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Shane Bond’s potential international comeback remains on track following New Zealand Cricket’s (NZC) decision that former ICL players will be eligible for national selection. Players including Bond, Daryl Tuffey and Lou Vincent need only prove they have severed all ties with the unofficial ICL and they will be immediately available for New Zealand selection.The NZC announcement came after a board meeting on Thursday and opens the door for the players to be selected for New Zealand’s next international engagement, a tour of Sri Lanka in August. Bond and Tuffey, both of whom performed strongly in the recent New Zealand domestic season, would be the most likely candidates for a recall.”We understand both of these players wish to return to international cricket, which is great news for cricket in New Zealand,” Justin Vaughan, the NZC chief executive, said. However, he said the board’s decision was “about policy rather than any player’s particular circumstance”.”Today’s decision is by no means a guarantee of selection for any player,” Vaughan said. “All former ICL players would need to earn their way back into the national side on merit.”There’s no question that New Zealand suffered heavily from the ICL – our national side lost a significant number of top players. New Zealand wants to have a top-ranked national team and this is very hard when you are unable to select from all your best players.”Bond’s manager Leanne McGoldrick said there was no question Bond wanted to play for New Zealand once more. “We are still working through the contractual situation with ICL. Shane’s is more complex,” McGoldrick told the .”As soon as he can make an announcement Shane will. It is his absolute desire to play international cricket again and is doing everything he can to do that. He is training incredibly hard.”Tuffey has reportedly already severed ties with the ICL, with Bond and Vincent likely to follow suit. Other New Zealand players who took part in the most recent ICL tournament included Hamish Marshall, Andre Adams, Chris Harris and the retired Craig McMillan and Nathan Astle.

Mahela Jayawardene has said Sri Lanka’s home series against Pakistan from Saturday will be a bigger challenge for him after giving up the team’s captaincy early this year because he now wants to push himself “to the limit” as a batsman. Jayawardene has discussed his new role with Kumar Sangakkara, his successor, and will focus on holding Sri Lanka’s batting together and improve its disappointing home record against Pakistan.The former Sri Lanka captain admitted that leading a subcontinent team, with all the passion involved, was not an easy job and hoped to emulate the manner in which Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid have managed the transition after giving up the captain’s role to contribute better as batsmen for India.”I always knew that everything [captaincy] was going to be over some day,” Jayawardene told Cricinfo. “For me, cricket is all about enjoyment and trying to do my best. I am sure I still have that hunger to do well and be a better cricketer than I am right now. In that perspective, it is a much bigger challenge for me, to push myself to the limit.”Jayawardene’s last Test as captain was also against Pakistan in March but that series was cut short by the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore. This time, he said, he was confident of easing into his new role for the home series, which starts on July 4. “When I captained the side, I made sure I had two different roles, as a captain and as a batsman. Now the captaincy has gone to somebody else but the batting role is going to be the same. My focus, my concentration, everything will be on that. So that’s not going to change because I am not the captain any more.”Jayawardene, who captained Sri Lanka from 2006, said Sangakkara, a close friend, understands and agrees with his views on how he should be contributing to the team. “Sanga just asked me to be the batsman that I am and probably be better than what I am right now. That’s what I want to be as well, and Sanga understands that. I enjoyed working with him when he was my deputy and now it is my duty to try and help him out in any way that I can to make his job easier.”We have already had lots of discussions about combinations, compositions and different things like tactics. I just give him different inputs and then it’s easier for him to play around with those. As for my role in the team, it is important for me to be the middle order batsman who will hold things together, and I just want to continue to do that.”Jayawardene has notched up four centuries, including a double against Pakistan in Karachi in February, in nine Tests over the last 12 months, scoring 773 runs at 70.27. His one-day batting dipped, however, during the same period and he scored just four fifties in 24 matches at 21.72, including three consecutive ducks against Zimbabwe and another against Bangladesh.On reflection, he said, he empathises with Tendulkar and Dravid who had also decided that captaincy was getting in the way of their batting. “It’s not an easy job, especially when you are captaining a sub-continent team. There are a lot of responsibilities, a lot of hope and joy because everyone is cricket-crazy. That’s something you get into when you get