation fell off a pedalo late one night and had to be rescued, which just about summed up the England performance.

Back in the 1994-95 Ashes series in Australia things were particularly desperate. England were supremely awful. One former Australian fast bowler famously referred to England’s bowlers as “pie-throwers” and admittedly they did a pretty good impersonation.

Not surprisingly the English press also showed little mercy with headlines like “Pathetic”, “Hopeless” and “Humiliating” _ you can’t beat media support.

At the end of the series one London newspaper was so upset at England’s performance it urged that the entire team be left in exile in Australia.

During a similar woeful display in the 2001/2 Ashes series in Australia, the headline in the Sydney Daily Telegraph read: “Is There Anyone In England Who Can Play Cricket?” Talk about rubbing it in.

Admittedly in that series England suffered an extraordinary number of injuries , prompting a Daily Mirror headline “Anyone for Crocket?” along with a suggestion to captain Nasser Hussein that he might do worse than ask members of the travelling Barmy Army if they fancied a game.

But it looks like those days are gone, at least for a while. The fielding for a start is in a different world from those earlier days, with brilliant catches being taken and an athleticism not witnessed before.

The batting has never been stronger, with a reliable opening pair in captain Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cooke, followed by the flair of Ian Bell and the power of Kevin Petersen.Without mentioning all the names, the batting goes down to at least number 10 which is always a morale booster.

But it is the bowling that is all important as you can’t win matches unless you can bowl the other side out twice.

They have a fine and usually accurate seam attack in Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan and Chris Tremlett and arguably the world’s best spinner in Graeme Swann.

Yiu could say they also have three genuine all-rounders in Broad, Bresnan and Swann.

The only thing they lack is a really fast bowler, but they don’t need one at the moment.

Let them savor their success. Cynics will say it won’t last and they might be right, but who cares? After decades of suffering it’s time to party… before the next batting collapse.

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Calcutta News.Net
Wednesday 24th August, 2011 (ANI)

Hours after beating India at The Oval, the England cricket team celebrated their success at a London club called Mahiki.

Players Stuart Broad, Alastair Cook, Matt Prior, James Anderson and Kevin Pietersen swapped their spikes for their dancing shoes, the Daily Mail reports.

The group, however, was forced to wait in line outside the Mayfair club before being let in by door staff.

Once inside though they partied until around 3 a.m., before going their separate ways.

Each left the club carrying a bottle of Mahiki rum, before getting into waiting taxis, with Prior and Broad opting to share. (ANI)

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England ICC World Cup cricket match on Feb 26, 2011 … “india england cricket match” cricket “icc world cup 2011″ “ctg 11″ “change the game 11″ ” …

There are moments in life when agony and ecstasy follow in such quick succession that they merge into a single bittersweet memory. For me, one such occurred 10 years ago, in the late summer of 2001. I was at Lord’s cricket ground watching the final day of the Second Test match between England and Australia, when I suddenly realised that the silver-haired Aussie sitting next to me was Alan Davidson. Alan Davidson! For those of you not of the cricketing faith, I should explain that four decades earlier he had been the most lethal swing bowler of the era and a fielder of such prehensile predatoriness that he was known to one and all as “The Claw”.

So for me, one of those cricket tragics who derives indescribable satisfaction from poring over the scorecards of great matches of the distant past, it was ecstasy to be able to engage him in conversation. The agony followed immediately upon my asking the now venerable Davidson what he thought of the Test series we were watching. “I just wish your lot would give our fellas a proper match,” he replied. This was not said with any air of smugness. The old warrior was genuinely upset that the English – against whom he had fought for so many years – were not able to push his own side hard enough to make victory seem special.

I felt abject humiliation, as if I were somehow personally connected with the failure of the England cricket team to rise to the occasion – and not just on that day (the match was wrapped up by lunch, to Davidson’s thinly disguised disdain). My second thought was that if ever our national side did reach the heights that were then occupied by the all-conquering Aussies, I would feel nothing but joy as we ground every international opposition into the dust. The bigger the victories, I thought, the bigger the buzz I would get.

How little I understood the true nature of sport. Over the past few weeks, as the England cricket team pulverised the Indian side – which came here as the officially designated top Test team – the thrill I imagined I would feel has diminished with each successively crushing victory. Of course, I was delighted that England were winning, and playing brilliantly; but, like Alan Davidson 10 years ago, my patriotic pride in national success was sharply tempered by the feeling that it had become almost too one-sided.

