Southampton supporters in the Transfer Tavern are eagerly anticipating the 2018/19 Premier League season following the news that Mark Hughes has penned a long-term deal to remain as the club’s manager.

The 54-year-old took over at St Mary’s back in March following the sacking of Mauricio Pellegrino, who had up until that point overseen a shambles of a league campaign, and one that left the Saints in danger of losing their top-flight status. Yet former Stoke City chief Hughes led the side to safety with key victories over Bournemouth and Swansea City, eventually ending up 17th in the Premier League table, three points clear of the relegation zone.

Regardless, many of our resident Southampton fans will be expecting a lot better this time round, and as such are likely to be intrigued by recent reports suggesting that Jack Grealish is seeking to leave Aston Villa this summer.

But with Tottenham reportedly in pole position for the £4.5 million-rated sensation (as per Transfermarkt), Hughes’ Southampton must seek to hijack their move for the 22-year-old during the close season.

Ultimately, while there is no doubting that the lure of working with Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino, given his track record of developing young talent, is going to interest Grealish, he must be somewhat concerned that he is likely to find it difficult to get into the starting eleven, what with Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, and Son Heung-min enjoying decent seasons last term.

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Yes, Pochettino is likely to give him the opportunity to shine, as he has done with messrs Alli, Eric Dier, and Harry Kane during his stint in North London, but with Spurs eyeing major honours and perhaps a Premier League title challenge this term, Grealish may find it tough to command the regular football he wants at Tottenham.

Whereas given Southampton’s struggles in the final third of the pitch, alongside their own willingness to develop and nurture young talent, the 22-year-old may find St Mary’s the best destination for his progression.

The Saints only managed 37 goals in 38 Premier League games last term to underline their supreme difficulties in the attacking department, with the likes of Sofiane Boufal, Nathan Redmond, and Dusan Tadic (bar from his brace against Bournemouth) failing to live up to expectations.

And if the South Coast outfit are serious about reaching the top half of the division again, having done so in each of the four seasons prior to the last one, Hughes will have to improve the attacking ranks – Grealish’s arrival would do just that.

The 22-year-old may only have scored three goals and laid on six assists for Aston Villa last term, but there is no doubting that he developed a maturity that hadn’t been seen in his career to date, perhaps suggesting that he is ready to return to the top-flight.

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And having failed to do so with Villa, having got agonisingly close in losing the Championship play-off final in May, the 22-year-old reportedly appears willing to leave his boyhood club this summer – Southampton should be his destination.

Thus, Hughes’ men simply must seek to hijack Tottenham’s move for the English youngster, to potentially offer him the best place for his development in the years to come.

Southampton fans… what do you think? Let us know!

Mohamed Salah had a disappointing end to a scintillating season for Liverpool as he dislocated his shoulder in the Champions League final and limped out of the group stages at the World Cup with Egypt.

His mood has certainly changed now, though, as he has put pen to paper on a new long-term contract at Anfield.

[brid autoplay=”true” video=”255848″ player=”12034″ title=”Watch Liverpool’s opening fixtures for the 201819 Premier League season”]

The club have not specified the length of the deal, but according to the Liverpool Echo, Salah is now tied to the Merseyside outfit until 2023, and more importantly, a release clause has not been inserted.

During the attacker’s prolific first season at Liverpool, in which he scored 44 goals in all competitions, he reportedly attracted interest from other clubs.

In the past, the Reds have lost key players, including Luis Suarez and Philippe Coutinho, to Barcelona, and fears grew among the fanbase when Salah started getting linked to Real Madrid in the media.

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News of his contract extension, which is likely to include a huge pay rise, will allow supporters to relax for a moment.

However, Coutinho also signed a new deal before leaving the club less than a year later, so fresh contracts do not always equal long-term commitment.

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Nevertheless, Liverpool fans have been left overjoyed by the news that Salah does not have a release clause written into the new terms.

