England bowler James Anderson has endorsed the decision to drop Alastair Cook as the team’s one-day international (ODI) captain ahead of the World Cup.
Cook was dropped by selectors last weekend as they picked the 15-man squad for the World Cup, with Eoin Morgan taking over as the 50-over captain.
The opener had made just one ODI half-century in his past 22 attempts and had led his country to five successive series defeats.
A personal return of 119 runs in six innings on the recent tour of Sri Lanka proved the final straw, with the left-hander appearing crease-bound, tentative and out of step with the modern 50-over game.
England paceman Anderson, while applauding the effort and attitude of the man who retains the Test captaincy, admitted that, on form, the right decision had been made.
“I think if you’re going on form alone, his form in the last 12 to 18 months hasn’t been near the standard that it needs to be to stay in the team, and he’ll openly admit that,” Anderson told the BBC.
“I think I saw an interview with him after the one-day series in Sri Lanka and he said that if he gets dropped, he’d have to hold his hands up and say his form hasn’t been good enough, so I think there is that.
“I feel sorry for him because he’s done such a lot of work behind the scenes. He’s really taken the captaincy with both hands and he wants to drive the team forward and he’s got a real vision of where he wants the team to go.
“I think that’s probably the biggest disappointment for him, that he won’t be able to carry that on throughout the one-day series and the World Cup.”
England lost the series against Sri Lanka 5-2 and were largely outclassed by the team who had finished runners-up in the past two World Cups.
But Anderson does not lay the blame for that at Cook's door, citing long-standing issues that England have had playing 50-over cricket.
“It’s not just the last 10 years. I think since the ’92 World Cup final that we got to, I think we’ve been pretty average in one-day cricket,” he said.
“I think we’ve had little flashes of good form, we’ve got to a couple of Champions Trophy finals in that period of time, we’ve become No 1 in the world for a brief period of time, but we’ve never found a formula that works for us to be successful over a long period of time.”
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Things Heard & Seen
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2/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
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Director: Todd Phillips
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
if you go
The flights
Emirates offer flights to Buenos Aires from Dubai, via Rio De Janeiro from around Dh6,300. emirates.com
Seeing the games
Tangol sell experiences across South America and generally have good access to tickets for most of the big teams in Buenos Aires: Boca Juniors, River Plate, and Independiente. Prices from Dh550 and include pick up and drop off from your hotel in the city. tangol.com
Staying there
Tangol will pick up tourists from any hotel in Buenos Aires, but after the intensity of the game, the Faena makes for tranquil, upmarket accommodation. Doubles from Dh1,110. faena.com
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
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Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
Bio
Age: 25
Town: Al Diqdaqah – Ras Al Khaimah
Education: Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering
Favourite colour: White
Favourite place in the UAE: Downtown Dubai
Favourite book: A Life in Administration by Ghazi Al Gosaibi.
First owned baking book: How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson.
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Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
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● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
The specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 620hp from 5,750-7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm from 3,000-5,750rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch auto
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh1.05 million ($286,000)
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Director: Laila Abbas
Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Ashraf Barhoum
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Jebel Ali Dragons 26 Bahrain 23
Dragons
Tries: Hayes, Richards, Cooper
Cons: Love
Pens: Love 3
Bahrain
Tries: Kenny, Crombie, Tantoh
Cons: Phillips
Pens: Phillips 2
Museum of the Future in numbers
- 78 metres is the height of the museum
- 30,000 square metres is its total area
- 17,000 square metres is the length of the stainless steel facade
- 14 kilometres is the length of LED lights used on the facade
- 1,024 individual pieces make up the exterior
- 7 floors in all, with one for administrative offices
- 2,400 diagonally intersecting steel members frame the torus shape
- 100 species of trees and plants dot the gardens
- Dh145 is the price of a ticket
Results
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3. Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) 37.383s
4. Lando Norris (McLaren) 46.466s
5.Sergio Perez (Red Bull-Honda) 52.047s
6. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) 59.090s
7. Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren) 1:06.004
8. Carlos Sainz Jr (Ferrari) 1:07.100
9. Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri-Honda) 1:25.692
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How to get exposure to gold
Although you can buy gold easily on the Dubai markets, the problem with buying physical bars, coins or jewellery is that you then have storage, security and insurance issues.
A far easier option is to invest in a low-cost exchange traded fund (ETF) that invests in the precious metal instead, for example, ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) and iShares Physical Gold (SGLN) both track physical gold. The VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF invests directly in mining companies.
Alternatively, BlackRock Gold & General seeks to achieve long-term capital growth primarily through an actively managed portfolio of gold mining, commodity and precious-metal related shares. Its largest portfolio holdings include gold miners Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold Corp, Agnico Eagle Mines and the NewMont Goldcorp.
Brave investors could take on the added risk of buying individual gold mining stocks, many of which have performed wonderfully well lately.
London-listed Centamin is up more than 70 per cent in just three months, although in a sign of its volatility, it is down 5 per cent on two years ago. Trans-Siberian Gold, listed on London's alternative investment market (AIM) for small stocks, has seen its share price almost quadruple from 34p to 124p over the same period, but do not assume this kind of runaway growth can continue for long
However, buying individual equities like these is highly risky, as their share prices can crash just as quickly, which isn't what what you want from a supposedly safe haven.