to be the captain. So you try and do your best and then leave it and go back and concentrate on your own performance and try and help the team in a different way. I have seen the way Sachin and Rahul have gone about things and it has been amazing. Hopefully, like them, I can do the job.”Jayawardene also revealed that he had a “light discussion” with Dravid on the issue when they met during the IPL in South Africa. “Rahul called me ‘skip’ and I said I am no longer that. We had a quiet joke about it during the IPL, [talking] about the captaincy and how much of a difference it makes when you leave it and come back into the team as a batsman. It’s all about prioritising your responsibilities; then the job becomes much easier.”It also helped, he said, that Sangakkara had emerged as a “capable” leader. “I knew I was leaving it to somebody capable of handling that pressure and of becoming a great captain for our country. I had no doubt in my mind about that.”The next step, Jayawardene said, was to work with Sangakkara and rectify their home record against the current visitors. Pakistan possess an overwhelming record in Sri Lanka, having lost just one Test to the hosts in 12 meetings since 1986. In fact, Pakistan have claimed three series wins out of five in Sri Lanka, including a 1-0 win in their previous meeting in 2006. This time, they are scheduled to play three Tests, five ODIs and a Twenty20 international.”We have always been very competitive, Pakistan and Sri Lanka,” Jayawardene said. “But our record against Pakistan is not that great. That’s something we need to improve on and that is added motivation for us. We need to make sure that we get it right because not many teams have beaten us at home but Pakistan have done that quite a bit. So that’s something we want to rectify.”Muthiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis will play a key role in the series, Jayawardene felt, and they will be helped by Lasith Maliga and a clutch of new fast bowlers. But he admitted that his own role will be under the scanner, too. “For me, from the first day that I played for my country, there has been pressure to do well. That’s always going to be there.”

Netherlands captain, Peter Borren, is not expecting an easy task when his weakened side takes on Canada in the opening game of their ICC Intercontinental Cup campaign in Rotterdam on Wednesday.The match is Netherlands’ first in the competition since they finished fifth in the previous tournament and they haven’t played any cricket since August 2008, when they hosted Kenya. Rustiness, however, isn’t Netherlands’ biggest problem for they are without experienced players such as Ryan ten Doeschate, Alex Kervezee (on county duty with Essex and Worcestershire respectively), Mudassar Bukhari and Bas Zuiderent.”It won’t be an easy task as we will be without our experienced batsmen like Doeschate, Schiferli, Kervezee, Bukhari and Zuiderent,” Borren said. “But we have tried to bolster our batting as much as possible by strengthening the middle order.”It will all be about seeing through the new ball and the batsmen can do it by showing application and discipline. Of course, it is easier said than done considering the batsmen haven’t played any four-day cricket in nearly 12 months but we have to switch to the four-day mode and this is where it all starts.”Borren was confident that Netherlands’ batsmen would be able to counter Canada’s in-form bowlers. “Canada is a good bowling side with bowlers like Henry Osinde, Umar Bhatti and Khurram Chohan. We have seen a lot of the Canada players in the limited overs version and have the highest respect for them. We know what they are capable of which makes it easier for us to put together a game plan. But making a strategy and implementing it are two different things.”Canada go into the contest having lost an Intercontinental Cup fixture in Scotland by 29 runs, a match in which their bowlers impressed but their batsmen struggled, managing totals of only 142 and 213. They fared better in the one-day series, though, which was drawn 1-1, with Sandeep Jyoti hitting a match-winning 117 in the first game and Sunil Dhaniram making 92 in the second.The tour of Netherlands started poorly with a loss in the first ODI on Saturday and a washout on Sunday but Canada’s captain Umar Bhatti remained positive. “We can take a lot of heart and encouragement from our batting performance in the last three ODIs. I’m confident the batsmen will carry that form into the four-day version and help us end the European tour on a winning note,” Bhatti said.”I think the wicket will help the batsmen more than the bowlers which should give more confidence to the batsmen. In a longer version of the game, the batsmen have to put big totals on the board and the bowlers have to take wickets. It’s as simple as that. Our bowling has been up to the mark and it is now up to the batsmen to make sure we have enough runs on the board.”Netherlands: Peter Borren (capt), Mark Jonkman, Pieter Seelar, Wesley Barresi, Tom de Grooth, Bart Schilperord, Nick Statham, Eric Szwarczynski, Berend Westdijk, Daan van Bunge, Jeroen Brand.Canada: Umar Bhatti (capt), Zameer Zahir, Havir Baidwan, Geoff Barnett, Trevin Bastiampillai, Sandeep Jvoti, Sunil Dhaniram, Shaheeb Keshvani, Khurram Chauhan, Ashif Mulla, Henry Osinde, Qaiser Ali, Rizwan Cheema, Abdool Samad.

