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@royal28 | 9 October 09 | |
Stephen James Harmison MBE (born 23 October 1978, Ashington, Northumberland) is an England cricketer, a leading Test match fast bowler and a two-time Ashes winner. He plays county cricket for Durham. With his height (6'4) he can extract pace and bounce from most pitches. While poor form led to him being dropped from the team in New Zealand in 2007, he returned to the England side in 2008 against South Africa.Steve Harmison was first selected for an England squad in May 2000 during the tour to England by Zimbabwe, but did not play. As part of an ECB National Academy touring team that also contained Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell and Robert Key, Harmison showed clear signs of his ability in the tour of Australia in 200102. In August 2002, Harmison made his Test match debut at Trent Bridge against India, replacing the injured Simon Jones. Originally lacking somewhat in control, he bowled seven consecutive wides in the first match of the tour of Australia, against the ACB Chairman's XI's at Lilac Hill in 2002. However, promising performances later in the tour saw him named in the World Cup squad, although he wasn't used in any of the matches. He was then awarded with a six month central contract by the ECB, but this was not renewed in September 2003. Despite media complaints about his ability, he was named in the England squad for the winter tour to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, partially due to injuries to other players. Harmison gave a man-of-the-match performance in the opening Test against Bangladesh, taking 9 wickets for 79 on a slow wicket, before succumbing to a back injury and missing the matches against Sri Lanka. Despite the injury, he'd done enough to be selected for the winter tour to the West Indies, and it was there he sealed his arrival, taking 7 wickets at the cost of just 12 runs as the West Indies collapsed to their lowest ever Test total of 47 all out. Harmison went on to win the Man-of-the-Series award after taking 23 wickets in the four Tests.ODI retirement and Sri Lanka On 21 December 2006, three months before the 2007 Cricket World Cup, Harmison announced his retirement from One Day International cricket after being left out of the squad for the one-day series in Australia. In October 2007, Harmison travelled to South Africa to play domestic cricket before heading to Sri Lanka as part of the England Test squad.[2] After a shaky start, however, he suffered a back injury on the first day of the second warm up match, having taken one wicket.[3] He was not included in the squad for the first test, however he took three wickets in the second.[4] On 21 August 2008, it was announced that Harmison would return to playing One Day International cricket against South Africa.[5] |
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@royal28 | 17 April 10 | |
Lee is a fast bowler, one of the fastest the game has known, and at his peak was capable of bowling at 161 km/h (100.05 mph). Lee's fastest recorded delivery to date is 160.8 km/h (99.9 mph) which he bowled in his first over on March 5, 2005 at Napier, New Zealand against Craig .[3] Lee ranked with Pakistani bowler Shoaib Akhtar as the fastest bowler in contemporary cricket during most of this decade.[4] Akhtar's delivery at 161.3km/h (100.23mph) stands as the fastest recorded to date.[5] Early in his career, Lee was reported for a suspected illegal bowling action, but was cleared.[6] He was also criticised in early 2005 for bowling a series of beamers at batsmen during ODIs, at a rate which lead some to claim he was deliberately bowling illegal head high full tosses at batsmen.[7][8] Lee is at his most effective on the pitches of the southern hemisphere, where the pitches have greater bounce. In the northern hemisphere, he has taken 53 wickets in 19 Tests at an average of 42.11. In the southern hemisphere, he has taken 178 wickets in 40 matches at 28.48. He has had the most success against the West Indies and New Zealand, averaging in the low twenties. He averages more than 40 against England, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and in the 30s against other teams.[9] [edit] Childhood and early career Lee is the second of three sons born to Bob, a metallurgist and Helen (ne Buxton), a piano teacher.[10] He has two brothers, the elder being former Australian all rounder and New South Wales Blues captain Shane Lee. His younger brother Grant played cricket for New South Wales at the under-19 level, and is now an accountant. Lee attended Balarang Public School and Oak Flats High School, which later named its cricket ground in his honour. His nickname 'Bing' refers to 'Bing Lee', after a chain of electronics stores in New South Wales. The brothers enjoyed soccer, basketball and skiing and were encouraged to play the piano by their mother (Grant is a qualified pianist).[11] Brett was introduced to the game of cricket at the age of eight by his brother Shane. He played his first formal game of cricket for the Oak Flats Rats where he took 6/0 from one over or 6 wickets for 0 runs, all of his wickets being bowled.[citation needed] At sixteen years of age, Lee began playing first grade cricket for Campbelltown, where he managed to claim the wickets of a few New South Wales cricketers. He later joined Mosman, where at one point, he shared the new ball with Shoaib Akhtar.