Hilditch does an encore with no Oz selector present during Australia’s warm up game

September 7th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting announced Monday that he will retire from international Twenty20 matches. Ponting will remain captain of the Australian Test and one-day sides but will step away from the international Twenty20 matches in an effort to prolong his playing career.

September 1st, 2009 MELBOURNE - Australia's cricket selectors have added West Australian middle order batsman Adam Voges to the Australia one-day squad on the tour of England. Voges, 32, replaces injured wicket-keeper Brad Haddin, who had surgery on a fractured finger last week.

August 30th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Former Test selector John Benaud has blamed the Australian selection panel for a series of blunders, including dumping opening batsman Phil Hughes for Shane Watson, opting for wicketkeeper Brad Haddin over Graham Manou and leaving behind a spare batsman. Benaud has called for an overhaul of the four-man panel, claiming the team of Andrew Hilditch, Jamie Cox, Merv Hughes and David Boon lacks balance and innovation, and is too stubborn to change.

August 27th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Cricket Australia's embattled chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch has said that he is pleased with the selection decisions made in the Ashes series and says he has no plans to retire. "As far as the selection processes are concerned, we had a really good Ashes, generally speaking," Hilditch said yesterday.

August 25th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Chairman of Australian selectors, Andrew Hilditch, has rejected criticism for not playing spinner Nathan Hauritz in the fifth Ashes Test, and said that Australia lost the Test because they got 160 in the first innings. Hilditch admitted that his panel was "gutted" by Australia's 2-1 Ashes loss to England.

August 22nd, 2009 MELBOURNE - Despite being sidelined for the entire Ashes series due to injuries, fast bowler Brett Lee has found a place in the 15-member Australian squad for the Champions Trophy in South Africa from Sep 22. Cricket Australia (CA) national selection panel's chairman Andrew Hilditch said the selectors decided to pick a squad which is similar to the Ashes team.

August 22nd, 2009 MELBOURNE - Nine of the players currently playing in the fifth Ashes Test at The Oval, have been included in Australia's 15-man squad for next month's Champion's Trophy to be played in South Africa. The national selection panel has resisted the temptation to blood some exciting youngsters.

August 12th, 2009 ADELAIDE - The chairman of Australia's cricket selection committee, Andrew Hilditch, has declared that Ben Hilfenhaus, Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle are the future of the Australian bowling attack and that fourth Test hero Stuart Clark will be dumped for the Ashes decider at The Oval. "Stuart Clark got the nod (last Test) and he did a good job, but the other three bowled exceptionally well also and took more wickets," the Daily Telegraph quoted Hilditch, as saying.

August 11th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Australia has named Victorian leftarmer Dirk Nannes in its Twenty20 squad to play England only months after he represented the Netherlands at the world T20 tournament. The inclusion of 33-year-old Nannes and resting of captain Ricky Ponting are the main surprises in the national squads named on Tuesday for the seven one-day international matches and two T20 matches which follow the current Ashes series in England.

July 31st, 2009 LONDON - Injured Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin faces the danger of missing the rest of the ongoing Ashes series due to a fractured finger. Haddin was injured moments before the start of third Test at Edgbaston Thursday and in almost the same spot where Glenn McGrath fatefully sprained his ankle by tripping on a cricket ball during the warm-up for the corresponding game four years ago.

July 13th, 2009 KARACHI - Former Test spinner Iqbal Qasim was Monday installed as the new Pakistan chief cricket selector. Qasim, 55, will take over from another former Test cricketer Wasim Bari, who served as an interim chief selector following the resignation of Abdul Qadir as the chairman of the national selection committee last month because of differences with the Pakistan team management and senior board officials.

July 4th, 2009 WORCESTER - Australia's national cricket selection committee has admitted it may have mismanaged the veteran pacer Brett Lee after his difficult marriage break-up last year. Selection committee chairman Andrew Hilditch now says that perhaps Lee should not have been sent to India last October with so little preparation as a result of his personal problems.

July 4th, 2009 KARACHI - Former Pakistan chief selector Abdul Qadir is preparing ammunition for his July 14 meeting with a parliamentary committee and says he will candidly inform the Members of the National Assembly (MNA) about the irregularities in the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). Qadir, a former Pakistan Test leg-spinner, said that he would also try to meet President Asif Ali Zardari, who is also the chief patron of the PCB, as he wants to inform him about all the problems in the board.

June 10th, 2009 LONDON - Legendary fast bowler Wasim Akram is sick and tired of seeing retired old men at the helm of Pakistan cricket, and is convinced that this is the right time for the younger generation to come forward in a bid to bring the sport back on track in the country. The former Pakistani captain believes that the change of guard could start with the appointment of a "youngish" chief selector in place of Abdul Qadir, who has recently resigned from the position.

June 5th, 2009 LAHORE - Pakistan's former chief selector Salahuddin Ahmad Sallu has advised the national cricket team to take the back-to-back defeats in the warm-up matches as wake-up calls before entering the challenging environment of the World Twenty20 Championships. Pakistan lost the second warm-up match to arch-rivals India by nine-wickets on Wednesday night, which was the team's second loss following the 59-run defeat at the hands of South Africa on Tuesday.