The Indian board will work with the ICC to come up with a mutually acceptable solution on the issue of adopting new anti-doping norms, Shashank Manohar, the BCCI president, has said.Manohar said the BCCI will not adopt a position of confrontation over the issue but added the Indian players’ concerns have been conveyed to the ICC. He said the Indian board will formulate its position on the issue during a meeting of its working committee in Mumbai on Sunday.”We hope to work out the best possible solution that’s mutually acceptable,” Manohar told Cricinfo. “There is absolutely no confrontation between the BCCI and ICC on the issue and if anyone is trying to convey such a picture, that is wrong. Our players have concerns about the security and privacy aspects regarding certain clauses in the WADA code. We have conveyed these concerns to the ICC and we will sit with them to work out a solution.”According to the ICC, an “overwhelming majority” of players in the testing pool from all countries have agreed to submit to the code, except India.The 11 Indian players in the ICC’s international testing pool, and other international players, are not against the concept of anti-dope testing and are in agreement with the larger aim of the WADA code, which is to ensure a clean sport. However, they are concerned about the ‘wherabouts’ clause in the amended code, which requires all players in the pool to submit details in advance of their whereabouts for the next three months, even during off-season, to facilitate effective out-of-competition testing.Yuvraj Singh, one of the cricketers who is required to furnish his whereabouts in advance, expressed reservations. “Our concern is that we play 9-10 months of continuous cricket and when we are not playing we should be given that free time,” he said. “We have a meeting tomorrow with the ICC and depending on that we will take a decision.”Apart from privacy and practicality issues, the Indian players in the list, some of whom like MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar have received security threats from terrorist organisations before, have raised questions about the confidentiality and security risks involved in providing whereabouts information in advance. These concerns have been raised earlier by the Indian players before the ICC.The Indian players have missed the July 31 deadline for submitting the information and are awaiting a meeting between the ICC and BCCI on Sunday to get their concerns addressed on the norms, which prescribe severe penalties in case of default. Some Indian players in the testing pool are also expected to attend the meeting.Manohar, however, refused to comment on whether the BCCI would let its players be penalised by the ICC, under the WADA code, for missing the first information filing deadline. Three such defaults can lead to a ban from the sport for up to two years. “This is an issue that has to be decided by the BCCI’s working committee members on Sunday,” Manohar said.The Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA), of which India is not a member, has warned that if the ICC does not penalise India’s players for failing to submit to the anti-doping norms in time, it would ensure that players from all other countries would be relieved from similar obligations.

Opening batsman Scott Newman has extended his one-month loan deal with Nottinghamshire from Surrey and will now play for the county until the end of the 2009 Championship season.”The deal is essentially an extended trial for Scott and we’ll monitor his performances between now and the end of the season,” Nottinghamshire director of cricket Mick Newell said. “I think that a number of counties will be interested in securing his services next season but we were keen to take the opportunity to have a closer look.”Newman began his stint with Nottinghamshire by scoring 87 against Somerset in July and will be in the XI to face Hampshire at Trent Bridge this week.

ScorecardThis is Northamptonshire’s game in hand on their two closest promotion rivals – Gloucestershire and Derbyshire – and after an opening day of hard toil they reaped the benefits with a strong effort at The Oval. Firstly they removed Surrey’s last five wickets for 56 then marched powerfully onto 332 for 4, led by a dashing hundred from Riki Wessels and a stylish ton from Niall O’Brien.The two wicketkeepers added 159 in 31 overs as they feasted on some awful bowling and quickly changed a game Surrey briefly thought they were edging. O’Brien and Wessels came together after Jade Dernbach claimed two in two balls; Stephen Peters was brilliantly held in the gully and Alex Wakely paid the price for playing to leg against the swing, losing his off stump to leave Northamptonshire 26 for 2.O’Brien initially raced out of the blocks, reaching 26 from 12 balls, against a wayward Alex Tudor, who was removed after an opening spell of 2-0-26-0. However, Wessels soon took up the attack and put away a series of help-yourself offerings. He went to his first hundred of the season – and fourth overall – from 94 balls with the second of three consecutive boundaries off James Anyon.That Surrey broke through was down to a Northamptonshire error, as O’Brien called Wessels back for a dangerous second run and the latter was well short when Rangana Herath’s throw came in from long leg. O’Brien, though, composed himself and ensured he didn’t waste his hard work.Following his lightning start, O’Brien reined himself