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It is a question that comes to haunt Pakistan every now and again. It rears its head once again during this Test. Is Abdul Razzaq really worth a place in the Test side as an allrounder?From his contribution here, over three days, tottering as it has somewhere between damaging and utterly irrelevant, the question isn’t even worth asking. As Pakistan tumbled yesterday morning, runs were the hour’s need. Razzaq proceeded then to make possibly the strangest unbeaten 16 in Test cricket. Off 92 balls, in over two hours, it was almost exactly what West Indies, not Pakistan, needed. He achieved the doubly difficult task of neither farming the strike nor scoring any runs. Singles were refused, yet the tail was still left with entire overs to face, it was inexplicable.It was not a stray incident. At Melbourne in 2004-05, he made a painful, unbeaten four from 76 balls, though it was said he was unwell. In Colombo, also against Australia two years earlier, an excruciating four, from 52 balls, allegedly set the platform from one down for a 300-plus chase. Each time, it was so at odds with the surrounding context that you could only ask why. People say he knows only two gears in his batting – first andfifth – but an experienced ex-Test player and coach also observed that “he gets locked into the two modes, unable to switch between the two.”Move on: he’s an all-rounder, so you expect some compensation with the ball. Except today, Umar Gul and Shahid Nazir might have received more support from West Indian batsmen. Nominally as a third seamer, Razzaq bowled a piddling ten overs all day, many without a purpose other than allowing us to appreciate the breadth of Brian Lara’s off-side game between cover and third man.Waqar Younis disagreed with reporters at a press conference later in the day that Razzaq wasn’t a regular bowler. “All four are regular bowlers. Razzaq isn’t in great form but his batting gives us a big edge.”Ninety-five wickets from 45 Tests at near 40.00, with one five-wicket haul are figures that would concern part-time bowlers. And a circle has more edge than his batting, if just two fifties in his last 25 Tests are anything go by.Whichever angle you look at his Test career from, it doesn’t make for pretty reading. Arguably, on only one Test has he had a genuine all-round influence – against India at Karachi recently, where seven wickets were complemented by innings of 45 and 90. Centuries, a hat-trick, occasional four-wicket hauls he has as well but they’ve been stretched out so much over an entire career it almost isn’t worth noting.Pakistan could have done with either a specialist batsman or a specialist bowler in this Test and currently Razzaq is neither. His place in the ODI side is the subject of less debate and rightly so, for he serves a purpose there but in Tests, increasingly it seems he is there on reputation and hope alone, neither of which is the right criteria. He is a big name in Pakistan cricket but as the West Indies showed with Ramnaresh Sarwan, theyare not indispensable.To be fair, Razzaq isn’t the first, nor will he be the last, to look ordinary when the mood grabs Lara. Certainly not Danish Kaneria, who if he didn’t know it already in his fourth Test against Lara, must know by now that the man can play spin. It’s not as if Kaneria bowled badly and even Lara acknowledged that. He got sharp spin and bounce on occasion and troubled almost everyone else. Sure, the good balls didn’t come consistently enough but he wasn’t as bad as four an over from 41 overs, with only three wickets, was he? Though he rarely seems to bowl a genuinely poor spell, it just isn’t happening for him right now, which can be either cause for worry or frustration. Time will tell.Sometimes though, like Waqar chose to do, you just have to applaud genius. “It isn’t the easiest pitch to bowl on. The bowlers tried their hardest but you also have to give full credit to their batsmen. Lara is a genius and you won’t find many cricketers in the history of the game like him.”

Shivnarine Chanderpaul credits a little bit of divine intervention and some brute force for his last-ball six which won West Indies the first ODI at Queen’s Park Oval.”I’m happy, I’m very, very happy. I prayed and prayed and asked God to give me the strength to hit that ball out of the ground,” he said after the nail-biter. “The plan was to fire as hard as I could.”West Indies, chasing 236, needed ten from the last two deliveries of the game. Chaminda Vaas had done extremely well for the first four balls of the 50th over but Chanderpaul drilled the fifth for a straight four and walked down the track to loft the last over midwicket.”I watched the ball until it went over, then I was able to jump up,” said Chanderpaul, who was recently named one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year. “When it dropped over the rope then I was happy to celebrate. I was looking for anything. I was looking for a slower ball, a wide ball, I was looking for whatever Vaas had up his sleeve. I didn’t have to do all that. He sent down a full toss and I just had to fire and fire hard.”The second last ball I knew I just had to hit. I was looking to get under it but I then had to hit it straight and hard. I timed that one very well.”Chanderpaul’s unbeaten 86 helped West Indies level the two-match Test series with a six-wicket win at the same venue earlier this week. He went into the first ODI with a bit of flu but was thrilled to have sealed another win.”I am still suffering a bit, but I knew with God’s help it could happen for us today. I have not recovered from the flu properly,” he said. “I was shaking out there all day and I was feeling weak. When I went to bat I was trembling and I was still struggling, but it worked out for me.”The second ODI is also at Port of Spain on April 12.

Shoaib Akhtar has protested his innocence, after it was revealed he had tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid Nandrolone, during an internal dope test carried out by the Pakistan Cricket Board.”I cannot say much at this time about what has happened but I just want to assure everyone that I am innocent of doing anything I shouldn’t have,” Shoaib told bigstarcricket.com. “The President of Pakistan has asked me not to comment in any detail at this stage and I want to respect his wishes, so I will keep my message short.”All I can say is that I have not knowingly taken any performance-enhancing drugs and would never cheat my team-mates or opponents in this way. I have always played the game fair and I give 100 percent and do not feel that I need to take drugs to help my bowling.”Shoaib, along with his team-mate, Mohammad Asif, has already been sent home from the Champions Trophy, leaving the Pakistan squad in further disarray, following the chaos that surrounded the appointment of Younis Khan as stand-in captain earlier in the month. “I am gutted to be missing the Champions Trophy,” added Shoaib,” and I will return to Pakistan to see what has happened and what needs to be done.”His pleas of innocence were backed up by a statement from his private doctor, Tauseef Razzaq, a reputed physiotherapist and sports medicine specialist, who told AFP that the positive test results probably stemmed from the medicines he had been taking to aid his recovery from injury.”Akhtar is definitely innocent and I can vouch for him,” said Tauseef. “He doesn’t know anything about medicines, and since he recently suffered ankle and knee injuries, he must have taken some medicines which are painkillers but come under the banned substances.”Dr Razzaq was hired by Shoaib in 2004, a move which attracted criticism from the PCB. He added that Shoaib had returned two negative tests, at the Champions Trophy in England two years ago and after the 2003 World Cup in South Africa.”Akhtar is so valuable a cricketer and is conscious of the fact,” said Razzaq, “so I don’t think he would take anything intentionally. Since he bowls at a venomous pace he also knew he would always be a target for a dope test.”

David Hussey, the Victoria batsman, has warned the new domestic Twenty20 competition could harm the games of players as they swing from four-day matches to the abbreviated contests. Hussey is a veteran of 14 matches after playing mostly for the English county Nottinghamshire and his message came as Cricket Australia launched its Twenty20 Big Bash, which starts in January.”All players should be wary of it,” Hussey told . “It’s not easy to transfer your game from Twenty20 into a four-day competition. They’re both very different competitions and both are very difficult.”Hussey came second behind Dominic Thornely in a big-hitting contest at the Junction Oval yesterday, with Thornely striking a ball 130 metres. Thornely, the New South Wales batsman, told the paper he expected Twenty20 specialists to become a feature of the competition.”The separation of the one-day and Test teams was a big deal, but since then selectors have picked specialist teams for not only different versions of the game but also for different grounds,” he said. “The style of player in Twenty20 may not be the style of player you would pick in a Test or even a one-day team, so you would have specialist teams for that game as well.”James Sutherland, the Cricket Australia chief executive, said the competition was aimed at attracting new audiences and was one of the most revolutionary steps in Australian domestic cricket since the introduction of a limited-overs competition in 1969-70. “New rules, fast paced, action packed – the Twenty20 Big Bash will be a fun and easy way to connect with the sport for both the uninitiated and ardent cricket fans,” he said. The Big Bash, which has each state playing two preliminary matches, starts on January 6 and the final will be held on January 21.

John Dyson, Sri Lanka’s coach, has praised his team for their growing mental resilience after they turned around a first-innings deficit to complete an emphatic victory in the opening Test against Pakistan at Faisalabad last weekend.Earlier in the year, Sri Lanka had watched in frustration as Australia showed off their legendary mental toughness by overcoming first-innings deficits in three consecutive Tests to complete a series whitewash, the first by any team in Sri Lanka.Dyson sensed that those defeats had made the team tougher. An AFP report quoted him as saying, “We have learnt from our defeats against Australia as we were in an awkward position at Faisalabad and we fought our way out of it. We had a good series against Australia and they beat us. I think we played very good cricket but they are a good enough team to fight out of awkward positions and win the match. I am pleased that the boys have shown they are able to do that too.”I think we fought back well from the position of 9 for 3 and our batsmen, led by [Thilan] Samaraweera, fought well to give us a chance to set up the rest of the match,” he said. “Sanath Jayasuriya’s innings was absolutely fantastic and is the sort of innings you look for from your champion player.”Dyson was now hopeful that the winning momentum will be continued in the final Test at Karachi which starts on Thursday. Sri Lanka are now looking for a hat-trick of series wins in Pakistan after victories on their previous tours in 1995 and 1999.A series win in Pakistan would be memorable, but Dyson was anxious for the team to prove itself outside the subcontinent. “We have identified that winning outside Sri Lanka is necessary to raise the profile of Sri Lankan cricket and we must also play well in England, Australia and South Africa.”

Sri Lanka Cricket has announced that it will appeal against the government decision last week to take over control of the game’s management. After several days of speculation, the government appointed a six-man interim committee after claims of financial mismanagement.Despite the government’s decision, announced by the sports minister Jeevan Kumaratunga on Thursday afternoon, the cricket board proceeded as scheduled with its AGM on Sunday, and elected Thilanga Sumathipala unopposed as the president for a fifth term.Other officials appointed included Ravin Wickramaratne as secretary, Nuski Mohammad as treasurer, Aravinda de Silva and Trevor Rajaratnam as the two vice-presidents, Bandula Dissanayake as assistant secretary, Lucian Merinnage as assistant treasurer, and Mohan de Silva as immediate past president.After the AGM, Aravinda de Silva criticised the government’s decision to strip the board’s elected executive committee of their powers, arguing that it will create uncertainty and hamper the development of the game in Sri Lanka.”This unfortunate incident will have a bad impact on our cricket internationally and on the morale of our team,” said de Silva. “This is the only country where the sports minister has suspended the activities of the cricket board on four occasions in the past five years. There has been so much uncertainty created as a result of this.”Meanwhile, Nuski Mohammad justified the $3.25million loss recorded in the accounts for the past year, claiming that occasional deficits were part and parcel of an international cricket association because of the variations in the revenue-generating capacity of different touring countries.”It is evident that during the years 2000 and 2002 we had deficits of $800,000 and $2.9million before tax, whereas in 2001 and 2003 Sri Lanka Cricket had a surplus of $4.4million and $2million,” he revealed. “This is normal because the administration and cricket expenses are dependent on the level of activity for each year in operation.”Sri Lanka Cricket is largely dependent on a multitude of factors, such as rotation and the number of international tours during a particular year, the TV income derived from such tours which could vary from country to country, the four-year World Cup cycle which brings in a large amount of revenue, and the income derived from other tournaments held periodically such as the Asia Cup.”He concluded: “Unlike other countries, we are servicing all the centres, districts and provinces and maintaining the infrastructure of stadiums where international matches are played. To get results in cricket you’ve got to spend.”He added that junior, under-23 and A-team tours cost a substantial amount of money without any financial returns. “One could justify the expenditure in terms of our current standing in international cricket, where we occupy second position in the one-day table and fourth position in Tests. Even Australia, which occupies top berth in both forms of the game, has reported losses to the tune of A$14 million [nearly Rs. one billion].”However, despite Sri Lanka Cricket’s AGM, the government’s new committee, headed by Jayantha Dharmadasa, will takeover control of the board on Monday, when they are expected to reveal their management mandate, which could include fundamental constitutional change of the board.Sri Lanka Cricket office-bearers: Roshan Abeysinghe (Chairman, Tournament Committee), Romesh Kaluwitharana(Chairman, Umpires Committee), Cricket Associations: Anura Weerasinghe, Tyronne de Silva; District Cricket Associations: M Manoharan, Lorence Amarasena, Controlling Clubs: Michael de Zoysa, Pradeep Peiris, Mizra Fajudeen; Affiliated Clubs: Gihan Weerasinghe, Manju Fernando.