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Phil DeFreitas
Showed he had lost none of his competitive spirit when he turned out for the PCA Masters XI in the International 20:20 at Grace Road, the place where his career began in 1985. He finished his cricketing days at Leicestershire – having travelled via Lancashire and Derbyshire – after bowling more than 120,000 first-class overs. Even in recent seasons, he continued to run in and complete a heavy workload. He was in his pomp while playing for Lancashire, where he was a part of their run of success in the one-day format, before forming a formidable three-pronged attack at Derby with Devon Malcolm and Dominic Cork. In 44 Tests he took 140 wickets and was the link between the end of England’s success in 1980s and their demise during the early 90s. Wednesday Interview with DeFreitasWarren Hegg
His career was cruelly ended two weeks prematurely in freakish circumstances. A ball from James Anderson bowled James Middlebrook, the Essex offspinner; the ball rebounded towards Hegg, who took a nasty blow on his thumb. The subsequent break meant he finished six victims short of George Duckworth’s Lancashire record of 925. Hegg had been a loyal servant for his county since 1986 and was central to the one-day success they enjoyed during the 1990s. His stunning 81 against Yorkshire in 1995 is still fondly remembered at Old Trafford. His career did not have the conclusion it deserved, as Hegg gave up the Lancashire captaincy at the end of the 2004 following their relegation in the County Championship. He was denied a final outing at Lord’s when Lancashire capitulated against Warwickshire in the C&G semi-final, having fallen at the same stage in the previous four seasons. His international ambitions were hampered because his prime years overlapped with the time when England were trying to cover two bases with their wicketkeeper, invariably returning to Alec Stewart. However, he enjoyed a memorable debut when he was part of the England team which beat Australia by 12 runs at Melbourne on the 1998-99 tour. He toured again in 2001-02, to India and New Zealand, but was overlooked in favour of James Foster.Matthew Maynard
One of the most prolific county batsmen of his generation but he never made the grade at international level. He was labelled a troublemaker, and did himself no favours on the West Indies tour in 1994 when he had little else to do but enjoy the Caribbean life away from the cricket field. However, he is now getting a second chance on the international stage – and has already making a significant impact – as England’s assistant coach. He took the role for the one-day matches of England’s winter in 2004-05 and, following an early season illness this summer, retired from playing and took on a permanent role within the England team. Throughout his career with Glamorgan he was a run machine, instrumental in bringing the County Championship to Wales in 1997.Maynard joins Team England

Graham Thorpe
A drawn-out retirement process for Thorpe, which began with him announcing in May that he was going to be part of the coaching set up at New South Wales. It ended with him saying he was retiring from all cricket, just as England’s Ashes campaign was hitting full speed. In between, he played his 100th Test, against Bangladesh at Chester-le-Street, and was then dropped from the England team for the first Ashes Test at Lord’s in favour of Kevin Pietersen. Thorpe was always going to call it a day at the end of this summer, but he was not able to do things exactly on his own terms. This should not detract from his superb career with Surrey and England. It is easy to forget, with the national team’s current success, that Thorpe almost single-handedly kept the ship afloat during the 1990s. On the domestic front he scored over 21,000 first-class runs at more than 45 – figures which aptly reflect his talents. His final figures would have been even better if he had been able to concentrate solely on his cricket.England’s middle-order PollyfillaAlan Mullally
It is easy to forget that, during the dark days when England slumped to bottom of the world rankings in 1999, Mullally was a key member in the attack. During the previous winter he had restarted his international career by playing in four of the Ashes Tests before producing consistent performances in the one-day matches. It was in the one-day arena that he really showed his potential, rising to fourth in the world rankings. Unlike many bowlers around the world he found it easier to bowl with the white ball than the red one, often spraying the ball around in Tests while having a brilliant economy in ODIs. He played throughout the 1999 World Cup and was a member of Duncan Fletcher’s first touring squad to South Africa in 1999-2000. However, he was a one-dimensional player and didn’t survive long into the new millennium except for a one-off recall against Australia in 2001. His county career was split between Leicestershire, whom he helped to two consecutive County Championships, and Hampshire where he was one of the early signings by Rod Bransgrove. However his influence began to wane as young players came to the fore and he was forced to concede to mounting injuries towards the end of this season.

