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For many Manchester United fans, Anderson is a classic example of what might have been. An injury blighted career has stalled his progress at Old Trafford, and has effectively rendered him a dead weight.

However, his talent is still well known, and there are many clubs who would happily have the 24 year old in their team. The question is, who should he join?

According to several reports throughout the transfer window, it seems there were several clubs regularly linked with the Brazil international, the most commonly reported being that of; Tottenham Hotspur, Benfica, or AC Milan. All three of these clubs are well known, and are regular challengers for European competition places. The choice now for Anderson, who only made ten appearances last season, is which club would be the best to revitalise his career.

Benfica

Having been spotted in Portugal by Manchester United while plying his trade for Porto, Anderson would quite easily slide back into the Portuguese League style of play. An added benefit to joining Benfica is the ability to regain his grasp of football, without the added pressure of playing in a more competitive league such as La Liga or the EPL.

AC Milan

Sporadically linked with a move for Anderson during the transfer window. AC Milan have been looking for a midfielder who can boss the centre of the park and believe Anderson, who is well known when he does play for his great tackling ability, will provide the answer. Serie A is also known for it’s slower tempo in comparison to the Premier League, which will suit Anderson, and his methodical playing style.

Tottenham Hotspur

The club most regularly associated with signing Anderson during the Summer, the Brazilian would have several decent motives for joining the North London Club.  Scott Parker is their only high class midfield talent who is focused more on winning the ball in the centre of the pitch, rather than immediately pitching it forward. With Parker also getting on in years, Anderson would have the perfect opportunity to stake a first team spot at White Hart Lane. Despite all his injuries, Anderson has now been in England for five years, and by now will be more accommodated to the rigours and style of the Premier League.

This would ensure he beds in a lot quicker at Spurs, then he would do in another league. Whether Manchester United would willingly sell him to a rival of theirs, is yet to be seen.

Who should Anderson join? Leave your comments below

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Though admitting to knee pain whenever he pushes his hardest, Australia’s captain Steven Smith has declared his intent to play every match of the home summer as he comes towards the end of an overdue rest period between the West Indies Tests.The niggling knee complaint was the primary cause of Smith’s enforced rest after his side’s victory in Hobart last week, keeping him out of the Sydney Sixers’ first two BBL 2015-16 fixtures. He has been carrying the knee soreness since the ODI series that followed the Ashes in England earlier this year, with flare-ups resulting from any diving in the field.It remains to be seen whether Smith will be fit to take part in all of Australia’s limited-overs fixtures in the new year – David Warner may find himself as stand-in ODI captain against India while Aaron Finch is the incumbent T20 skipper – but the man himself is adamant he will be doing all he can to play throughout, with a tour of New Zealand and South Africa followed by the World T20 in India.”I’d love to play every game,” Smith said at the SCG on Sunday. “This little break’s going to be good for me to make sure I can sustain it and I’m just looking forward to everything else coming up, and hopefully be out in the field every game.”I’d have loved to be out here today [for the Sixers] but the rest will do me the world of good. There’s plenty on for the rest of the summer and going forward, so a little break’s not a bad thing for me and good to go for Boxing Day. It’s been good, nice to spend a little bit of time at home and just unwind and do all that.”I’d love to be a part of the World Cup and the T20s here at home as well, so we’ll wait and see how the rest of the summer goes, hopefully I’ll be fine to play those.”T20s will be the main test of Smith’s maneuverability, and he has admitted that he is presently affected by knee pain whenever striving to move at his fastest. Australia’s players reconvene in Melbourne on Tuesday, where Smith will find out how much his week’s rest has helped alleviate the issue.”It popped up in the one-dayers after the Ashes and it’s sort of stuck around. It feels ok and then if I dive and land on it just irritates it a bit, so I’ve been doing that a little bit,” Smith said. “I guess it’s fine going at 90%, it’s just if I have to go at 100% it’s a little bit sore. That’s why I’m not playing the T20s because I’m a pretty competitive guy and it’s a pretty fast-paced game and you’ve got to go 100% to do well in this format.”Smith said he was also keeping one eye on the fortunes of Usman Khawaja, testing his healing hamstring for the Sydney Thunder at the MCG in the second of Sunday’s two BBL fixtures. “It will be a good test,” Smith said. “Hopefully he gets through it okay and there are no dramas.”