What makes sport most gripping to the partisan spectator is not just the prospect of winning, but the sense that loss is an ever-present possibility: thus the most joyous of all experiences to the fan is the snatching of an improbable victory from the near-certainty of defeat. That is why Ian Botham remains England’s most mythologised cricketer: in 1981, by sheer force of will and personality (or so it seemed), he seized two Test matches in which the Australians had seemed to have victory in the bag and brought about the unlikeliest of successful counter-attacks. Just how unlikely was manifested by the fact that Rodney Marsh, the Australian wicketkeeper, had at one point during the first of those memorable matches found a bookmaker to give him odds of 500-1 against an England win.

By contrast, England’s annihilating victory against the Aussies last winter, even thought it was in their own back yard, will not live in memories to anything like the same extent. It was all too obvious that, wonderfully as our men played, the opposition were badly-captained, ill-prepared, and out-of-sorts. Gratifying as it was to humiliate the once-impregnable Australians in front of their own almost grotesquely partisan supporters, it was hard not to feel, as Alan Davidson expressed it with the boot on the other foot 10 years ago, that we were being denied the ferociously competitive contest we wanted.

How much more so has that been the case over the past month or so, as the Indian Test side has above all betrayed its own billions of fanatical followers, by turning up largely unfit and then displaying tactical incompetence on the field of play. To read the many hundreds of comments by readers on the Times of India website is to realise that their pain at such abject defeat at the hands of their erstwhile colonial masters is by an order of magnitude greater than any suffering England supporters would have felt if the balance of power were reversed. Effigies of the Indian team’s selectors will soon be burning on the streets of Mumbai and Kolkata, if they are not already.

That’s enough schadenfreude, however (delicious as it is); to beat even an under-motivated Indian side with a 4-0 whitewash – and thus replace them as the highest-ranked side in the world – is an astonishing accomplishment by captain Andrew Strauss and his men: Ladbrokes had given odds of 33-1 against such an eventuality before the series started, and that had not seemed especially generous. At a time of diminishing national optimism, and above all in the month that the streets of our biggest cities have been disgraced and disfigured by arson and looting, such an assertion of sporting supremacy, however transient in its invigorating effect, acts as a tonic.

That politicians are keenly aware of the feel-good potential of national sporting endeavour was vividly demonstrated by David Cameron’s inviting himself into the England cricket team’s dressing room over the weekend, ostensibly to toast their success in private. Objectively a victory for England – in any sport – does not in itself affect the economic terms of trade: the national debt is not diminished by a pound, thereby. Yet Karl Marx identified religion as the way in which the oppressed gained solace in the grimmest of economic circumstances; in the England of the 21st century, sport is now the opium of the masses, raising their spirits above mundane everyday concerns.

Unfortunately the sport in question is almost invariably professional football, which in its players’ conduct on the field and its administrators off it is hardly an example for any young person to emulate. If the effect of the England cricket team’s comprehensive victory over the most admired of all adversaries is to persuade even a tiny proportion of our youth to switch their obsession away from football, then some social good will have resulted.

On the other hand, it would mean that there will be more tragic types for whom yellowing cricket score cards evoke more passion than any novel, more reverence than any holy text.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk

More from Dominic Lawson

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Brian Close is arguably one of the men best placed to judge where Andrew Strauss’s team stands in the pantheon of great England Test sides after knocking India off their number one perch following Saturday’s innings victory at Edgbaston.

Close, who made his Test debut in 1949 – the youngest English Test player at the age of 18 years and 149 days – was unbeaten as England captain, with a record of played seven, won six and drawn one.

The 80-year-old describes Strauss’s side as “quite useful” but is unequivocal in his answer when asked whether the current team is the best England Test side.

“No, unfortunately it isn’t,” Close told BBC Sport.

He is equally unequivocal about which is the best England side there has been: “Obviously the one I captained,” said Close, before he breaks into a cackling laugh, a cackle made even more throaty by a smoking habit.

“I only started in 1955 because I was bored on the 1955/56 tour of Pakistan.”

With the best win percentage record of any 20th-century England Test skipper – “Don’t forget, we should have won the Test we drew” – Close believes the standard of Test cricket has been spoilt by the amount of one-day cricket that is now played.