Brydon Coverdale in Perth 15-Dec-2009Australia and West Indies have both been hit by a series of injuries the day before the third Test in Perth, with Peter Siddle ruled out, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Adrian Barath unlikely, and Nathan Hauritz also in doubt.The problems have left Australia with one confirmed debutant, the Victoria fast bowler Clint McKay, who will replace his state team-mate Siddle. And Steven Smith, the 20-year-old batsman-legspinner, has been put on standby for Hauritz and will fly from Sydney to Perth on Tuesday night.Hauritz took a blow to his spinning finger while fielding at training on Tuesday and although he did bowl afterwards, he suffered some soreness and will not know his fate until the morning of the match. Smith has starred with the bat for New South Wales this week, scoring a century against Queensland, but not with the ball.Ricky Ponting said the replacement spinner would not necessarily step straight into the starting line-up if Hauritz missed out. The Tasmania fast bowler Brett Geeves joined the squad on Monday night and will be considered along with Smith if Hauritz wakes up with a swollen finger.”There’ll be a chance of that,” Ponting said of a four-man pace attack. “Geeves flew in last night and trained with us this morning. There’ll be that possibility but I’ve said for a while it’s always my preference to go into a Test match with a specialist spin bowler but we’ll wait and see what happens.”West Indies are likely to have two changes with the key batsmen Chanderpaul and Barath both in serious doubt. Chanderpaul is still struggling with a finger problem after being struck on the hand in Adelaide, while Barath hurt his hamstring during the second Test.”It’s not looking too good but we’ll see what happens tomorrow,” the captain Chris Gayle said. “Those two guys are the worry for us right now. It’s a big blow going into the final Test match but having said that whoever gets that opportunity, hopefully they will make the best use of it.”Travis Dowlin is expected to come in and open with Gayle in place of Barath, while Chanderpaul’s spot is likely to be taken by Narsingh Deonarine. Ponting said the injuries to Chanderpaul, who Australia found almost impossible to dismiss last year in the Caribbean, and Barath, who made a hundred on debut in Brisbane, would be a major blow for West Indies.”That’s not ideal for them,” Ponting said. “Barath’s looked pretty good most times he’s come to the crease and we all know how much of a run scorer Chanderpaul is for them, so that’s two of the better players out of their batting so that’ll leave a couple of big holes. It’ll be nice for Clint to be bowling to some of their younger guys, in a way.”The opportunity for McKay opened up because Siddle, who was under a cloud during the week after suffering a strain to his left hamstring in Adelaide, woke up on Tuesday with some soreness following a lengthy spell in the WACA nets the previous day. It was enough for the Australians to err on the side of caution and Siddle, who will fly home to Melbourne, will aim to be available for the Boxing Day Test against Pakistan.”The deal was that for him to come up here and play this game it would have to be a seamless period and have no pain, no stiffness, no feeling at all of anything wrong,” Australia’s physio Alex Kountouris said. “He bowled yesterday and this morning he woke up and it’s a little bit stiff.”He was almost ready to play this one and he has done no harm, it’s just a bit of stiffness. So we’re going to go back to Melbourne now and just try a couple of little things, it’s probably more coming with his back we believe, so we’ll try to deal with that component of it. I’m fairly hopeful he will be okay [for Boxing Day].”Australia are already without Ben Hilfenhaus (knee), Stuart Clark (back) and Brett Lee (elbow) from the Ashes squad, leaving Mitchell Johnson as the only fast man from that tour who is still fully fit. The loss of Hilfenhaus, who was the Man of the Match in the Gabba victory, has been the biggest blow for Australia and Kountouris said the outlook for Hilfenhaus was still uncertain.”He has commenced bowling today so it will depend on how he is going over the next two or three times he bowls,” Kountouris said. “Knee tendonitis, or tendonitis anywhere, is a bit of a grey area. Most people play with pain, it’s just whether the level of the pain is severe enough to stop them doing what they have to do.”In his case he had it throughout England and he was fine, he got through, he just got to the point where it became very painful during the Brisbane Test match. Until he has another bowl and sees how he goes we really don’t know how long his prognosis is. We’re hopeful he will be up but we just don’t know at the moment.”