Sachin Tendulkar says he isn’t even thinking about retiring © Getty Images

Sachin Tendulkar has dismissed speculation about his retirement from one-day cricket, saying he was “batting brilliantly” at the moment and that the thought of quitting had not even crossed his mind.”The thought of retirement has not crossed my mind,” Tendulkar told . “I am still enjoying the game very much and want to play for as long as I can. Cricket means a lot to me.”Tendulkar’s clarification sought to end speculation over his retiring from one-day cricket after India’s home engagements against Pakistan and Australia later this season. Cricinfo had reported, quoting sources close to Tendulkar, that he was inclined to announce his retirement on this tour of England, but had been persuaded by friends to do so at home.Tendulkar, along with Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, had opted out of the ICC World Twenty20 and he had told the of the toll one-day cricket was taking on his body. “I enjoy every moment I have on a cricket field, but the recovery times between games these days are difficult, especially for one-day internationals, and that’s my major obstacle,” he said. “It does take its toll on the body. When you are 22 or 23, you recover a lot more quickly. But at 34, it’s not so easy.”Tendulkar has been in excellent one-day form on the tour of the United Kingdom so far. In 10 one-day innings, he has plundered 548 runs, with four 90s, at a strike rate of 84.3. The tour also reunited him with his opening partner Sourav Ganguly, and the pair, the most prolific in the history of one-day cricket, added four more century partnerships to take their tally to 25, 20 of them for the first wicket.

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Mark Cosgrove provided some hope for South Australia with 43 before he departed to Stuart MacGill © Getty Images

New South Wales will chase a further 281 for victory after Doug Bollinger and Stuart MacGill dragged the Blues back into the match against South Australia at the SCG. On a day for the bowlers, Shaun Tait provided the early fireworks as the home side lost 6 for 37 to be all out for 304, giving the Redbacks a first-innings advantage of 95.However, Bollinger, the left-arm fast man, quickly made things difficult for the visitors with three wickets and MacGill chipped in with four of the last five as South Australia were dismissed for 198. Set 294, the Blues were 0 for 13 at stumps.South Australia were not allowed to escape for long once Bollinger dropped them to 3 for 33, picking up Daniel Harris (9) and Cameron Borgas (0) in consecutive balls before adding Nathan Adcock before lunch and Callum Ferguson after the break. The middle order also had to fight but Mark Cosgrove, who became MacGill’s first victim on 43, Darren Lehmann (23) and Shane Deitz (50) could not take the game away from their opponents. MacGill then demolished the tail as the last four batsmen fell for seven runs.Tait’s morning included a burst of 3 for 1 as he took care of Moises Henriques, Beau Casson and Matthew Nicholson in two overs. Reverse-swing was a feature of the spell, which was a mix of accuracy and waywardness, and he finished with 4 for 70. The end was so swift that Brad Haddin, the No. 6, was stranded on 11 not out and faced only 26 balls as his partners disappeared. Phil Jaques, who added one to his overnight 162, was the first to depart when run out by a clever flick from the wicketkeeper Deitz.

Jason Gillespie’s axing was inevitable © Getty Images

Glenn McGrath believes the axing of established players after the failure to retain the Ashes was inevitable as the Australia selectors made several changes to the squad for the Super Series against the World XI in October.McGrath, who was injured for the two defeats at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, told the website: “It was always going to be the possible outcome that a few guys might lose their positions. It’s the way the selectors have gone, obviously they’ve got a tough job to do and we’ll see what happens over the next few months.”Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz have been left out of both Australia squads for the three one-day Super Series internationals and the six-day Test match after poor performances in the Ashes. Matthew Hayden has been dropped from the one-day team while Damien Martyn has lost his Test place.Merv Hughes, the selector, denied Martyn had been made a scapegoat for the Ashes loss. “I don’t think he’s been made a scapegoat, I think his performances in England would suggest a change was needed,” he said. “Player performances weren’t to the standard that we’ve come to expect and there’s been a couple of changes, not wholesale changes.”

© Getty Images

No team in history can have owed so much to two more different bowlers than Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas. Between them, they have accounted for nearly 1500 international wickets, and as their skills have developed over the past decade, Sri Lanka has leapt towards the top of the Test table.They are a partnership of extreme opposites. Vaas, the quiet unassuming left-arm swing bowler, whose immaculate rhythm enables him to boomerang past the sturdiest defences in world cricket, and Murali, the ever-smiling spinner whose bamboozling talents have propelled him to the very summit of the game. On May 8, 2004, against Zimbabwe at Harare, Murali took his 520th Test wicket to set a new world record, and at the age of 32, his best years may yet be ahead of him.

© Getty Images

Together, