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Vice-captain Adam Gilchrist expects more senior Australian cricketers to miss smaller tournaments as their workloads are managed in lead-up to the 2007 World Cup, to be staged in the Caribbean.

At the end of the Bangladesh series in April Gilchrist was exhausted and there were serious rumblings this would be his final international summer, but he has been refreshed by tour-free winter and had no concrete retirement plans during gap in team camp at Coolum.

“The way I feel now I’m keen to keep playing, get through this summer, get through all the

Darrell Hair, the Australian umpire at the centre of the ball-tampering controversy, has maintained a defence of his conditional offer of resignation and issued a statement apologising to his friends and supporters.

“I wish to apologise to all my family, friends and supporters, because I somehow feel that I may have let them down, simply by sending an ill-advised but entirely confidential email,” Hair said in a statement after his demand for US$500,000 compensation was made public. “That has given other people the opportunity to question my motives.”

Pakistan cricket chief Shaharyar Khan said on Tuesday he was confident Inzamam-ul-Haq will be cleared of disciplinary charges by the International Cricket Council (ICC), adding that the tourists have never thought about not selecting him for the ICC Champions Trophy in India.

“We are very hopeful that the charges against Inzamam would be dropped so to say that we are thinking about whether to select him for the Champions Trophy is not current. It is too early for that,” said the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman.

Pace star Shoaib Akhtar was happy at making his international return but said he was looking forward to a more emphatic comeback.

Shoaib was back in green for Pakistan on Monday in a Twenty20 game against England after staying away for seven months due to injury, taking 1-31 from four overs.

“It is good to be back though I was hoping for a better start,” Shoaib said after Pakistan romped home to a five-wicket win over the hosts in the Twenty20 match.

Australian cricket team’s coach John Buchanan, who presided over a golden era in Australian cricket, has confirmed he will quit after next year’s World Cup in the Caribbean.

Buchanan, who has been coach for seven years since replacing Geoff Marsh in 1999, had his contract extended after last year’s Ashes series loss in England.

But Buchanan, 53, said there was a “shelf life” in coaching and he felt after the World Cup was an appropriate time for him to step down. “There’s a good foundation of systems and processes for the next coach to shape the future of the Australian cricket team,” Buchanan said in a Cricket Australia (CA) statement on Monday.

England suffered a double blow on Monday evening when they returned to the cricket field after recording an emphatic 3-0 triumph over Pakistan in the Test series.

The hosts were outclassed in a Twenty20 game at Bristol but the more worrying news for them came when top strike bowler Steve Harmison was ruled out of the one-day series because of a back problem.

Harmison was one of the biggest heroes of England’s success in the Tests with 20 wickets in four matches and his ouster is a big blow for their attack that looks less than ordinary without him.

England’s Twenty20 defeat to Pakistan at Bristol, on Monday, means they have yet to win a limited overs match against serious opposition this summer. Their lone success came against Ireland, in the warm-up to their series against Sri Lanka, but even that included the warning signs of what was to come.

Their 5-0 whitewash to Sri Lanka included some of the worst bowling England have produced for a long while. They now have another five matches against Pakistan, who are even more daunting opposition as Shahid Afridi amply demonstrated in the Twenty20. The selectors have opted for a new collection of bowlers, with one-day recalls for Darren Gough and Jon Lewis, but they are now without the services of Steve Harmison — ruled out with a back problem.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting says he wants the best umpires to officiate in Test cricket, irrespective of nationality.

Ponting and the Australian cricket officials believe this year’s Ashes series here with England should be controlled by the top umpires on the ICC’s Elite Panel, even if they are Australian or English.

But it’s a notion that does not have the support of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). “The ICC have a well-established principle of appointing neutral umpires for Test matches – it’s a process the ECB are extremely comfortable with,” a board spokesman told the Press Association Sunday.

Pakistan hope their big guns would be right on target when they face England in the first 50-over ODI here at the Sophia Gardens today.

The tourists whisked to a comfortable five-wicket win over England at Bristol in the series curtain-raiser — a Twenty20 International — on Monday and are now looking forward to make their return to action after The Oval setback even better.

It was a welcome change from a frustrating Test series they lost 0-3 and many believe more good news for the Pakistanis would follow in the ODI contest after the return of their valuable quartet — Shoaib Akhtar, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Shoaib Malik. The trio missed the Test series due to injury but were back in the Pakistani line-up for the twenty20 game.

The Oval Test fiasco is fast turning into a fight between Darrell Hair and the International Cricket Council (ICC) from a row between the controversial Australian umpire and Pakistan.

Hair, who seemed down and out after the ICC disclosed he demanded US$500,000 to step down after accusing Pakistan of ball tampering in the fourth Test, has now claimed that the game’s governing body encouraged him to make the offer.

The umpire’s lawyers issued a statement in which Hair said he was asked to send his offer in black and white by Doug Cowie, the ICC Umpires’ manager, just days after the final Pakistan-England Test ended in a shocking forfeiture.