Men in Blue headed by India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni now has Australian Michael Hussey breathing down his neck for the top slot in the ODI rankings. Teammate Sachin Tendulkar lost his fourth place to West Indies Captain Chris Gayle in the latest ICC chart announced on Monday.

In-form Hussey narrowed the gap with top ranked Dhoni to just eight points after finishing as the second most successful batsman with 198 runs in the series against New Zealand.

Meanwhile Gayle, who was in seventh position at the start of the month, was in sublime form in the recently concluded ODI series against Zimbabwe in which he scored 273 runs, including three half-centuries.

Tendulkar is now at fifth place with a total of 819 points.

In the ODI Team rankings, India has maintained its number two position with 122 points, while Australia still rules the ratings with 133 points.

The second place in the ODI Championship means India wins $75,000 in addition to $175,000 which it won for finishing as the number-one Test side.

In the bowling ratings, India’s spinner Harbhajan Singh continued to be at seventh position with 645 points.

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Here is the list of cricketers who have been short listed for ICC Annual Awards that is to be announced on October 1 in Johannesburg.

Short-lists of nominees (in alphabetical order):

Cricketer of the Year: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Ind), Gautam Gambhir (Ind), Mitchell Johnson (Aus), Andrew Strauss (Eng).

Test Player of the Year: Gautam Gambhir (Ind), Mitchell Johnson (Aus), Thilan Samaraweera (SL), Andrew Strauss (Eng).

ODI Player of the Year: Shivnarine Chanderpaul (WI), Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Ind), Virender Sehwag (Ind), Yuvraj Singh (Ind).

Emerging Player: Ben Hilfenhaus (Aus), Graham Onions (Eng), Jesse Ryder (NZ), Peter Siddle (Aus).

Associate and Affiliate Player of the Year: Rizwan Cheema (Can), Ryan ten Doeschate (Ned), William Porterfield (Ire), Edgar Schiferli (Ned).

Twenty20 International Performance of the Year: Shahid Afridi (Pak), Tillakaratne Dilshan (SL), Chris Gayle (WI), Umar Gul (Pak).

Women’s Cricketer of the Year: Charlotte Edwards (Eng), Shelley Nitschke (Aus), Claire Taylor (Eng).

Umpire of the Year: Aleem Dar, Tony Hill, Asad Rauf, Simon Taufel.

Spirit of Cricket: Australia, England, New Zealand, Sri Lanka.

Sir Garfield Sobers trophy for Cricketer of the Year was short listed after voting by an independent 25-member academy.

Dhoni is also in contention to retain the ODI Player of the Year award he won last year as he is short-listed in that category with team-mates Yuvraj and Sehwag as well as West Indies’ Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

Pacer Zaheer Khan, off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, VVS Laxman, Amit Mishra and women team’s former captain Mithali Raj, who made it to various categories earlier were left out of the final list of nominees.

Mitchell Johnson is the lone Aussie to make to the nominees’ list.

This year’s awards include eight individual prizes and also features the selection of the Test and ODI Teams of the Year and the award to the side that has adhered most to the Spirit of Cricket.

The nominations were made by a five-man ICC selection panel chaired by former West Indies captain and current chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee Clive Lloyd. The panel also included former players such as Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble, Mudassar Nazar of Pakistan, Bob Taylor of England and New Zealand’s Stephen Fleming.

The Spirit of Cricket award was voted on by all international captains as well as all members of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Umpires and Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees.

The Umpire of the Year award was voted on by the captains and the match referees based on the umpires’ performance statistics.

The LG ICC Annual Awards ceremony is now in its sixth year and this year it will be held in Johannesburg to coincide with the ICC Champions Trophy. Previous ceremonies were held in London (2004), Sydney (2005), Mumbai (2006), Johannesburg (2007) and Dubai (2008).

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India made amends for their Twenty20 World Cup disaster by winning the ODI series against West Indies by 2-1 after rains washed out the fourth and final ODI at the Beausejour Stadium on Sunday.

The tourists won the four-match series 2-1 following victories in the series opener in Jamaica and the third match on Friday. Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was adjudged the Man of the Series.

