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Javed Miandad, the former Pakistan captain and newly appointed director-general of the PCB, has joined a steadily growing chorus of concern against the ban on ICL players and the marginalisation of the unrecognised Twenty20 league. Miandad believes there is immense “public pressure” on the PCB to bring ICL players back into the Pakistan fold and “past decisions by past [PCB] administrations” have “nothing to do with the new set-up”.

The PCB banned all players contracted by the ICL but Miandad said it’s a policy the new board administration must reconsider, keeping in mind the “best interests” of Pakistan cricket.

Pakistan cricket chief Ijaz Butt on Thursday named Abdul Qadir as the new chief selector, bringing the legendary Test leg-spinner in place of Saleem Jaffer, who was heading the national selection committee on an interim basis. Javed Miandad has also been appointed as the Director General of the cricket in the country and Aamir Sohail has been appointed in the academy.

This new team of veterans and the game players is a welcome sign and one hopes that the things will improve for the cricket in the country. Another welcome sign is that the government also shares the passion of cricket and they are also worried about its current plight and the future.

PCB officials, including chairman Ijaz Butt, met with officials from the Indian High Commission on Wednesday to discuss the forthcoming Indian tour to Pakistan, the fate of which is likely to be finalised in ten days.

The meeting took place at Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore and lasted about half an hour, with one official describing it as “fruitful”. “It was a mutually beneficial meeting,” the official told Cricinfo. “Issues of the tour were discussed and broadly speaking it was a fruitful and useful meeting.”

Abdul Qadir, the former legspinner, has been appointed Pakistan’s new chief selector in place of Saleem Jaffar, who headed the interim committee. This is the latest in a series of appointments of former Test players to decision-making roles in the Pakistan board. The other members of the selection committee are yet to be announced.

Qadir said his first task would be to pick a squad for the series against India, who are scheduled to visit Pakistan in January for three Tests, five ODIs and a Twenty20. “We will do an honest selection so that we can put up the best fight against India, who are improving by leaps and bounds,” Qadir told AFP. “I will select players on merit and devise a system where no first-class player can complain that he was not selected despite doing well.”

Zimbabwe’s captain, Prosper Utseya, may have suggested that Muttiah Muralitharan was “not as effective” as he once was, but that assertion came back to haunt his team during the first ODI against Sri Lanka in Harare. Ripping the ball with all the mystery and venom of old, Murali claimed figures of 4 for 14 in four overs, as Zimbabwe lost their last seven wickets for three runs in four overs. They tumbled from 124 for 3 to 127 in the blink of an eye, leaving Sri Lanka to coast to their target with six wickets and more than 16 overs in hand.

If Australia were expecting an easy follow-up to their tough tour of India, their hopes were dashed by Tim Southee within 40 minutes at the Gabba. A super spell of swing bowling from Southee reduced Australia to 3 for 23 and, despite Michael Clarke’s fighting 98, the green-tinged pitch and the discipline of New Zealand’s seamers made scoring hard and ensured the visitors finished the day happy.

Losing to India in India brought enough questions about Australia’s declining dominance, despite the difficulty of the task. The side was expected to regain its form against New Zealand, the No. 7-ranked team, ahead of home-and-away contests against the more likely challengers South Africa. Instead, Australia’s batsmen spent the first day of their home Test summer battling to 214 against a relatively unheralded attack.

A day after bad light forced an early end to the Kanpur ODI and handed India their third victory of the series, England captain Kevin Pietersen has raised concerns about the possibility of a similar problem in Guwahati, the venue for the sixth one-dayer on November 29.

“They [the authorities] will have to do something about Guwahati,” Pietersen said. “We are going to start there at 8.30 am but that will still not make too much of a difference. It could get dark there by 3.30pm.”

India made heavy work of an under-par England total in the first evenly-contested match between the two sides, but edged ahead thanks to a superior run-rate under the Duckworth/Lewis method when bad light curtailed their chase after 40 overs.

Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh produced some fireworks during India’s chase, and that ultimately proved crucial as the umpires were forced to stop play in murky conditions, with India ahead by 16 runs. The toss, scheduled at 8:30 am local, had been put back 45 minutes because of the thick haze and overcast conditions in smoggy Kanpur, but only one over was docked from each innings, and to top it off, the lunch interval was not shortened.

Simon Katich was the main man standing between New Zealand and a gettable fourth-innings chase at the Gabba, where 16 wickets tumbled on an eventful second day. Mitchell Johnson led Australia’s fast men back into form as they bundled New Zealand out for 156 but they will need to retain that spark on the third day after New Zealand’s seamers were equally dangerous in Australia’s second innings.

A dramatic electric storm, 25 minutes before the scheduled lunch break, brought the third day at Bloemfontein to an abrupt end, but not before South Africa had claimed two more wickets to edge ever closer to another comprehensive victory. Though Bangladesh fought hard, and with much greater application than they had shown during their first-innings capitulation, the loss of Tamim Iqbal and Junaid Siddique, to add to Imrul Kayes’ dismissal on the second evening, meant that – if the rains halt – they are still odds-on to slip to their 32nd innings defeat in 56 Tests dating back to November 2000.