Indian news round-up

In the inaugural match of the ICC knock-out tournament to be played in Nairobi, India take on hosts Kenya on October 3. The second edition of the tournament will be played from October 3 to 15. The first edition, which was held in Dhaka, was won by South Africa. The format for this year's edition has been modified with the four World Cup semifinalists been given a bye into the second round.

Title holders South Africa take on the winners of England-Bangladesh encounter, while World Cup champions Australia take on the winners of the India-Kenya game. The itinerary, released by the Board of Control for Cricket in India is as follows:

Oct 3: India vs Kenya, Oct 4: Sri Lanka vs West Indies, Oct 5: England vs Bangladesh, Oct 7: Australia vs winner of match one, Oct 8: Pakistan vs winner of match two, Oct 9: New Zealand vs Zimbabwe, Oct 10: South Africa vs winner of match three, Oct 11: First semifinal, Oct 13: Second semifinal. Oct 15: Final.

A 20-member second batch of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) has been announced and the training will start at the KSCA stadium in Bangalore from September 4. This was announced by the NCA director Hanumant Singh on Thursday, reports The Hindu. Hanumant Singh said "The first batch's schedule effectively comes to a close today. The team has done well in the Buchi Babu tournament. Rodney Marsh will land here on Saturday and the second batch's training programme will start on Monday.''

Those who have been selected for the NCA second batch are: Nikhil Kulkarni, Swapneel Hazare, Vinayak Mane, Sangram Bagul, Vinit Indulkar, Santosh Chaphe (Mumbai), Nitin Agarwal, Pradeep Chawla, Chetan Sharma (Delhi), Manish Sharma, Ravneet Rickey (Punjab), Rakesh Dhruve, Uday Karwarde (Saurashtra), Bikhil Doru (Rajasthan), Mrithyunjay Tripathi (Uttar Pradesh), Joginder Sharma (Haryana), Alind Naidu (Vidarbha), SS Lahiri (Bengal), Pallav P Vora (Gujarat) and Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan (Tamil Nadu).

The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) inter-club transfers will open on Saturday with East Bengal likely to sign a number of players this season. They are likely to retain Arun Lal, Goutam Shome, Subir Dey, Ajoy Verma and Sharmendra Singh.

Others who are likely to join the club are SS Lahiri who has been selected for the NCA, Wrichik Mazumder and Satyen Bhattacharya. Lahiri will miss the inaugural session with NCA. The East Bengal club which has a new co-ordinator this year expects to rope in Shrikant Kalyani from his current club Tollygunge Agragami and Sumitra Mazumdar from Aryan.