Dhoni with Cup

The match started an hour late following heavy rains just after India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and elected to field.

West Indies were 27 for one when rain interrupted play for the second time after they had lost the crucial wicket of skipper Chris Gayle for a duck.

Runako Morton (12 not out) and Ramnaresh Sarwan (12 not out) were at the crease when play was called off.

Team India

With this victory, India registered only their second bilateral series triumph in the Caribbean. Last time they won a series in West Indies was in 2002 under Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy.

India had earlier won the first match of the series by 20 runs, while West Indies came back strongly in the second, hammering the Dhoni-led side by eight wickets.

However riding on Dhoni’s brilliance, India took the unassailable 2-1 lead, winning the third ODI by six wickets with a ball to spare.

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‘Men in Blue’ – India are now one step away from a rare One-Day International series victory in the Caribbean.

They face West Indies in the fourth and final ODI on Sunday at the Beausejour Cricket Ground confident in the knowledge that they cannot lose the brief series.

The visitors won the rain-affected third ODI by six wickets on Friday at the same venue to take an unstoppable 2-1 lead in the series.

The final match was initially delayed due to dampness in pitch. However, the toss was over after few mins of wait and like the previous match, India have won the toss and opted to bowl first. And rains have started again and we are definite to have a shortened game.

Teams:

West Indies: CH Gayle, RS Morton, RR Sarwan, S Chanderpaul, DJ Bravo, DM Bravo, D Ramdin, JE Taylor, DE Bernard, SJ Benn, R Rampaul

India: G Gambhir, D Karthik, MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, R Sharma, A Nayar, Y Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, RP Singh, A Nehra, I Sharma

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Mahendra Singh Dhoni played a captain’s knock as India battled bad weather to defeat the West Indies by six wickets through the Duckworth-Lewis method and take an unassailable 2-1 lead in the four-match ODI series at the Beausejour Stadium in St Lucia on Friday.

Needing 11 runs off the last over after the target was revised to 159 from 22 overs, Dhoni (46 not out) sent Jerome Taylor’s second delivery for a six over mid-wicket as India won with a ball to spare.

The One-dayer was almost reduced to a Twenty20 fixture as it witnessed as many as four stoppages due to rain during the West Indies innings – including a two hour and five minutes delay at the start of the match. The interruptions forced the overs to be brought down to 27 per side.

The West Indies, put into bat after Dhoni won the toss, rode on Ramnaresh Sarwan’s 62 to post a competitive 185 for seven and India were set a revised target of 195 following the D/L method.

The visitors needed a strong start and Dinesh Karthik (47 off 43 balls) and Gautam Gambhir (44 off 38) did just that. The duo put on 84 runs before a direct throw from Ravi Rampaul ended Karthik’s innings.

Gambhir and Dhoni took the score to 95 for one off 13.3 overs when rain intervened for the fifth time and following a 22-minute delay, the target was revised to 159 in 22 overs.

Needing another 64 runs from 51 deliveries, India lost Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh (2) in quick succession.

With 11 runs required off the last seven deliveries, Rohit Sharma too departed leaving Dhoni to see the team through. The skipper’s 34-ball unbeaten knock included a couple of boundaries besides the six in the last over.

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The West Indies scored a convincing eight-wicket victory over India on Sunday in the second one-day cricket international at Sabina Park. The team was backed by an inspired display from their fast bowlers.

The four-match series is now level at 1-1 as the teams head to St Lucia for the final two matches next Friday and Sunday.

Man of the Match Ravi Rampaul took a career-best 4-37 as the visitors were bowled out for a modest 188 off 48.2 overs.

Dwayne Bravo claimed 3-26 and Jerome Taylor 3-35 but India’s captain MS Dhoni cracked a defiant 95 off 130 balls to offer some respectability to his team’s innings.

Dhoni and RP Singh (23) produced a record ninth wicket stand of 101 after the home team was well on top at 8-82.

But the West Indies coasted to victory as Captain Chris Gayle and Runako Morton hit contrasting half centuries in a century opening stand.

Gayle blasted eight fours and two sixes in 64 off 46 balls. While Morton hit six fours in an unbeaten 85 off 102 deliveries and finished the match with his only six as the West Indies reached 2-192 off 34.1 overs.

The disappointed Dhoni said “I think we didn’t assess the wicket well enough and went on with our strokes and that really caused our downfall.”

“Once you lose too many wickets early on, the only job you’re doing is catching up,” Dhoni added.

India, who won the toss, were quickly reduced to 3-7 in the second over when Rampaul removed Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma for ducks.

Dhoni and Friday’s century-maker Yuvraj Singh rebuilt the damage in a fluent stand of 47 for the fourth wicket.

Yuvraj showed an exquisite touch, becoming the fifth Indian batsman to reach 7,000 runs in ODI cricket before he departed for 35 off 33 balls.

The left-hander, who hit five fours and one stunning pulled six, chased a wide delivery from Taylor and presented Ramdin with another catch at 54-4.

India soon slipped to 82-8 as Yusuf Pathan (0), Ravindra Jadeja (7), Harbhajan Singh (7) and Praveen Kumar (1) fell in quick succession.

However, the home team couldn’t complete the job as Dhoni and Singh shared their record partnership.

Bravo eventually claimed Singh for a career-best 23 off 75 balls while Taylor bowled Dhoni five short of a fifth one-day century.

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After surviving through a narrow 20-run win over the West Indies, India go into the second ODI on Sunday. India need to be fully aware that they need to maintain their intensity right through the game to take an invincible 2-0 lead.

The close game will serve as a wake-up call for the visitors who are determined to make amends for their Twenty20 World Cup debacle by clinching the four-match series.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has already warned his team-mates not to get contented and it remains to be been seen how the Indians respond to their captain who finds himself under some pressure.

With the dashing Virender Sehwag not available for the series, the Indians have struggled to get the starts though new opener Dinesh Karthik did well by scoring 67.

The left-handed Gautam Gambhir has not been in good form for some time now and the Delhi batsman will be keen to rediscover his touch.

Yuvraj Singh, who smashed 131 in the first match, has been in excellent form and will have to shoulder the responsibility of taking India to a healthy total.

Bowling in the slog overs continued to remain an area of concern for India as home side was in the game till the end despite the tourists removing seven wickets in 40 overs. They conceded 29 runs in extras.

In Dhoni’s own words, giving pacer Ashish Nehra the ball in the closing stage was a gamble which paid off.

“It was a gamble. We were thinking of giving that over to an off-spinner or a pacer. Finally, we chose a pacer as the ball was getting reverse swing,” he said.

Dhoni also admitted they had to toil hard to defend their mammoth 340-run target because his team-mates got complacent after removing the top-order of the West Indies.

West Indies, who were brave in their chase despite losing wickets at regular intervals, will surely look to bounce back to draw parity in the series.

They needed one batsman to play a big innings like Yuvraj had done for the Indians and the others could play the supporting role.

That their bowlers let India recover to set such a massive target after twice applying break to their run-spree shows they needed to buckle up too. The West Indies’ bowling appeared indisciplined as they did not maintain the right line and length on the slow track.

Skipper Chris Gayle confessed his batsmen failed to capitalise on the good start.

Squads:

India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Yusuf Pathan, Murali Vijay, Subramaniam Badrinath, Rudra Pratap Singh, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Abhishek Nayar, Ashish Nehra, Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik.

West Indies: Chris Gayle, Denesh Ramdin, Lionel Baker, Darren Bravo, Dwayne Bravo, Sulieman Benn, David Bernard Jr, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Narsingh Deonarine, Runako Morton, Ravi Rampaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Jerome Taylor.

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India has won the first of the four ODI series between India and West Indies at the Sabina Park in Jamaica by 20 runs.

After winning the toss, India opted to bat first and the opener Dinesh Karthik gave a good start joining with Man of the Match Yuvraj Singh.