in and took 59 balls over his first fifty then reached his hundred from 150 deliveries when he tucked Matthew Spriegel through midwicket. He is a classy batsman – a point demonstrated on the one-day international stage for Ireland – and promotion to Division One would allow him to push his game further. Sadly for O’Brien, England aren’t short of keepers so Test honours are unlikely, although Ireland will be grateful they won’t lose another star name.When past his hundred he dispatched Herath for six over deep midwicket but Chris Schofield, after two big appeals in two balls, finally had him caught at slip from a drive. However, by now Rob White was also in on the act and he too had three figures in sight by the close of play.Surrey have only bowled a team out twice once this season (Northamptonshire were the unlucky side in the previous meeting) and on the evidence of today’s bowling it’s not hard to see why. Dernbach is the only who can hold his head reasonably high, but to say the combined efforts of Tudor and Anyon were a disappointment would be an understatement.Both Tudor and Anyon, who is on loan from Warwickshire, are trying to earn contracts for next season but after this showing Chris Adams’ signature won’t be poised on the dotted line. Between them they sent down 15 overs for 104 and the figures aptly demonstrate what was on offer.Neither did Surrey’s spinners offer much control. Herath, the Sri Lankan left-armer, has so far found taking county wickets much harder than bowling out Pakistan and New Zealand. The pitch didn’t offer him, or Schofield much, but they also struggled to tie up an end for Stewart Walters.However, the surface was starting to produce a touch of spin. That could yet develop over the next two days and Surrey’s final total of 376 was below expectations. It was three South Africans who wrapped up the effort as Jon Batty hadn’t added to his overnight total when he cut Johan van der Wath straight to point, then Nicky Boje prised out Tudor from a lofted drive and Herath to a top-edged sweep.Schofield played positively and struck two clean sixes as he reached a 70-ball half-century before becoming one of two late scalps for Andrew Hall.

Dirk Nannes to Brad Hodge. That’s the likely scenario for Victoria’s first ball at the Champions League Twenty20 but the coach Greg Shipperd said he was confident Shane Harwood and Peter Siddle could stand up as a new-ball combination in the absence of Nannes, one of the most fearsome Twenty20 bowlers in the world.Nannes was born and bred in Victoria and has been a key part of their formidable Twenty20 record but at the Champions League he will be playing for his IPL side, Delhi Daredevils, who Victoria face in their opening match. Shipperd said the depth of Victoria’s fast-bowling quality was one of their strengths and they had the players to cover for Nannes.”Shane Harwood not that many weeks ago had a shoulder cleanup and he’s come through his preparations very well,” Shipperd said. “He’s an absolute key for us. Peter Siddle, who hasn’t played a lot of Twenty20 cricket at all for Victoria now becomes a weapon for us.”It’s a magnificent opportunity for Peter. He’s in good form at the moment and forms with Shane a world-class opening combination. We do have a world-class opening combination with the bat and to have one with the ball is also absolutely critical.”Cameron White and David Hussey are key men but the most important player in the batting order is Hodge, who will open. Hodge, 34, can’t find a place in the Australian team in any format but he has a reputation as one of the world’s premier Twenty20 batsman, averaging 41.60 at a strike-rate of 132 from 68 games.Hodge said he was not feeling any extra pressure despite being one of the most accomplished players in the 12-team competition. But his personal success is critical to Victoria’s chances and with one of Delhi, Victoria and Wayamba dropping out after the cut-throat group stage, much will rest on the start Hodge gives Victoria against Nannes.”It’s going to be a reality and the chances are I’ll be taking the first ball against him,” Hodge said. “It’s something we can’t get around and I’ll just be looking forward to the competition.”There’s a lot of talent out there. But I think if you look at our squad, we’ve got a number of internationals who’ve played as well. We’ve got a lot of experience. I think our batting is definitely a strength and we’ve just got to use that. If you stacked up our batting against anyone else’s in the competition, it’s as good as any.”Victoria have won the Australian domestic Twenty20 title three of the four years it has been held, and have only ever lost three matches in the format. They are playing down their chances on the world stage but are quietly confident that their steady, familiar group can match the mish-mash of players in IPL teams.”I think a par result would certainly be to qualify for the second round,” Shipperd said. “That would be a lovely opportunity to move into that and have three more games of cricket. Everyone’s going to be a little bit nervous in the first couple of games. This has been a project four years in the making … but certainly we’re going there to win, no doubt about that.”The Victorians fly out for India on Friday morning and they will be without one of their original 15-man squad, the fast bowler Damien Wright. He has been ruled out with a calf strain and will be replaced by the young allrounder James Pattinson.