[12] He still lives on the Lower North S of Sydney today, in the suburb of Lane Cove. Lee also played for the Australian Under 17 & 19 teams and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Australian Cricket Academy. In March 1994, Lee was forced out of the Australian under-19 team to tour India due to stress fractures in his lower back. He recovered and made his first-class debut for New South Wales against Western Australia in a Sheffield Shield match as a 20-year old in the 199798 season, playing one match and taking 3/114.[13] One month later, Lee was chosen to represent the Australian A team on a tour to South Africa. He claimed two wickets but in that very match, stress fractures in his back from the previous injury had re-opened and Lee was in a back brace for over three months. When he turned twenty-one, Lee moved to Sydney to be closer to work.[citation needed] During the 1997-98 season, he played in five of the ten Sheffield Shield games, taking fourteen wickets at 30. He finished outside the top 20 in both the wicket taking list and the bowling averages.[14] In 1999, during a Sheffield Shield match at Perth, Lee bowled a spell against the Western Australian batsmen, compared the fastest bowling seen in Australia since the days of Jeff Thomson back in the 1970s. From that point, Australian captain Steve Waugh and then vice-captain Shane Warne began pushing for Lee's inclusion in the Test team. [edit] Test career [edit] Early Test career By the late 1990s there were calls for Lee to be included in the national squad. He was eventually chosen in the final 14 for the Test series against Pakistan in 1999 but failed to make the final 11. By the time the Test series against India came around, he was twelfth man. However, he duly made his Test debut for Australia in December 1999 against the touring Indians, becoming Australia's 383rd Test cricketer. Bowling first change, Lee took a wicket in his first over in Test cricket when he bowled Sadagoppan Ramesh with his fourth delivery. He also captured Rahul Dravid in his first spell before returning to take three wickets in six ba11s to finish the innings with figures of 5/47 from 17 overs. Australia had batted first, and Lee had earlier made 27 runs. Lee took thirteen wickets in his opening two Tests at the low average of 14.15. Lee won the inaugural Donald Bradman Young Player of the Year Award at the Allan Border Medal award ceremony in 2000 soon after his debut. During the early 2000 tour to New Zealand, Lee was reported by umpires Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Arani Jayaprakash for a suspected illegal bowling action. He was later cleared. Lee took 42 wickets in his opening three series, the most by any Australian bowler in the seven matches he played. [15] However, in his seventh Test, where he took seven wickets including a five wicket haul in the second innings against the West Indies, he suffered a stress fracture of the lower back which kept him out of three following Tests. He returned against Zimbabwe but soon suffered another setback a month later when he broke his right elbow and was sidelined until May 2001. [edit] Return from injury Lee returned to the international team on the 2001 Ashes tour of England after recovering from an elbow injury. His comeback saw less success than his debut, managing only nine wickets in five Tests at 55.11. However, Lee was back as Australia's leading wicket-taker in the first and third Test against New Zealand later that year, in a series which he captured 5 wickets in the second innings and made a contribution of 61 with the bat in the first Test match. The series ended in a 00 draw. He finished the series with 14 wickets at 25.14. The two home and away series against South Africa were not as productive, yielding 19 wickets in six Tests at 38.42. Lee only took five wickets in a match on three occasions between the New Zealand series and the 2003 Cricket World Cup. Lee came under pressure for his position after taking only five wickets at 46.50 in the three-Test series against Pakistan in 2002. Andy Bichel, who was filling for the injured Jason Gillespie, took eight wickets at 13.25. With the other frontline bowlers all taking wickets at less than 13,[16] Lee was dropped when Gillespie returned for the first two Tests during the 200203 Ashes series. He returned for the Perth Test, after claiming a five wicket haul in a Pura Cup match against Queensland for New South Wales. He took thirteen wickets at 41.23 in three matches, compared to Bichel's ten at 35.1.[17] After the 2003 Cricket World Cup, Lee took 17 wickets at 28.88 in four Tests against the West Indies. It was the first series in two years where he averaged under 30, and only the second in that period where had averaged under 40. After a mid year break, he parti ted in a Two Test series against Bangladesh in northern Australia. He took six wickets at 31.66, and was Australia's most expensive bowler, with the other specialist bowlers averaging 15.55 against the lowest ranked team in Test cricket. He followed this with six wickets at 37 in a comfortable 20 Test series against Zimbabwe, in which the other specialist bowlers averaged 23.15.[18] Against the Indian batting lineup in the 200304 home series, which ended in a 11 draw for Australia, Lee was out of the first two Tests recovering from a torn abdominal muscle, an injury which he sustained during the Zimbabwe series.