Cricinfo previews the Ranji Trophy semi-final between Karanataka and Uttar Pradesh

The Preview by Siddarth Ravindran02-Jan-2010

Match facts

January 3-6
Start time 09.30 (04.00 GMT)It has been 20 months since RP Singh played a Test•Getty Images

Big picture

After dominating the late nineties, with three Ranji championships in four years, the next decade wasn’t one to savour for Karnataka: they failed to reach the finals for ten straight years. In that time, Uttar Pradesh transformed themselves into perennial title contenders, contesting the finals thrice in the previous four years.This season, though, a revamped Karnataka have had a hiccup-free ride into the semi-finals on the back of a promising bunch of young batsmen and a bowling attack with bite. They opened the campaign with a thumping 185-run victory over UP in Meerut, strolled to big wins in three of the remaining five league games, and are yet to even concede the first-innings lead in the tournament.However, they can’t take a tenacious UP lightly, particularly as they are up against a bowling line-up that includes three players (Praveen Kumar, RP Singh and Piyush Chawla) with international exposure. Also, UP are packed with players well-versed in dealing with the pressures of playing quality teams in knock-out Ranji encounters, which will be a novel experience for many of Karnataka’s new boys.UP have also shown tremendous appetite for a scrap this season, bouncing back to prevail from dire situations like when they were rolled over for 62 by Bengal in Kanpur. It’s their bowling which will be their main strength, but their batsmen have put up timely, if not massive, runs to keep the season on track. “We are fighters, we don’t give up,” their captain Mohammad Kaif said on Saturday. “We don’t have any player scoring 1400 runs in a season, players averaging around 30, maximum 40-45, but we have eleven players contributing all the time.”

Form guide

(last five completed matches, most recent first)
Karnataka – DWWWD
Uttar Pradesh – DWDWD

Players to watch

A blistering century in the IPL sprung Manish Pandey from anonymity into national limelight. Making runs in the hit-and-giggle world of Twenty20s is all very well, but can he cut it in the first-class arena, the critics asked? This season, he has shown he can. First, there was the aggressive 194 against UP to rescue Karnataka from 27 for 3, then a century against Irfan Pathan and Co. but the most important innings was the assured 115 in the quarter-finals, when he shepherded the Karnataka tail past Punjab’s first-innings score.RP Singh has followed the well-worn path of Indian fast bowlers in recent times: start off mopping up plenty of wickets before gradually losing effectiveness over a few international seasons. It’s nearly two years now since RP played a Test, and his state fast-bowling mates, Praveen and Sudeep Tyagi, are ahead of him in the limited-overs pecking order. It’s been a lacklustre season so far – 20 wickets at 37.55 with no five-wicket hauls – and he doesn’t have too many more first-class games to impress the selectors.

Team news

Rahul Dravid said the final eleven won’t be chosen until he has had a look at the pitch on Sunday morning, but it will not be surprising if they retain the side that took on Punjab in the quarter-finals.Karnataka (likely) 1 Robin Uthappa, 2 KB Pawan, 3 G Satish, 4 Rahul Dravid (capt), 5 Manish Pandey, 6 Amit Verma, 7 CM Gautam (wk), 8 Sunil Joshi, 9 Vinay Kumar, 10 A Mithun, 11 S Aravind.With Praveen being available for the semi-finals, left-arm medium-pacer Shalabh Srivastava is likely to be sidelined. Chawla and Praveen Gupta will continue to share the spinning responsibilities.Uttar Pradesh (likely) 1 Tanmay Srivastava, 2 Shivkant Shukla, 3 Mohammad Kaif (capt), 4 Rohit Srivastava, 5 Parvinder Singh, 6 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 7 Piyush Chawla, 8 Praveen Kumar, 9 Amir Khan (wk), 10 Praveen Gupta, 11 RP Singh

Pitch and conditions

The track at the Chinnaswamy Stadium is expected to be a flat one, with both captains saying they would like to bat first on winning the toss. “It will not be like Delhi,” joked the curator, Narayan Raju, referring to the abandoned one-dayer against Sri Lanka last week. He said there will be some bounce on the first day after which it will get a little slower. With both teams having plenty of batting depth, we might be in for a game similar to the one the last time these two teams faced each other at the Chinnaswamy Stadium; Karnataka piled on 511 after being sent in, only to see UP counter with 567 to take away three points from a drawn match.