Misbah-ul-Haq’s international revival seems to have come to an end, after he was left out from the squads in all three formats for Pakistan’s upcoming series of ODIs, T20Is and Tests against New Zealand in the Middle East and New Zealand. Pakistan’s selection committee have seemingly covered as many bases as possible in the three formats, recalling several forgotten names and forming an unusually large 18-man Test squad.Misbah’s form has been poor in all three formats over the last year, in contrast to 2007, when he reignited his dormant international career in sensational fashion at the World Twenty20 in South Africa and then on a tour to India. The emergence of Umar Akmal as a middle order prospect has, for now at least, brought Misbah’s second innings to a close.However, chief selector Iqbal Qasim hoped Misbah would regain form before the tour to Australia later this year. “He has been given rest because we think he is under pressure and needs time to regroup himself,” Qasim said.The other major theme to the squads is the return of opener Imran Farhat, who ends a two-year exile after his stint in the Indian Cricket League by being picked in all three squads. Pakistan’s last few squads have lacked specialist openers; at the Champions Trophy, only Imran Nazir was a specialist in the position.Alongside Farhat returns another left-handed opener, Salman Butt; he was dropped after a poor series in Sri Lanka this summer but is back in both the Test and ODI squads. According to the selectors, the left-hander was brought back to avoid reliance on makeshift openers. “Opening is a specialized field and we want to hand over this job to regular openers,” Qasim said.Nazir is retained in the Twenty20 squad. Khalid Latif, in imperious domestic form, has also been recalled to Pakistan’s ODI and Twenty20 squads, offering another opening option.There will be disappointment at the non-selection of fresh faces performing well in domestic cricket, particularly batsmen, but the selectors have recalled left-arm pacemen Sohail Tanvir and Wahab Riaz. The pair make up for the absence of Mohammad Asif from the first limited-overs leg of the tour; because of his deportation last year from Dubai, Asif is unable to travel back and so has been picked only for the Test squad.Seven players – the Akmal brothers, Saeed Ajmal, Farhat, Shoaib Malik, Umar Gul and Mohammad Aamer – find a place in all three squads. Younis Khan, after resigning and coming back in the last week as captain, will lead the Test and ODI side, and Shahid Afridi remains the Twenty20 captain.After a lull in international assignments over the last two years, Pakistan suddenly find themselves embarking on a schedule that will keep them in action until February next year. They first play three one-dayers in Abu Dhabi starting November 3, followed by two Twenty20s in Dubai before heading off to New Zealand for a three-Test series. Following that, they move to Australia where they have another three-Test series and a series of five ODIs as well as a T20I. The large squads, in part, reflects the heavy schedule.Squads
Tests: Salman Butt, Khurrum Manzoor, Imran Farhat, Younis Khan (capt), Mohammad Yousuf, Shoaib Malik, Fawad Alam, Faisal Iqbal, Kamran Akmal (wk), Danish Kaneria, Saeed Ajmal, Yasir Arafat, Umar Gul, Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Aamer, Abdur Rauf, Umar Akmal, Sarfraz Ahmad
One-dayers: Salman Butt, Imran Farhat, Khalid Latif, Younis Khan (capt), Mohammad Yousuf, Shoaib Malik, Umar Akmal, Kamran Akmal (wk), Abdul Razzaq, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Shahid Afridi, Saeed Ajmal, Umar Gul, Mohammad Aamer, Rao Iftikhar Anjum, Wahab RiazTwenty20: Khalid Latif, Imran Nazir, Umar Akmal, Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi (capt), Kamran Akmal (wk), Abdul Razzaq, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Umar Gul, Mohammad Aamer, Rao Iftikhar Anjum, Saeed Ajmal, Imran Farhat, Fawad Alam, Sohail Tanvir

Back in February, like a bolt from the blue, a fast bowler from Multan allegedly standing 7’2″ tall caught the eye of former Pakistan fast bowler Aaqib Javed. At 6’8″, Joel Garner and Bruce Reid were the tallest fast bowlers to play international cricket, but this was something else, Aaqib realised. It was at that moment that a young player’s fortunes took a dramatic change, even if there was and remains, subsequently, considerable confusion over his real height: the PCB has variously measured him at 6’8″, 6’10” and 7’1″.Until then Mohammad Irfan’s cricketing ambitions were being held back by his surroundings and lack of contacts. He had been working in a plastic pipe factory earning about Rs 8,000 ($96) a month while playing club cricket in the eastern Pakistan town of Gaggu Mandi. Coming from a humble small-town background, the lack of opportunities had left Irfan disillusioned and without first-class representation. In August 2008 he decided to stop playing cricket and seek full-time employment to support his family.With plenty of interest generated from a fan forum on the cricket website – who heard of Irfan’s name while interviewing Multan’s assistant coach Nadeem Iqbal – the tall fast bowler was introduced to Aaqib at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Lahore by a reporter for the site.Once Aaqib was enthused by what he saw – “I spent the whole day thinking to myself that we might have something really special here,” – things happened swiftly. Irfan was brought to the NCA almost immediately by Aaqib, who was keen to develop him mentally more than physically, and then joined a local club at which the internationals Abdul Razzaq and Imran Nazir played. He put in long hours at the NCA as well as for his club; one highlight was his 4 for 45 against Pakistan A prior to their departure for Sri Lanka this summer.A key moment in Irfan’s development came after Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) opener Azhar Ali recommended that the team keep an eye on him. The former Pakistan batsman and current KRL captain, Mohammad Wasim, then recommended that Irfan go to Rawalpindi and trial with the team. All it took was a stint at the nets bowling to Wasim for Irfan to get selected.Irfan made his first-class debut against PIA on October 10 this year. He went wicketless and conceded 79 runs from 25 overs. In his second game, Irfan took nine: seven in the second innings including former Test batsmen Imran Farhat, Hasan Raza and Salim Elahi.His former coach, Iqbal, was duly delighted for his ward. “Irfan, once he settles into first-class cricket, will show signs of maturity,” he said. “The best thing about Irfan is that he is a quick learner and he bowled only one no-ball in his 46 overs against HBL.”His main aim should be to obviously take as many wickets as possible and to remember the advice that he has been given about bowling wicket to wicket and not to bowl too short. With his height, if he maintains a good length he will trouble a lot of batsman in Pakistan”.KRL team official Rashid Iqbal, who was contacted by Ali in June, predicted a rise in speed. “At the moment he is raw and he bowls between 130-140 kph (81-87 mph) but I am sure that with the passage of time he could bowl up to 150 kph (93 mph),” he told .It is perhaps no surprise that one of the fast bowlers Irfan, 27, hopes to emulate is Garner. “I have seen quite a lot of videos how Garner used to bowl,” he said “The videos help a lot to learn the art of fast bowling.”For someone who just wanted to play cricket and nothing else, Irfan knows that those who have invested in him have high hopes.

Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner and BCCI vice-president, has lost the Rajasthan Cricket Association’s (RCA) presidential elections for the second time in a year, defeated by CP Joshi, a central government minister, by six votes. The reverse, on his home ground, will be an embarrassment for Modi but his BCCI post is secure as he is also vice-president of the Punjab Cricket Association.The high-profile election was marred by a scuffle earlier in the day between supporters of the two groups. Modi had alleged that his supporters were being intimidated and prevented from casting their vote. “Some of my supporters are being beaten up and it is unfortunate,” he said. “We hope for the good of cricket people are allowed to cast their votes. But there are goonda (rowdy) elements out here, who shouldn’t be here.”A PTI report said the scuffle started when workers of the Congress party, of which Joshi is a member, allegedly objected to the presence of about half a dozen armed bodyguards of Modi on the RCA premises. A Congress legislator asked the police to remove the bodyguards, following which the two sets of supporters started fighting with each other.Joshi blamed Modi for instigating the trouble. “I am not on the spot, I don’t know how these allegations are being made against me,” he said. “I only know that the other party went with bodyguards. Why do you need bodyguards when you are going to cast your vote?”A bitter fight for control of the RCA has put Rajasthan cricket in turmoil, particularly over the past couple of months.Modi lost the RCA elections in March earlier this year but in September Sanjay Dixit, who’d become president, was removed from power by the Modi faction, which claimed a majority. The no-confidence motion brought in by the Sri Ganganagar District Association was subsequently accepted, and it was decided that fresh elections would be held on October 14. The date was later changed to November 19.The nadir was reached when cricket teams from both factions landed up for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Twenty20 tournament in October, which resulted in Rajasthan being barred from the tournament. A scheduled one-dayer between India and Australia in Jaipur was also moved to Vadodara as a result of the power struggle.