Gavin Hamilton
In the days before Andrew Flintoff was given his famous “talking to,” England were involved in their decade-long search for an allrounder. Duncan Fletcher, in his first overseas tour to South Africa, plumped for Hamilton, who had performed commendably for Scotland in the World Cup that summer. He started the tour with runs in the warm-up matches and was thrown in at Johannesburg – where England were 2 for 4 against Donald and Pollock – but bagged a pair and was wicketless in 15 overs. He was one of the few players to be dumped during the Fletcher era after just a single Test – and never came close again. His county career went into a nosedive when he suffered the yips and, although he moved from Yorkshire to Durham, there was never a feeling of longevity about him. However, he has helped Scotland into the 2007 World Cup so still has the chance to extend his international career.Trevor Penney
A Warwickshire stalwart for 17 years, Trevor Penney retired from first-class cricket at the end of the 2005 season to take up a post as Sri Lanka’s assistant coach, where he teamed up with his former county team-mate, Tom Moody. Originally from Zimbabwe, Penney joined the county in 1988 whereupon he embarked on a four-year residential qualification. The time on the sidelines paid off in the early 1990s, when he was an integral member of the most successful Warwickshire team of all time, including the side that won a unique treble in 1994. In all, he played in seven one-day finals, the last coming against Hampshire at the end of 2005. Like his fellow Southern African, Jonty Rhodes, Penney was perhaps best known for his outstanding fielding which, even at the age of 37, remained good enough to earn him a role as one of England’s substitute fielders in the 2005 Ashes campaign. He had been appointed as England’s fielding coach for that series, and is set to make significant strides in that field in years to come.Mark Alleyne
He was a key part of Gloucestershire’s one-day success when they won Lord’s finals as if by habit, and he scored a memorable 112 in the 1999 B&H Super Cup final. But Alleyne was there through the lean times as well, whether it was shoring up the batting or putting in the hard yards with his medium pace. England recognition took some time in arriving, but he certainly didn’t disgrace himself during the 10 matches he played. His best performance came at East London, on the 1999-2000 tour, where he scored a half-century and took three wickets but was unable to prevent a South Africa win.Michael Burns
If ever there was a bits-and-pieces player it was Burns. Through his career with Warwickshire and Somerset he has batted in the top order, bowled medium pace, kept wicket and even captained Somerset when no one else wanted to do it. He played a part in the glory days at Edgbaston in 1994 and 1995 but became a victim of Mark Garaway’s youth policy at Taunton.

Lucy Pearson
She was the fast-bowling spearhead of the England women’s team for almost a decade. She announced her retirement in April after missing the semi-final of the World Cup with a stress injury in her left ankle, and returned to her day job, teaching English Studies at Solihull School near Birmingham. As England’s leading wicket-taker in recent years, she became only the second woman in over 70 years of Test cricket – and the first for nearly 50 years – to take 11 wickets in a Test against Australia, at The Bankstown Oval in February 2003, with 7 for 51 in the first innings and 11 for 107 in the match. Her final international career statistics are impressive. In 12 Test matches, she took 30 wickets at 29.36, and in 62 one-day games she took 68 wickets, at an average of 22.97 and an economy rate of 3.09.Clare Taylor
Clare Taylor was one of the most successful bowlers in the women’s game. She became the first England player to take 100 international wickets in 2002 and was the second highest wicket-taker overall at the World Cup in 2000. She played 16 Tests and 105 ODIs, was made a Member of the British Empire in 2000 for services to cricket and was also part .of the England side that won the 1993 World Cup at Lord’s. She was also a talented footballer too, having represented Liverpool Ladies as well as playing in the football World Cup.Also retiring
Paul Grayson (Yorkshire, Essex, England), Andy Pratt (Durham), Rob Turner (Somerset)Some of the most recognised umpires are also leaving the game: David Shepherd, Merv Kitchen, Alan Whitehead and John Hampshire are all hanging up their coats.

The five-day conditioning camp for the cream of India’s pace bowling talent started off under cloudy skies in Bangalore on Tuesday morning. Members of the national team were joined by those on the fringes, and some who hope to catch the eye over the next fortnight. Gregory King, the South African trainer, oversaw proceedings as the players were put through a series of tests to determine their fitness levels after a month and a half of rest and recuperation.The 21 men chosen limbered up with a yoga session in the morning and then arrived at the National Cricket Academy so that their fitness levels could be assessed through a combination of bleep tests, cardiovascular endurance tests and core stability tests. Talking to the media, King insisted that the camp was designed with the sole intention of getting the players into shape ahead of what promises to be a gruelling season. “The focus is on fitness, not on injury prevention or the treatment of injury,” he said. “Of course, there will be a bit of bowling and throwing, but then it’s part of fitness training.”The exercises, he said, would be bowler-specific, with some needing more work in certain areas. The accent on fitness assumes added importance when you consider how contenders like Zaheer Khan have been affected by injuries over the past season.After the morning workout, Lakshmipathy Balaji spoke to the media, and the grin that charmed the Pakistani public was as engaging as ever. Stressing that he would like to continue where he left off at the end of last season, Balaji said that a recent tour of England with his club side, Chemplast, had been an invaluable experience, especially his interaction with Mike Hendrick, the former England pace bowler.”It was very good interacting with him,” said Balaji. “I got tips on how to pause in the delivery stride, on having a smooth run up, rhythm, and gradually increasing the pace. I also worked on making the batsmen wait for the ball, like what [Javagal] Srinath and Zaheer do.”

Alderley Edge:
Berkshire: 466-5 & 71-3 v Cheshire 409-6dBarrow-in-Furness:
Cumberland 154 & 244-5 v Lincolnshire 365Dean Park:
Shropshire 316 & 55-2 v Dorset 216Challow:
Cornwall 408-9 v Oxfordshire 235Longton:
Staffordshire 429-8d v Cambridgeshire 262 & 121-4Ransomes:
Bedfordshire 458-6 & 145 v Suffolk 306-6dCorsham:
Wiltshire 297 & 95-4 v Herefordshire 270

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday announcedthe itinerary for the Zimbabwean tour of India in 2002.The 36-day tour which will immediately follow the India-England serieswill see India and Zimbabwe clashing in two Tests and five one-dayers.Delhi’s Feroze Shah Kotla will host the first Test from February 20 to24 while Nagpur would host the second Test from February 28 to March4. Interestingly, the two venues had played hosts for the two Teststhat were played when the Zimbabweans last toured India in 2000.India won that two Test series 1-0, after registering a sevenwicketwin in the Delhi Test. That was the series that saw Andy Flower employhis now famous reverse sweep while scoring runs by the ton against theIndians. Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, meanwhile, were thebatting heroes for India in a series dominated by batsmen.Faridabad, Mohali, Guwahati, Cochin and Hyderabad in that order willhost the five one-dayers between the two sides.The proposed itinerary:Feb 12, 2002: Arrival
Feb 15-17: Three-day match (venue yet to be fixed)
Tests:Feb 20-24: First Test at Delhi
Feb 28-Mar 4: Second Test at Nagpur
One-dayers:March 7: First one-day International at Faridabad
March 10: Second one-day International at Mohali
March 13: Third one-day International at Guwahati
March 16: Fourth one-day International at Cochin
March 19: Fifth and final one-dayer at Hyderabad
March 20: Departure

ScorecardHarry Gurney finished with eight wickets in the match•PA Photos

These are troubling times for Sussex: too many bowlers injured, too many batsmen out of form and too many counties threatening to finish above them in the First Division table. Relegation would have been a long-odds chance before the season began, but not now. Not after this desperate day’s work.Full credit to Nottinghamshire, of course, who began the latest round of matches in a similar position, at least points-wise, but have dominated their hosts from the moment on the first afternoon when James Taylor and Chris Read embarked on a sixth-wicket partnership that was to realise 365 runs.But while those two deflated Sussex, it was Harry Gurney who all but destroyed them. The currently out of favour England one-day bowler bent his back during every spell, dragging extra pace and disconcerting bounce out of a pitch which, by and large, still encouraged batsmen to dream of big scores.Gurney’s reward was a five-for in the first innings – his second against Sussex this season – and three more wickets once a doomed home side were forced to follow-on 357 runs behind. Derbyshire’s Mark Footitt may register more brightly on England’s radar at the moment when it comes to left-arm pace bowlers but, on this showing, Gurney should remain in the reckoning.”I thought Harry Gurney had an exceptional match,” said Mick Newell, Nottinghamshire’s coach. “He was fast and aggressive throughout and presented a challenge for the Sussex batsmen. He bowled with serious pace and was impressive whether he was bowling left-arm over or left-arm round. What we want to do now is see him bowl like this more consistently.”What of Sussex, though? Wins against Hampshire and Worcestershire right at the start of the season prompted thoughts of a title challenge. Now, as things stand, only Hampshire are below them in the table – and two of their last five matches are against the seemingly unstoppable Yorkshire.Much can be made of the fact that Sussex are without five pace bowlers – Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, Ajmal Shahzad, Jimmy Anyon and Lewis Hatchett – because of injury. And of those, only Jordan can be expected, with any degree of certainty, to figure in the final third of the championship programme.As a result, the promising Ollie Robinson is playing on despite sore shins and a recently dislocated finger when he – like the equally raw Matthew Hobden – could do with a rest.But, if anything, it is the batting that currently causes even more concern, especially after today. Resuming this morning on a shaky but not hopeless 157 for 4, Sussex lost their last six wickets for 56 runs and did not even reach lunch unscathed second time around – opener Luke Wells giving catching practice to the slip cordon.Thereafter, it was helter-skelter stuff with neither the next boundary nor the next wicket very far away. Matt Machan and Luke Wright scored 108 and 67 respectively at the rate of a run a ball as a lightning fast outfield continued to give full reward, but what Sussex need more than anything was a bit of stickability.On the day when former England one-day player Mike Yardyannounced his intention to retire at the end of this season, the hosts could find no-one to play the kind of battling innings championship innings their ex-captain might have produced when at his best.The current skipper, Ed Joyce, typifies Sussex’s struggles. The Irishman scored seven championship hundreds last season while making nearly 1,400 runs at an average of 66 but this year he is century-less and averaging below 30.Joyce, Chris Nash and Craig Cachopa were all given second chances in the second innings with three catches going down. But not one of them made Notts pay any sort of price – unlike Read, who was reprieved on day one and turned 35 into 121.By the end, Sussex could not even make their visitors claim the extra half-hour, being bowled out in 61 overs for 254 to make it 310 for 16 on the day. Just as well, perhaps, that the Members’ Forum with director of cricket Mark Robinson was held this morning, rather than after play.

Opener Evin Lewis struck 74 off 71 balls as Trinidad & Tobago defeated Jamaica by 84 runs at Queen’s Park Oval. Lewis propelled his side to a speedy start after electing to bat, before a middle-order collapse had the hosts fall to 119 for 6 before the halfway point of the innings.A lower-order revival was led by Rayad Emrit and Marlon Richards, who scored 43 and 31 respectively to get T&T past 200. Legspinner Damion Jacobs finished with 3 for 40 as Jamaica restricted T&T to 137 in 47.2 overs. Richards continued his solid match by ripping out the Jamaica middle order to claim 5 for 36 as the visitors were eventually bowled out for 137 in the 43rd over.Barbados held off a gritty ICC Americas upset bid to win by four wickets in St Augustine. The Americas squad were sent in and found themselves in trouble by the 30-over mark at 110 for 8 before Alex Amsterdam’s 73 off 87 balls propped up his side to a total of 183 in 43.1 overs.Amsterdam received support from tailender Hammad Shahid with the pair putting on 66-run stand for the ninth wicket before Sulieman Benn claimed both men to wrap up the innings. The left-arm spinner was named Man of the Match for his 4 for 40.Barbados were in trouble at 125 for 6 in 32 overs after legspinner Timil Patel burrowed into the middle order with a pair of wickets. However, a composed effort from Jonathan Carter – an unbeaten 55 off 84 balls – helped Barbados across the line. Carter and Justin Greaves put on an unbroken 59-run seventh-wicket partnership to see Barbados to victory with 7.1 overs to spare.In Group B, Windward Islands kicked off their campaign with a narrow one-run win by D/L Method over Guyana in St Kitts. Devon Smith starred for Windwards with 91 at the top of the innings after being sent in. Smith put on 84 runs with Sunil Ambris for the fourth wicket in what turned out to be a vital partnership in Windwards’ total of 214.Gudakesh Motie took 3 for 32 while fellow spinner Steven Jacobs took 3 for 40 opening the bowling for Guyana. Assad Fudadin scored an unbeaten 44 in Guyana’s D/L adjusted target of 123 in 26 overs. Guyana finished on 122 for 4 with Raymon Reifer alongside Fudadin on 18 not out falling just short of the par score when play ended.Leeward Islands split points with Combined Campuses & Colleges in a match with no result after rain ended play at Warner Park with just 38 overs of the first innings. Nkrumah Bonner led the way with 65 off 69 balls for Leewards after electing to bat while Ryan Hinds took two wickets in the field for CCC before play was halted at 187 for 5.

The Indian board has sold the ground and title naming rights for 55 Tests and ODIs to be played in India over the next 31 months from September 1 to the World Sports Group (WSG) for Rs 1.73 billion (US $42,262,694).WSG, part of the Global Cricket Corporation, outbid two other Indian firms – Percept and Nimbus – to secure the rights till March 2010, BCCI vice-president and marketing committee chief Lalit Modi said. Nimbus, however, own the telecast rights for the international and domestic matches organised by the BCCI during this period.”The WSG consortium has won the rights from among four bidders including 21st Century Media which was disqualified as they had not submitted all the necessary documents,” Modi said. “There will be 55 matches covered by the bid. The winning bid is three times over the last contracted bid which was Rs 10 million per match.”Venu Nair, the chief executive of WSG, told the that the value of the deal would work out to $50 million over the three-year period between 2007 and 2010. “That is the kind of exposure we are expecting from this deal,” he said. “We have three-four advertisers on board, and the contracts are in the process of being signed.”There is a significant difference between the ground rights of the BCCI and the ICC. The former guarantees India’s presence in every single match and this in turn helps consistently deliver returns on investment.”The deadline for submitting the bid ended at noon today after which they were opened in front of the bidders and the members of the BCCI’s marketing committee. Modi also said that the bids for the other rights, including Twenty20 internationals to be played in India and domestic cricket, were still “being negotiated”.

No depth. Not so much in the batting order or the available talent so much as in character.West Indies’ capitulation against Sri Lanka on October 14 may have been disappointing, even deflating, but only those who just became followers of the roller-coaster ride that is contemporary West Indies cricket would have been shocked by the manner of the surrender in the last preliminary match of the Champions’ Trophy.The match report of the debacle in the , T&T’s Sunday edition, was less of an eye-opener as the sidebar on “Windies ups and downs” which highlighted exactly why the batting demise is par for the course, simply because the Caribbean side spend as much time these days bogged down in sand traps, unplayable rough and water hazards as sitting pretty on the fairways in sight of a birdie or an eagle.Even then, with just a short tap-in needed to seal the deal, there is always the persistent fear that they will blow it, as in the opening match of the DLF Cup in Malaysia against Australia. Now the next opponents will again be Australia in the opening Group A match for both sides on October 18. But this will be a settled, full-strength Aussie side, quite different from the one of four weeks ago that was almost an experimental unit with a handful of players given a rare run out at the top level.This doesn’t mean automatically that the West Indies have no chance. Far from it. The abbreviated nature of one-day international cricket guarantees a greater degree of unpredictability, and when that is combined with the mercurial nature of the regional side, it really isn’t stretching the imagination to any great degree to suggest that anything good or bad can happen when the teams clash in Mumbai in two days’ time.If you’re seeking consolation in fairly recent history, just go back ten years ago to the 1996 World Cup, which was also played on the Indian subcontinent, when the West Indies crashed to their most humiliating defeat in the tournament’s history, being bundled out for just 93 by newcomers and still minnows Kenya in Pune. Yet in the aftermath of all the weeping and wailing following that embarrassment, the same side rallied to defeat Australia in a critical final group match a few days later, beleaguered captain Richie Richardson guiding his team into the quarter-finals with an unbeaten hundred.They eventually fell to the same Australians in the semi-finals in Mohali by just five runs, a result that remains the most painful that I have ever, ever experienced for reasons so wide and varied that one column cannot suffice.But, in the immediate aftermath of the latest setback, most fans will probably accept a narrow semi-final defeat in this Champions Trophy hands down because it would mean that team responsible for their fluctuating blood pressure had claimed a top two spot in a group that also includes India and England.None of this, of course, deals with the fundamental issue of just why players blessed with such phenomenal individual talent cannot perform at a consistently high level.

It may be incomprehensible that a team capable of scoring a world record 418 to defeat Australia in a Test match can crash for just 47 against England a year later. Within the space of three weeks at the start of 2004, the audience in Cape Town saw the West Indies threaten a seemingly impossible target of 441 – a chase highlighted by Dwayne Smith’s spectacular hundred on Test debut – and then fold for 54 under lights in the opening one-dayer, their lowest-ever ODI total. Many at Newlands for those matches thought they were watching two very different teams.The list of such dramatically erratic performances grows longer and still you ask: Why?Well, with a few notable exceptions, these are just gifted boys playing a man’s game, where ability without character, commitment and dedication will only take them so far. Yes, we are the Champions Trophy holders, but only because, as Brian Lara has said more than once, we played four one-day matches well, and still it required an heroic ninth-wicket partnership to pull us out of a seemingly hopeless position in the final two years ago.From the repetitive manner of dismissals to the almost casual errors in the field to the inability to follow one disciplined spell of bowling with another, these are players capable of incomparable feats of brilliance but who really have no sense that they are just part of a greater whole, the latest in a lineage that has brought pride and dignity to the people of the former British West Indies and immense respect from opponents.They say all the right things, how defeats hurt and how they must do better next time, but they don’t really mean it. Maybe they think they do, but at the superficial level at which most of them function, there is no real association between words and meanings, far less appreciating their place in an historical context.Victory or defeat, hundred or duck, five wickets or licks around the ground, it is just another performance on just another day. Throughout the region, we bemoan the deterioration of values and principles yet are surprised when our cricketers reflect that level of decay and disconnection from the bigger picture.Again, none of this precludes a reversal on the 18th or a victory in the final on November 5. But turnaround? Not for a long, long time.

Division One

Sussex enjoyed an astonishing run feast at Lord’s as Michael Yardy and Naved-ul-Hasan put Middlesex to the sword. Yardy passed 1000 runs for the season during his 179 – a fourth century of the season – which spanned 229 balls. Middlesex had steadily chipped out the Sussex batsmen and at 199 for 6 were on course to restrict them. However, Naved-ul-Hasan struck a stunning century – his second in first-class cricket – reaching his landmark from 94 balls. He added 228 with Yardy and by the time Ed Joyce finally prised him out had launched 11 fours and four sixes. Mark Davis ensured the punishment went right to the end for Middlesex with a rapid half-century of his own as the bowlers nursed some painful figures.Stephen Adshead led a superb Gloucestershire recovery after Surrey had reduced them to 1 for 3. Adshead compiled a career-best, unbeaten 148, ensuring Gloucestershire were able to notch four batting points despite their earlier dire situation. Alex Gidman clubbed 84 with 14 boundaries, adding 110 with Adshead, who then received support from James Averis at No. 10 and last-man William Rudge. Azhar Mahmood had began the Gloucestershire collapse but had to be content with three wickets, while Saqlain Mushtaq was expensive on his return to Surrey. Gloucestershire’s fightback was capped when Averis snapped up Scott Newman shortly before stumps.

Division Two

Somerset were thankful for some purposeful lower-order batting to dig them out of a hole after the middle order was dispatched by the Worcestershire attack. Arul Suppiah continued his impressive form with 72 but lacked support as Somerset slipped to 121 for 6. However, Keith Parsons made 34 then the real resistance came from Carl Gazzard and Richard Woodman – an 18-year-old debutant. Gazzard struck a confident 74, adding 89 with Woodman, who remained unbeaten on 46 off 117 balls. The wickets were shared around with Nadeem Malik taking 3 for 63. Stephen Peters – who yesterday fielded sub at Old Trafford – and Stephen Moore played out four overs.Derbyshire ground their way through the opening day against Essex favouring cautious accumulation instead of flashing strokeplay. Their final effort was a mixed result with Steve Stubbings and Hasan Adnan both striking half-centuries but failing to convert into much-needed hundreds. Luke Sutton, the Derbyshire captain, protected his wicket at all costs, so far facing 104 balls for 16. Danish Kaneria again did more than his fair share of bowling by sending down 41 overs and deserved his threw wickets.Yorkshire closed on 324 for 6 in the Roses battle against Lancashire at Old Trafford. For a full report see Match of the day.

Michael Bevan, the former Australian one-day star, is set to join Kent on a short-term contract this summer, and Ian Butler, the 22-year-old New Zealand fast bowler, may also be drafted in.Bevan and Butler will provide Kent with cover for Andrew Symonds, who will be on international duty next month should Australia’s one-day series against Zimbabwe go ahead as scheduled, and Pakistan’s paceman Mohammad Sami, who will be away for eight weeks from mid-July, at the Asia Cup one-day series.This will be Bevan’s fourth spell in county cricket, having played for Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Sussex in the past. He is widely regarded as one of the best one-day batsmen in the world, with an average of 53 from over 200 matches, but was dropped from Australia’s list of contracted players for the 2004-05 season last month after a lean period."I still think that I have room for improvement and my body is feeling great," said Bevan. He is continuing his first-class career with New South Wales, and has been looking for a county contract in England.Butler spent part of last summer with Gloucestershire, and picked up 17 wickets in four Championship matches. He has played seven Tests and 10 one-day internationals since his debut against England in 2002, but was not picked for New Zealand’s current tour.