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Alastair Cook is preparing to stick with the same balance of seven batsmen and four bowlers that carried his side to a comfortable, if somewhat laboured, 181-run victory in the first Test at Chittagong, as he aims to hand the England captaincy back to Andrew Strauss with a 100% record from his first tour in charge.

With two days to go until the second Test at Dhaka, England are still weighing up their options and have not ruled out the introduction of a second spinner in James Tredwell to partner their ten-wicket Man of the Match from Chittagong, Graeme Swann. But in the absence of a genuine allrounder, the likelihood of calling upon a five-man attack seems slim, especially now that England have a 1-0 lead in the series, and therefore no need to gamble with their selection.

Yawar Saeed will continue as manager of the Pakistan side during their defence of the World Twenty20 in the Caribbean from April-May, despite wanting to step down from the post last year after the Champions Trophy. Saeed will be reunited with Shafqat Rana, who has been named associate manager as part of a large, eight-man support structure to Pakistan’s 15-man squad.

New Zealand batsman Brendon McCullum is keen to put the lessons learned from a difficult 2009 IPL into practice during this year’s tournament.

McCullum is in the middle of a home series against Australia. New Zealand lost the Chapell-Hadlee series 3-2 and the teams will meet in Wellington on Friday for the first of two Test matches. With the 2010 IPL successfully underway amongst security fears, McCullum is still waiting on clearance before confirming his involvement but was eager to participate in the competition because of its massive impact on the cricketing world.

Gautam Gambhir will not play in Friday’s match against Chennai Super Kings at the Feroz Shah Kotla, Eric Simons, the assistant coach of Delhi Daredevils, has said. Gambhir pulled a hamstring during Wednesday’s defeat to Mumbai Indians and was forced off the field within the first 10 minutes of the match. In his place the vice-captain Dinesh Karthik has been elevated to the lead the side.

“He [Gambhir] is going for a scan to see how bad it is. Once we assess him, only then we will know how long he will be out for. It’s reasonably serious and he won’t play on Friday,” Simons said.

A superlative bowling performance by Royal Challengers Bangalore, including a hat-trick by Praveen Kumar, decimated Rajasthan Royals to a paltry 92 and set up a huge win. The match lasted just 30.3 overs as Bangalore strolled home by 10 wickets to call it an early night, and also seal the second-most comprehensive victory in terms of ball to spare.

The bowlers stuck to a plan of bowling quick, short deliveries, which contributed to an abject batting performance by a weakened Rajasthan. The batsmen struggled to find a weak link to exploit. Although Praveen hogged the limelight with the first hat-trick of IPL 2010, it was the combined bowling performance that set the platform for back-to-back wins at home.

Michael Clarke has spoken publicly for the first time since his sudden departure from Australia’s tour and his subsequent break-up with Lara Bingle. Clarke fronted a packed media conference at Wellington’s Westpac Stadium, where he mentioned the support he had received from Shane Warne and insisted the media frenzy following him and his former fiancée would not affect the focus on his cricket.

“I have spoken to Warney,” Clarke said. “I’ve spoken to a lot of my friends and my family. He’s been a wonderful friend of mine for a long time and he was excited to see me back in New Zealand and wished me all the best for Friday’s Test match.”

Tournament heavyweights Delhi Daredevils crashed to a 98-run defeat against an inspired Mumbai Indians outfit that seemed determined to set the lopsided head-to-head record straight and, in the process, went to the top of the points table. Quickfire sixties from Sachin Tendulkar and Saurabh Tiwary took Mumbai to an imposing 218 but a batting line-up capable of overhauling the biggest of targets was bowled out with more than three overs to spare.

Shaun Marsh will be in India by the weekend provided he can convince Cricket Australia his injured back is fully healed. The opener Marsh, who was the batting star of the first IPL, has been troubled by a bulging disc problem for the past five weeks and the injury interrupted his Australian one-day ambitions for the second year in a row.

If he can prove his recovery to Kevin Sims, the Cricket Australia physiotherapist, on Friday, Marsh will try to get on a flight that night or on Saturday morning and begin his road back with Kings XI Punjab. “Hopefully I’ll get the all-clear, which I’m really confident of doing, and get over to play some cricket in India,” Marsh told Cricinfo.

Match facts

Bangalore v Rajasthan in Bangalore
Thursday, March 18
Start time 2000 (1430 GMT)

Big picture

The captain’s legbreaks are not coming out right; the most imposing batsman of the team has broken a finger, the canny wicket-taker has done an ankle; their fastest bowler is fast becoming wider than he is fast; and the talismanic allrounder’s arrival is still two Test matches away. So average were the rest that even a 37-ball hundred from their big hitter proved to be inadequate. Rajasthan Royals need to find inspiration from somewhere, somehow they need to stay afloat till Shane Watson arrives and joins forces with Yusuf Pathan.

As a man who once feared his international career would be limited to five wicketless overs in a forgotten ODI in Bloemfontein, Graeme Swann is in a hurry to make up for lost time. So much so, that even when the conditions have seemingly been designed to slow him down, he still continues to take strides into the history books. On Tuesday in Chittagong, he completed the first ten-wicket haul of his career (having earlier in the game bagged a wicket in the first over of a spell for the 18th occasion in 17 Tests) to emulate the late, great Jim Laker, the last England offspinner to achieve such a feat, in 1956.