Quotes

“I think they have the experience in the semi-final and final knock-out level but on current form and in this season we have the momentum and are playing a little bit better than they are.”

“One advantage we have is that we have seen their young players, like Pandey, who are coming in, playing their first season, that will help us have better plans when they come in to bat than in the first match [in Meerut].”

A scintillating 53-ball century from big-hitting Shaun Marsh led Western Australia to a convincing win over New South Wales at the WACA

The Bulletin by Andrew Fuss05-Jan-2010
Scorecard
Mitchell Marsh, handed the ball for the first time in Twenty20 cricket, made it a memorable day for the Marsh family•Getty Images

A scintillating 53-ball century from big-hitting Shaun Marsh led Western Australia to a convincing win over New South Wales at the WACA. Former Australian opener Geoff Marsh watched from the stands as son Shaun hit the Blues attack to all corners, racking up a 168-run Big Bash record-partnership (for any team and any wicket) with fellow-opener Wes Robinson.So swift was Shaun’s second fifty that when he reached his hundred, Robinson was on just 54 – having beaten Shaun to the half-century mark.The Blues bowlers had started steadily through Josh Hazelwood and Mitchell Starc, backed up by some darting offspinners from Dominic Thornely, and had restricted the hosts to 87 off the first 12 overs. However, when Thornely exited the attack, Marsh unleashed fury on Dwayne Smith, Moises Henriques, and the often wayward Aaron Bird.He blasted six fours and the same number of sixes, including several effortless drives over long-off as the Warriors set the Blues an imposing target for victory.The visitors came out swinging with David Warner falling early to a good catch by Luke Pomersbach at cover from a lethal cut shot. Usman Khawaja fell shortly after trying to pull Michael Hogan and when Henriques was bowled trying to loft Brad Knowles, the Blues looked in dire straits.Aaron Heal ended a mini fightback from Steve Smith and Phil Jaques, dismissing them in consecutive balls and when Mitchell Marsh was handed the ball for the first time in Twenty20 cricket, the visitors were in for a tough time. The younger Marsh brother showed he’s got plenty of talent with the ball, regularly hitting the mid-130s kph, and gave father Geoff even more to smile about, taking 4 for 6 in just 2.2 overs to wrap up a comprehensive win.The Warriors moved to third on the table and will host Victoria on Sunday night, while the Blues dropped back to fifth (with a net run-rate of -1.667) with home matches against Queensland and South Australia to come.

Legendary legspin coach Terry Jenner will travel to Zimbabwe later this month to conduct clinics with some of the country’s up-and-coming bowlers

Cricinfo staff19-Jan-2010Legendary legspin coach Terry Jenner will travel to Zimbabwe later this month to conduct clinics with some of the country’s up-and-coming bowlers.”We are expecting Terry Jenner on January 26 to hold coaching courses with our spinners,” Ozias Bvute, Zimbabwe cricket’s chief executive, said. “This is part of our programme to improve the standard of cricket in the country.”The appearance of Jenner will help Zimbabwe’s aim of showing the wider world that the rows which blighted it over the past decade are a thing of the past. He follows in the footsteps of former England bowler Mike Hendrick who visited at the end of last year.