Scoreboard:

India innings (50 overs maximum)

KD Karthik c Ramdin b Bernard 67

G Gambhir c DJ Bravo b Taylor 13

RG Sharma c DJ Bravo b Baker 4

Yuvraj Singh c Ramdin b DJ Bravo 131

MS Dhoni run out (Ramdin) 41

RA Jadeja c Ramdin b DJ Bravo 0

YK Pathan not out 40

Harbhajan Singh not out 21

Extras (b 1, lb 8, w 10, nb 3) 22

Total (6 wickets; 50 overs) 339

Fall of wickets:1-25, 2-32, 3-167, 4-253, 5-253, 6-298

Bowling:JE Taylor:10-1-74-1-7.40,LS Baker:9-0-62-1-6.88,DJ Bravo:10-0-66-2-6.60,DE Bernard:8-0-50-1-6.25,SJ Benn:10-0-50-0-5.00,CH Gayle:3-0-28-0-9.33

Yuvraj Singh celebrates his 12th ODI Century

West Indies innings (target: 340 runs from 50 overs)

CH Gayle c Harbhajan Singh b Nehra 37

RS Morton c Dhoni b Pathan 42

RR Sarwan  run out (Singh/Dhoni) 45

S Chanderpaul c Jadeja b Pathan 63

DJ Bravo c RG Sharma b I Sharma 8

DM Bravo c Singh b Harbhajan Singh 19

JE Taylor lbw b Pathan 21

D Ramdin c Harbhajan Singh b Nehra 29

DE Bernard c RG Sharma b Nehra 19

SJ Benn b Singh 7

LS Baker not out 0

Extras (b 4, lb 4, w 19, nb 2) 29

Total (all out; 48.1 overs) 319

Fall of wickets:1-65, 2-100, 3-151, 4-188, 5-224, 6-241, 7-250, 8-294, 9-318, 10-319

Bowling:RP Singh:7-0-44-1-6.28,A Nehra:7.1-1-49-3-6.83,I Sharma:5-0-38-1-7.60,RA Jadeja:7-1-34-0-4.85,YK Pathan:8-0-56-3-7.00,Harbhajan Singh:10-0-56-1-5.60,Yuvraj Singh:4-0-34-0-8.50

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West Indies Captain Chris Gayle has said he is not underestimating the Indians despite the visitors fielding an understrength team for the four-match ODI series in Jamaica and St Lucia.

The Indians haven’t had the best of fortunes in the Caribbean over the last few years. In 2006, they were comprehensively beaten 4-1 before crashing out of the World Cup in the first round the following year.

West Indies – India Match Schedule: All matches are to be played at local time 9.30, MT 14.30

Jun 26: West Indies v India at Kingston

Jun 28: West Indies v India at Kingston

Jul 3: West Indies v India at Gros Islet

Jul 5: West Indies v India at Gros Islet

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Indian cricketers have failed to find a place in the World Twenty20 squad released by ICC in London on Monday. The squad consists of four Pakistan, three Sri Lanka, three South Africa and two West Indies players.

Member of Team India, who failed miserably in the T20 world championship, could not find a place in the ICC’s World T20 XI.

Younus Khan, who bids adieu to the shortest version of the game, has been made the skipper of the team alongwith his Pakistan team-mates all-rounder Shahid Afridi, wicket-keeper batsman Kamran Akmal and paceman Umar Gul.

Sri Lanka’s Tillakratne Dilshan, player of the tournament, named as an opener alongwith the West Indies Chris Gayle while South Africa Jacques Kallis and AB de Villiers included for the middle-order.

West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, teenage South Africa paceman Wayne Parnell and Sri Lanka spinner Ajantha Mendis complete the line-up, with Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga as the 12th man.

ICC’s World Twenty20 squad:

Jacques Kallis (SA), AB de Villiers (SA), Shahid Afridi (Pak), Kamran Akmal (Pak), Chris Gayle (WI), Tilakratne Dilshan (SL), Mohammed Younus Khan (Pak, Skipper), Dwayne Bravo (WI), Wayne Parnell (SA), Umar Gul (Pak), Ajantha Mendis (SL), Lasith Malinga (SL)

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