Miandad unhappy over loss of day in travel

Calcutta, Feb 14: The Pakistan cricket team is expected to touch down in Calcutta only late on Sunday evening. But the buzz here is that ...

Calcutta, Feb 14: The Pakistan cricket team is expected to touch down in Calcutta only late on Sunday evening. But the buzz here is that the visitors have already prepared a long complaint list before they enter the first Test of the Asian Test Championships beginning here on Tuesday.

For starters, they are unhappy over the manner in which their long haul from Kochi to Calcutta has been managed. Apparently, they expected to be brought over to Calcutta in a special flight after the three-day match against Board President’s XI. As it turned out, they were flown here through normal channel, including a stop-over at Chennai.

According to a peeved coach, Javed Miandad, this meant they lost a valuable day of practice with only one day to go for the prestigious tournament.Miandad and company have also been slipping in the odd comment — especially to the Pakistani journalists — about the umpiring in the two Tests so far. Skipper Wasim Akram also went on record yesterday about the need for neutral umpires inIndo-Pak Tests, indicating that the recent series suffered from inept umpiring. But that also seemed more like an excuse to cover up their fragile middle order, more than anything else.Here, at least, they will have no such curtains to hide behind as South Africa’s Rudi Koertzen and West Indian Steve Bucknor will be controlling both ends at the Eden Gardens.

Neutral umpires

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CALCUTTA: All the matches of the Coca Cola Asian Test Cricket Championship will be officiated by the neutral on-field umpires and third umpires. Steve Buckner from West Indies and David Orchard from South Africa will supervise the first match of the championship between India and Pakistan to be held from February 16 to 20. K T Francis of Sri Lanka would be the third umpire. The umpires for the India-Sri Lanka match to be held in Colombo would be Rudy Koertzen of South Africa and Russel Tiffin of New Zealand. Salim Badar from Pakistan would be the third umpire.

David Shephered of England and Koertzen would conduct the thirdmatch of the event between Pakistan and Sri Lanka to be held in Lahore from March 4 to 8 where S Venkataraghavan would be the third umpire. The final would be supervised by Shepherd and New Zealander Douglas Cowie.