Harbhajan Singh, whose five-for won India a tense game against South Africa, has said their hunger to retain the No.1 ranking was the prime motivation behind their spirited comeback

Cricinfo staff18-Feb-2010Harbhajan Singh, whose five-for won India a tense game against South Africa, has said their hunger to retain the No.1 ranking motivated them in their spirited comeback in Kolkata after an innings-defeat in the first Test in Nagpur. “We wanted to be at the top of the table; we know we have the players to keep being No 1,” Harbhajan said after the game. “We are very happy and it’s fantastic to win the way we did. The heart was pumping in the end.”Harbhajan, who has a tremendous record at the Eden Gardens with 46 wickets in seven Tests at 21.76, kept picking wickets at crucial moments for India amid a determined South African resistance led by Hashim Amla’s heroic, unbeaten 127. His effort was significant, for India were without Zaheer Khan, who pulled his muscle to be ruled out of the Test as well as the subsequent ODI series.”This was probably a better wicket than Nagpur. We played fantastic cricket , the way we bowled on the first day and the way we batted. Today we just bowled with three bowlers but have done the job,” Harbhajan said. “Eden has been special to me. I don’t know what it but I have done well here always.”Hashim Amla, adjudged both man of the match and of the series, ended up unbeaten on 123. “I am feeling tired,” he said after the game. “I am very disappointed in losing this game. We could have saved it; there wasn’t anything unplayable in the wicket.”Amla’s vigil – he batted for more than six hours – ended when Morkel was out after a last-wicket stand lasting more than 20 overs. “Morne and I were just having some fun out there. He played really well and so did Parnell earlier. Fortunately, Morne and Parnell are decent batsmen and took lots of pressure of me.”Amla ended the series with 490 runs, and one dismissal, and was the most influential batsman on either team. “I am being just grateful that I have had a good tour,” he said. “I now have the one-dayers to look forward to.”

Daniel Vettori, the New Zealand captain, has criticised his batsmen for squandering a bright start to be bowled out for a below-par score and concede the Chappell-Hadlee trophy to Australia.

Cricinfo staff11-Mar-2010Daniel Vettori, the New Zealand captain, has criticised his batsmen for squandering a bright start to be bowled out for a below-par score and concede the Chappell-Hadlee trophy to Australia. New Zealand lost their third consecutive game to surrender the series after winning the opening fixture.”Unfortunately, [we made] the same mistakes as the previous two games,” Vettori said. “We did not put enough runs on the board, lost wickets at crucial times and put ourselves under far too much pressure. When you do that against Australia, you get yourself in trouble and that’s what happened today.”New Zealand, after being put in, blazed away to an attacking start, courtesy Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill, but lost steam in the middle overs to be eventually bowled out for 238 in the 45th over. “If you look at most of the dismissals, they were relatively soft dismissals,” Vettori said. “They just made poor mistakes and whether it is the mental shift from aggressiveness to accumulation, I’m not too sure. But they’re mistakes that shouldn’t have been made constantly and they have been made in the last three games.”The hosts lost six wickets for 57 runs in close to 19 overs after their positive start, and were rescued by Daryl Tuffey’s quickfire 34, which included four sixes, and support from the lower order. But Vettori rued the fact that his team – not for the first time in the series – failed to bat out its entire quota of covers. “That just hurts you,” Vettori said. “We took a gamble again with the Powerplay, with so many wickets down and have a crack. I thought the way Daryl played, we might get 500 but at the end we were pretty poor.”We knew we were under a par score, and we had to be aggressive and take a chance because if we kept going the way we were, we wouldn’t even have had a total to defend. So we took a chance, it looks when it works and bad when it doesn’t.”The rain interruption did provide New Zealand with a lifeline, for Australia were left to chase a revised target of 200 in 34 overs. Vettori had been critical of the Duckworth-Lewis system at the end of the second ODI, where a revised target made New Zealand’s chase more difficult. But, today, he admitted the system had handed his team an opportunity.”It’s a funny system,” Vettori said. “I said at the end of the second game that I didn’t quite understand it, but it gave us an opportunity. I suppose we put some pressure on with the ball, but we couldn’t maintain it from both ends and that hurts against Australia.”New Zealand head to Wellington for the fifth and final ODI and Vettori said Nathan McCullum, the offspinner, was likely to be given a go. “We’ll definitely look at Nathan McCullum coming into it,” he said. “Westpac is a bigger ground and it allows Nathan to come into the mix a little more, but we want to end the series on a high. 3-2 is not a result we wanted but it would be a start on the road to improvement, hopefully.”