“Limited-overs cricket is entirely opposite to the first-class game,” said Close, who lost the England captaincy in 1967 in controversial circumstances after his Yorkshire side were accused of unsporting time-wasting tactics to avoid losing a County Championship match against Warwickshire.

“The limited-overs game – particularly Twenty20 and 40-over matches – reverses that. Bowlers are running up wondering where they can bowl the ball so the batsman can’t score.

“That doesn’t help bowlers improve their ability to bowl properly and think. Cricket is a thinking game.”

For Close, the key to measuring a Test side’s true greatness is the strength of its bowling attack.

“We used to play six days a week of Championship cricket,” explained Close, who retired from county cricket in 1977 but continued to play the occasional first-class game at the Scarborough Festival, where “D.B. Close’s XI” would play the touring international sides at the end of the summer.

His last first-class innings came in 1986 at the age of 55, when he finished six short of 35,000 first-class career runs.

Close added: “Fred Trueman would bowl 1,000 overs a season. They don’t bowl anything like that now.

“You only learn to bowl by bowling under the right conditions where a batsman in Test or Championship cricket has to defend his wicket and to build an innings.

“Bowlers make a Test side because you need to get the opposition out twice. The quicker you bowl your overs, the less time the batsman has to compose his thoughts for the next delivery.

“They bowl 90 overs in six hours now. We used to bowl between 125 and 130 overs in a six-hour day and we didn’t bowl overtime!”

Close won his first Test as captain in 1966 at the Oval against the West Indies when he caught Garry Sobers first ball from a John Snow delivery.

The side he led included such England greats as Geoff Boycott, Colin Cowdrey, Tom Graveney and Ray Illingworth.

“We played on uncovered wickets and therefore the top bowlers – seamers, spinners and quicks – were able to do things with the ball and batsman had to learn how to play them,” Close explained.

“I saw batsman make hundreds and never play and miss. When do you see that now? They play and miss quite regularly when it moves around.”

Arguing that limited-overs cricket encourages technical deficiencies in players – “If you make runs in limited-overs cricket, you can’t stop your hands going through the ball and you can’t have that” – Close called for a return to three-day Championship games.

“We’d get two-first class matches a week. It’s all right having the odd one-day competition but they have so many of them it means they don’t play enough first-class cricket.”

Close was speaking after having just played 18 holes of golf at the British Par Three Championship. He can play golf either left or right-handed, and is almost a scratch golfer with either hand.

He has just returned from a week’s golf in Spain with his great friend Sir Ian Botham – “I did bring him up, you know” – referring to their time together at Somerset.

Despite his age and his injury-ravaged knees – he lifts up his trouser legs to show four surgical incisions on a gnarled right left leg and three on his left leg – the former Yorkshire and Somerset captain is in sprightly shape, both in body and mind.

At school he excelled at maths – “I could do it falling over and my schoolmaster wanted me to go to Cambridge” – and reveals as a teenager he was a better footballer than cricketer, though injury and National Service ensured that he pursued a career in cricket.

Remarkably, 27 years after his Test debut, Close was chosen for three Tests in 1976 at the age of 45 against a West Indies attack that included Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Wayne Daniel.

It proves difficult to pin Close down to which was the best Test side he faced, but you sense it was that bowling whirlwind of a Windies team: “They were the nastiest bowling side.”

Close almost winces at the memory. Almost.

Listen to Jonathan Agnew, Geoff Boycott, current selector and former Test spinner Ashley Giles plus former England captain Ray Illingworth debate whether the current England Test side is their greatest ever.

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RAVI Bopara has learned many valuable lessons since he last played a Test match – including the importance of self-organisation in life and in cricket.

The 26-year-old seems certain, thanks to Jonathan Trott’s shoulder injury, to win his 11th Test cap for England against India tomorrow.

It will be two years almost to the day since his last attempt at the highest level ended in a whimper as England descended to a landslide defeat against Australia at Headingley.

He was seen then as a richly-talented batsman who had been found wanting in one of cricket’s toughest environments, at number three in the thick of an Ashes series at an early stage of his career.

“It’s amazing what you can learn in two years about yourself,” he said.

“Just when you think you’ve got it cracked, you suddenly realise you haven’t and you’ve got a lot to learn.”

He is under no illusions that Trott will surely replace him again for next week’s final Test at The Oval.

But Bopara knows, too, he can do himself, and England, a lot of good in the meantime.

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