[19] At that point, Lee decided to undergo surgery to partially repair 'posterior ankle impingement', a condition that Lee was suffering with prior to the Test series against Zimbabwe as well as surgery to repair his torn abdominal muscle, but Lee never fully recovered from the ankle injury and finally broke down against Sri Lanka.This was done so that recovery for both injuries would run concurrently. . [edit] Loss of Test position Lee took eight wickets in over 100 overs in the final two Tests against India, taking eight wickets at an average of 59.50. This included conceding a double century to Sachin Tendulkar in the Indians' first innings of 7/705 where Sachin and V.V.S. Laxman freely attacked Lee and other bowlers in the final Test in Sydney. He ended the series with the worst average and economy rate of Australia's front line bowlers.[20] He was subsequently replaced by fellow fast bowler Michael Kasprowicz in 2004 during the tour of Sri Lanka when Lee's ankle injury worsened, forcing him to return home to have surgery. This injury would force Lee out of the game for 4 months to ensure his full recovery. Lee's form in the Test arena had been ineffective, and from July 2001 to January 2004, he had a Test bowling average of 38.42,[21] compared to an average of 16.07 in his earlier career. Lee was unable to reclaim his position for eighteen months, when Kasprowicz took 47 wickets at 23.74 in thirteen Tests, taking his wickets at a much lower cost than Lee had done in the previous three years. This included 17 wickets at 26.82 on the spin friendly pitches of the Indian subcontinent, helping Australia to its first whitewash in Sri Lanka, and its first series win in India for 35 years. |
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@royal28 | 17 April 10 | |
He made his international debut in 2000 against England at Faisalabad. In January 2002, he took 7 wickets for 77 runs in the Test match against Bangladesh in Bangladesh, which are his career best figures so far in Test cricket. Earlier, in the same season, he had taken 6 wickets in an innings twice against Bangladesh during Bangladesh's tour of Pakistan. In October 2004, he took 10 wickets against Sri Lanka at Karachi, with a second-innings haul of 7/109, setting up Pakistan's 6-wicket win. More recently he has played an important role in Pakistan's Test wins over West Indies, England and India. In December 2009, He took 7/168 in the 1st innings of the 3rd test match against New Zealand at Napier. Pakistan managed to draw that game. [edit] One Day Internationals In One Day International cricket, he has been economical so far with an economy rate under 4.8 runs per over. His best bowling in ODIs came against New Zealand in Sri Lanka in 2003. He also had a good series against Zimbabwe in Sharjah just before that. Success in the one day arena has been more elusive, Pakistan usually opting to play the two spinning all-rounders Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Malik or Saeed Ajmal instead. [edit] County Cricket Kaneria has impressed in English county cricket taking 32 wickets in seven championship matches for Ess*x in 2005. Although unable to play English county cricket in 2006 due to Pakistan's tour of England, he returned to play for Ess*x in 2007, taking 107 wickets for the County in all forms of the game [2]. He played for Ess*x again in 2008, although he missed the start of the campaign due to his wife giving birth to their second child. Kaneria suffered a broken finger in Ess*x's LV County Championship Division Two match against Worcestershire at Colchester on August 21, 2008. The bowler was injured attempting to take a catch off Ben Smith. An X-ray confirmed he had broken a finger and he missed the remainder of the 2008 English domestic season |
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@royal28 | 17 April 10 | |
Danish Kaneria made his international debut in 2000 against England at Faisalabad. In January 2002, he took 7 wickets for 77 runs in the Test match against Bangladesh in Bangladesh, which are his career best figures so far in Test cricket. Earlier, in the same season, he had taken 6 wickets in an innings twice against Bangladesh during Bangladesh's tour of Pakistan. In October 2004, he took 10 wickets against Sri Lanka at Karachi, with a second-innings haul of 7/109, setting up Pakistan's 6-wicket win. More recently he has played an important role in Pakistan's Test wins over West Indies, England and India. In December 2009, He took 7/168 in the 1st innings of the 3rd test match against New Zealand at Napier. Pakistan managed to draw that game. [edit] One Day Internationals In One Day International cricket, he has been economical so far with an economy rate under 4.8 runs per over. His best bowling in ODIs came against New Zealand in Sri Lanka in 2003. He also had a good series against Zimbabwe in Sharjah just before that. Success in the one day arena has been more elusive, Pakistan usually opting to play the two spinning all-rounders Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Malik or Saeed Ajmal instead. [edit] County Cricket Kaneria has impressed in English county cricket taking 32 wickets in seven championship matches for Ess*x in 2005. Although unable to play English county cricket in 2006 due to Pakistan's tour of England, he returned to play for Ess*x in 2007, taking 107 wickets for the County in all forms of the game [2]. He played for Ess*x again in 2008, although he missed the start of the campaign due to his wife giving birth to their second child. Kaneria suffered a broken finger in Ess*x's LV County Championship Division Two match against Worcestershire at Colchester on August 21, 2008. The bowler was injured attempting to take a catch off Ben Smith. An X-ray confirmed he had broken a finger and he missed the remainder of the 2008 English domestic season |
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@royal28 | 17 April 10 | |
