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Pakistan docked five WTC points for slow over rate during Cape Town Test
Pakistan have been docked five World Test Championship (WTC) points and fined 25% of their match fee for maintaining a slow over rate during their 10-wicket defeat in the second Test against South Africa in Cape Town. They were ruled to be five overs short of their target after time allowances were taken into consideration.
Match referee Richie Richardson imposed the sanction, which Pakistan captain Shan Masood accepted after pleading guilty to the charge – levelled by on-field umpires Kumar Dharmasena and Nitin Menon, third umpire Alex Wharf and fourth umpire Stephen Harris – which meant that was no need for a formal hearing.
Teams are deducted one point for every over by which they fall short of their target. This is Pakistan’s third points deduction in the 2023-25 WTC cycle. They were docked two points after the first Test against Australia in Perth in December 2023, and six points following the first Test against Bangladesh in Rawalpindi in August 2024.
As a consequence, Pakistan now have 35 points – instead of a possible 48 – from 12 Tests in the 2023-25 cycle. The latest deduction has brought their percentage of points contested – the number that determines a team’s position on the WTC table – down from 27.78 to 24.31. They remain in eighth place as before, but their points percentage is now only a few decimal points better than West Indies, who occupy the bottom of the nine-team table with a percentage of 24.24 – with no over-rate deductions.
The deduction adds a layer of intrigue to one of the two remaining series in the 2023-25 WTC cycle – Pakistan are due to host West Indies for two Tests, in Karachi and Multan, starting January 16.
[Cricinfo]
Chamari Athapaththu is set to miss the final phase of the WPL for UP Warriorz (UPW) to join Sri Lanka on a white-ball tour of New Zealand starting March 4 in Napier. Athapaththu’s departure will be the second big blow for UPW who are already without their full-time captain Alyssa Healy because of injury.
ESPNcricinfo has learnt that as of now, Athapaththu is going to be available for UPW until February 26, which is four more games for them, before she tends to national duties. After their game on February 26, against Mumbai Indians in Bengaluru, UPW will fly to Lucknow for the final league phase of the tournament where they will play three home matches. They left Athapaththu out of the XI in the clash they lost to Gujarat Giants.
Athapaththu was named captain of Sri Lanka’s 16 member side released by SLC on Monday and the squad is scheduled to leave for New Zealand on February 22 for three ODIs and as many T20Is.
Allrounder Amelia Kerr is the only New Zealand player in the WPL this season and she, unlike Athapaththu, is going to miss the bilateral series next month to play the entire WPL, including the knockouts if MI qualify for those again. If MI make it to the final, scheduled for March 15, Kerr will also miss the first two T20is slotted for March 14 and 16 in Christchurch. Last year too, Kerr had skipped the home bilateral T20Is against England to be available for the entire duration of the WPL.
In 2024, the calendar clash between the final leg of WPL and the T20I series in New Zealand had become a much bigger issue when England captain Heather Knight (RCB) and Lauren Bell (UPW) had opted out of WPL completely to represent their national team. Coincidentally, Athapaththu had replaced Bell for UPW then.
However, since then boards like the ECB have assured their players they won’t schedule international games during the WPL, which is set to move from the current February-March window to January-February 2026 onwards, according to the new women’s Future Tours Programme (FTP). To avoid such clashes between international series and other T20 leagues, the Hundred (August) and the WBBL (November) have also been given separate windows in the FTP that runs till 2029.
[Cricinfo]
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Showers or thundershowers may occur at a few places in Galle, Matara, Kaluthara and Rathnapura districts in the evening or night
WEATHER FORECAST FOR 20 FEBRUARY 2025
Issued at 05.30 a.m. on 20 February 2025 by the Department of Meteorology
Misty conditions can be expected at some places in Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, Uva, North-western, Northern and North-central provinces during the morning.
Showers or thundershowers may occur at a few places in Galle, Matara, Kaluthara and Rathnapura districts in the evening or night. Mainly dry weather will prevail elsewhere over the island.
The general public is kindly requested to take adequate precautions to minimize damages caused by temporary localized strong winds and lightning during thundershowers.
WEATHER FORECAST FOR SEA AREAS AROUND THE ISLAND DURING NEXT 24 HOURS
[Issued at 05.30 a.m. on 20 February 2025]
Mainly fair weather will prevail over the sea areas around the island.
Winds will be north-easterly and speed will be (20-30) kmph. Wind speed can increase up to 40 kmph at times in the sea areas off the coast extending from Colombo to Mannar via Puttalam.
The sea areas off the coasts extending from Colombo to Mannar via Puttalam can be fairly rough at times. Other sea areas around the island will be slight.
President Trump has launched a fresh attack on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a “dictator” and deepening the rift between the two leaders.
His latest salvo came after Zelensky, reacting to US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia from which Kyiv was excluded, said the US president was “living in a disinformation space” governed by Moscow.
“Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The “dictator” slur quickly prompted criticism from European leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said “it is simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelensky his democratic legitimacy”.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer made it clear he backed Zelensky in a phone call to the Ukrainian president. A Downing Street spokesperson said Sir Keir “expressed his support for President Zelensky as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader”. It was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War Two,” the spokesperson added.
Zelensky’s five-year term of office was due to come to an end in May 2024. However, Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and elections are suspended.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also criticised Trump’s use of the word “dictator” while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called the comments “absurd”. “If you look at the real world instead of just firing off a tweet, then you know who in Europe has to live in the conditions of a dictatorship: people in Russia, people in Belarus,” she told broadcaster ZDF.
A White House official said Trump’s latest post was in direct response to Zelensky’s “disinformation” comments.
“I love Ukraine,” Trump continued, “but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died.” In the meantime, the US was “successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia,” he said.
On Tuesday US and Russian officials held their first high-level, face-to-face talks since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The former prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, told the BBC that Russia was “popping champagne right now” in response to Trump’s comments.
“Volodymyr Zelensky is a completely legitimate president,” he said. “We cannot hold elections under martial law.”
The war of words began with comments made by Trump on Tuesday at a news conference at Mar-A-Lago in Florida, when he blamed Ukraine for the war.
Trump was asked by BBC News what his message was to Ukrainians who might feel betrayed, to which he replied: “I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat, well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily.”
“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” Trump added.
Trump did not mention that President Vladimir Putin took the decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
Then on Wednesday, Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv: “We are seeing a lot of disinformation and it’s coming from Russia. With all due respect to President Donald Trump as a leader… he is living in this disinformation space.”
He added that he believed “the United States helped Putin to break out of years of isolation”.
Later in the day, the Ukrainian leader said the world faced the choice to be “with Putin or with peace” and announced he would be meeting Washington’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, on Thursday.
Earlier, Zelensky also rejected Trump’s attempts to access Ukraine’s rare minerals, saying no security guarantees were offered in exchange.
Trump has attempted to make an issue out of Zelensky’s popularity, claiming the Ukrainian president had only a 4% approval rating. But BBC Verify reports that polling conducted this month found 57% of Ukrainians said they trusted the president.
In Wednesday’s explosive Truth Social post, Trump also took aim at Europe, saying the war in Ukraine is “far more important to Europe than it is to us”. “We have a big, beautiful ocean as a separation,” he said.
Europe had “failed to bring peace” in the region, he added.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke to reporters, saying he would meet Trump “with pleasure”.
For its part, the EU said it would place further sanctions on Russia.
The new sanctions target Russian aluminium and dozens of vessels suspected of illegally transporting oil. They would also disconnect more Russian banks from the global Swift payment system and ban more Russian media outlets from broadcasting in Europe.
[BBC]
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