Seamer Andre Adams helped Nottinghamshire get their Championship
challenge off to a perfect start as they completed a comprehensive victory over
Kent with more than a day to spare

17-Apr-2010
ScorecardAndre Adams finished with seven wickets in the game as Nottinghamshire completed a crushing victory over Kent•PA Photos

Seamer Andre Adams helped Nottinghamshire get their Championship
challenge off to a perfect start as they completed a comprehensive victory over
Kent with more than a day to spare.The Kiwi followed his four-wicket haul from Kent’s first innings with 3 for
78 as the visitors were bowled out for 224, handing Nottinghamshire a win by an innings
and 32 runs.Adams was ably assisted by Luke Fletcher (3 for 43), who took the key
wickets of Geraint Jones and Martin van Jaarsveld early on as Kent collapsed to
72 for 5. England one-day opener Joe Denly made 37 before he was lbw to Adams with the
first ball after lunch, and Samit Patel wrapped up the win before tea with the
wicket of Amjad Khan.Kent began the day requiring another 205 runs to make Nottinghamshire bat again, an
unlikely prospect given the way their line-up had collapsed during their first
innings. It proved to be a similar story the second time around as Fletcher combined
with Ryan Sidebottom in a tight opening hour, before Fletcher struck twice in
consecutive overs.First Jones drove at a ball that bounced on him to edge to Adams at third slip
for a sharp catch, and then key Kent batsman van Jaarsveld was lbw to a ball
that kept a fraction low.Sidebottom followed up by removing nightwatchman Philip Edwards in the next
over as the batsman, set up with a succession of short deliveries, pulled
another straight to Mark Wagh at mid-on. Denly and Sam Northeast held out for an hour before wicketkeeper Chris Read brilliantly stumped Northeast off the bowling of Patel from the last ball of the morning session.Once Adams saw off Denly at the start of the second session, the writing was on
the wall for the visitors, and while tail-enders Azhar Mahmood, Matthew Coles
and Khan swung merrily with the bat to hit a few boundaries, the result was
never in doubt. Khan was last to go, bowled by Patel, with Stevens left unbeaten on 42 not
out.

Micky Stewart, the former Surrey captain, has described Alec Bedser, who died on Sunday evening at the age of 91, as the “typical traditional English professional cricketer”

Cricinfo staff05-Apr-2010Micky Stewart, the former Surrey captain, has described Sir Alec Bedser, who died on Sunday evening at the age of 91, as the “typical traditional English professional cricketer”.”This is obviously a very sad day for me and everybody who has been associated with Alec both during his Surrey and England days,” Stewart said. “I first met him in my debut season with Surrey in 1953 when he was the senior professional and it was an honour and a great experience to play with him.”He was an incredibly accurate medium pace bowler with great control and I know he was extremely proud of the great Sir Don Bradman saying he was the finest bowler of his type that he played against.”He was also great friends to myself and my family. Whenever there were moments of concern, Alec was always the first on the phone to see that everything was okay.”Alec was the typical traditional English professional cricketer and never quite understood all the fuss that goes on about the game today – both on and off the field. When he took his eleven wickets against India in 1946, the press rang at home to speak to his mother for her reaction. Her reply was, ‘Well, isn’t that what he’s supposed to do as a bowler?’.””Alec Bedser deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest England bowlers of all time, a master of the craft of seam bowling and a true legend of the game,” said Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board.”His contribution to cricket in this country as a player and an administrator was immense and he will forever be associated with Surrey’s famous County Championship winning sides of the 1950s,” said Clarke.Paul Sheldon, the Surrey chief executive, added: “Sir Alec was an iconic figure in world cricket. He upheld all the great traditions of the game and represented an era that has had a lasting impact on the history of Test and county cricket. Along with his twin brother Eric, he was one of the most recognisable characters in cricket across the globe.”In our sadness at the passing of one of the worlds greatest cricketers, we can also celebrate the end of an innings which brought pleasure to millions – and who was respected by all who were privileged to have known him.”