Bradley James Haddin (born 23 October 1977 in Cowra, New South Wales) is an Australian cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper. Haddin was selected in the first ever Mercantile Mutual Cup season of 199798 for the Canberra Comets, with whom he began his professional cricketing career. In the 19992000 season, he began playing for the New South Wales Blues[1] in order to pursue further cricketing opportunities. Since then, he has produced several memorable batting innings, including a top score of 133 against Victoria. In September 2003, he replaced Simon Katich as captain of New South Wales, while Katich was on international duty, and he since been acting-captain on numerous occasions. He has also captained Australia A. For most of his career he was Australia A wicketkeeper but was drafted into the Australian squad as wicketkeeper if Adam Gilchrist was injured or rested. He made his international debut in a one day international on January 30, 2001 against Zimbabwe in Hobart. He made one stumping and made 13 runs. He was demoted from second choice wicketkeeper for Australia in 2001 by Wade Seccombe and later Ryan Campbell, but reclaimed this position in late 2004. On 18 September 2006, playing against West Indies at Kuala Lumpur in the DLF Cup, Haddin and Australian captain Mike Hussey put on 165, which at that time was a world-record stand for the sixth wicket in ODIs.[2] He finally made his Test debut on May 22, 2008 against the West Indies at Kingston, Jamaica,[3] becoming Australia's 400th Test cricketer, after Adam Gilchrist retired. Haddin was involved in a controversy relating to the dismissal of Neil Broom in an ODI in Perth in February 2009. Broom was given out bowled but replays clearly showed that Haddin's gloves had disturbed the bails. New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori expressed his dissatisfaction with Haddin's actions in not calling Broom back to the wicket. His comment led to an angry retort from Australian captain Ricky Ponting. Ponting defended his team mate saying that Haddin was convinced the ball hit the stumps.[4] On February 15, 2009, Haddin became acting Australian captain for the Twenty20 against New Zealand after Ricky Ponting was rested and Michael Clarke was injured. There is a debate as to who would be the successor of Haddin, but Graham Manou and Tim Paine are the frontrunners having already had international experience. On March 9, 2010, in the third match of the 200910 Chappell-Hadlee one day international series against New Zealand, Haddin scored his second ODI hundred, hitting 110 off 121 ba11s opening the Australian innings.[ |
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@royal28 | 25 April 10 | |
A West Indian cricketer of Indian origin, the left-handed Chanderpaul is known for his doggedness and ability to stick on the wicket for long hours. He is known in the cricketing world for his unorthodox front-on batting stance, although he shifts his body into a more conventional position when he plays the ball, thus making him a prolific scorer on both sides of the wicket. His stance allows him to get most of his runs behind the wicket. Chanderpaul is renowned for playing left arm spin bowlers by getting his pad outside the line of off-stump, and hiding his bat behind the pad, in imitation of a shot, but without the risk of edging the ball. Chanderpaul's first notable impact on Test cricket was as being the last batting partner of Brian Lara when Lara broke Gary Sobers' record of 365 not out in the fifth and final Test against England in 199394. Lara went on to make 375 before he was caught off Andrew Cadd*ck's bowling, sharing a 219-run stand with Chanderpaul, who was left not out on 75. Chanderpaul made his first Test century in his 19th Test match after having scored 15 half-centuries in the preceding 18 matches. In the third of a five-Test series against India in 199697, he made 137* at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados. He also featured with his Guyanese counterpart, and current West Indian vice captain Ramnaresh Sarwan, making 104 in chasing a world record 418 to win in the fourth innings of the final Test match versus Australia in 200203. Chanderpaul's best first class score is 303* versus Jamaica for Guyana, and, despite his reputation as a dogged batsman, he has also made the fourth fastest century in Test cricket, scoring three figures in just 67 ba11s at the Bourda, Guyana, also in the 200203 series against Australia. This innings was twice as quick as his next fastest, and took 267 deliveries fewer than he needed to reach 100 against India the previous season.[2] He was named captain of West Indies in the first Test versus South Africa in March 2005 in Guyana, after seven senior players including captain Brian Lara were dropped in a sponsorship row. He emulated Graham Dowling to become only the second player to make a double century on debut as a Test captain, scoring an unbeaten 200 and making a sporting declaration in the first Test. It was announced that Lara would return to the team for the second Test, but Chanderpaul would retain the captaincy for the rest of the series. He was named to the squad of twenty for the World XI to face Australia in the Super Test in October 2005, but when the squad was cut to fourteen names in August his name was not mentioned. An innings-by-innings breakdown of Chanderpaul's Test match batting career, showing runs scored (red bars) and the average of the last ten innings (blue line). |
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