Ahmed Faiz 86 hands Malaysia second win in low-scoring game

In a tense low-scoring affair, Ahmed Faiz was the difference with an innings of 86 off 101 balls - the next-best score from the line-up was 27 - in a 23-run win over Vanuatu at Kinrara Oval to put Malaysia on the path to promotion with two wins out of two games. Vanuatu, meanwhile, may be on the road to relegation after starting off with two losses at WCL Division Four.

Vanuatu took wickets at regular intervals after sending Malaysia in as the hosts' best partnership of the day was 44 runs. But Faiz stuck around till the 35th over after arriving at the crease 11 balls into the match, anchoring Malaysia and providing them just enough runs to defend for the second day in a row at Kinrara.

After 20 overs, Vanuatu were well on course in their 197-run chase having reached 63 for 2. But Patrick Matautaava edged behind off the spin of Virandeep Singh in the next over. Captain Andrew Mansale and player-coach Shane Deitz rallied Vanuatu back in contention with a 54-run fourth-wicket stand but Vanuatu lost Mansale for 26 and key allrounder Nalin Nipiko for a golden duck in the space of four balls to make it 119 for 5 in the 38th.

Deitz struggled to get adequate support down the stretch from Vanuatu's long tail as the run rate climbed dramatically. By the end of the 45th, Vanuatu needed more than ten per over to win. Deitz slammed a boundary straight past Syed Aziz in the following over, Vanuatu's first boundary since Deitz hit one in the 34th, but Aziz foxed him with a change of pace on the next delivery to bowl Deitz for 46. The 42-year-old has top-scored for Vanuatu in both matches at Division Four - 36 against Jersey and 46 against Malaysia - since his remarkable international debutfollowing a right-hip replacement surgery just seven months ago, but both his efforts have been in vain.

Aziz finished with figures of 2 for 22 to lead the way for Malaysia with the ball while offspinner Mohammad Shukri helped spin out the tail with 2 for 39. For the second day in a row, a run-out by wicketkeeper Shafiq Sharif - this one far less controversial than the one against Uganda - clinched victory as Sharif's throw into the non-striker's stumps denied Callum Blake's attempt to steal a leg bye in the final over.

Curran departure leads frustrated Stewart to call for IPL cut-off date

Alec Stewart, Surrey's director of cricket, has lent his weight to calls for the ECB to consider a cut-off date for future call-ups to the IPL, after his team's early-season plans were thrown "out of the window" due to the last-minute departure of Tom Curran to Kolkata Knight Riders.

Though Curran went unsold at his base price of USD156,000 during the IPL auction in February, his stock as a limited-overs allrounder rose considerably during England's subsequent ODI series win in New Zealand.

And, when Mitchell Starc was ruled out of this year's campaign due to a shin injury, KKR swooped for Curran in a USD253,000 deal. Barely a week later, he made his debut against Chennai Super Kings at Chepauk, and has impressed his new employers with three wickets in two appearances to date.

While Stewart did not begrudge his player either the pay packet or the high-pressure experience that he accepts will help mould Curran into a better player, he bridled at the timing of his departure, just days before the start of a County Championship campaign in which he had been expected to be a pivotal player.

Curran's departure was one of three high-profile call-ups from the county circuit this month, preceding Yorkshire's twin losses of David Willey and Liam Plunkett to Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Daredevils respectively, and the subject was the hot topic of discussion at last week's crisis meeting of county coaches at Edgbaston.

"It's far from ideal losing Tom so late," Stewart said. "I hope in time this will be looked at. The IPL is not going anywhere - I fully understand players wanting to be part of it because, one, it's a good competition and, second, it helps your bank balance.

"The problem is when you get the phone calls I got for Tom, and Martyn Moxon [Yorkshire's director of cricket] got for Willey and Plunkett. Your planning goes out of the window."

Counties call crisis meeting to address T20 drain

County cricket's leading coaches will gather at Edgbaston next week in a crisis meeting to consider how to fight back against the lure of sundry worldwide Twenty20 leagues to the top limited-overs players in the country.

The growing feeling within the counties is that they are paying reliable, long-term contracts to players - many of whom they have developed since childhood - who then rarely take the field.

As cricket has no transfer system, or worldwide compensation agreement, the complaint is that English counties are running extensive coaching networks and nurturing players from an early age without adequate rewards for their efforts.

A record number of England players are taking part in this season's IPL, causing them to miss virtually half the Championship season, but at least when it comes to India's T20 competition the counties can anticipate some levels of compensation.

One proposal on the agenda is that county players contracted for an entire year must pass on a percentage of their earnings from winter tournaments like the Bangladesh Premier League, Australia's Big Bash and the Pakistan Super League - so putting those tournaments on roughly the same level as the IPL.

Others contend that overseas T20 leagues should pay loan fees, similar to the methodology used in football. If they can reach common accord, many counties believe they can prevent players switching from county to county in search of a softer deal.

Former England coaches Ashley Giles and Peter Moores are expected at the meeting, as well as ex-England internationals such as Alec Stewart and Paul Allott.

Representatives from 15 county clubs are confirmed to attend and such is the level of anxiety about county cricket's plight that the only surprise is that three counties don't see fit to be there.

A prime fear is that more players will follow the example of Alex Hales and Adil Rashid in seeking a white-ball only future, which might suit England's needs as they plan for the 2019 World Cup on home soil but could, if the habit became widespread, put the survival of England's first-class game at risk.

But the growing sense of dismay goes deeper than that. Equally disturbing for the counties are the players who will profess their loyalty in all forms of the game, but who then top up their salaries with several close-season T20 leagues, and as a result are either injured, fatigued or must undertake enforced rest periods imposed by England, during the county season.

Players, for their part, contend that an impossible overcrowded fixture list, with international and club cricket battling for supremacy, leaves them with the sort of divided loyalties that they would rather not face as they seek to maximise their earnings.

Yorkshire's director of cricket, Martyn Moxon, will chair the meeting on April 10, which will seek solutions at a time when the ECB seems merely content to let cricket's shifting sands move in whatever direction they wish.

Moxon, who has developed into one of the county game's more serious thinkers, is well placed to pass on concerns, also being on the ECB's cricket committee, and well respected by the ECB chairman Colin Graves.

Central to their concerns are the white-ball only contracts introduced by the managing director of England cricket, Andrew Strauss. These were introduced in September 2016 as a supplement to county contracts - roughly doubling their pay - but the counties now feel that England are getting their one-day specialists on the cheap.

The situation is more equable in Test cricket where the ECB contracts the player exclusively - although even that makes it difficult for a county to make financial plans when a player suddenly loses that contract and is added to the county payroll.

The ECB claims it wishes to protect the 18-team county system - the most successful professional club league in world cricket despite predictions of its demise for more than half a century - but the harsh fact is that counties barely see some of their top white-ball players in spite of most of them earning salaries above GBP100,000 a year.

That situation is seen as unsustainable. Parasitical T20 leagues can ultimately destroy the host. The counties are seeking something more symbiotic - a form of mutual advantage - and, as the cricketing calendar seems to be the harshest form of economic free-for-all, they believe that time is running out to achieve it.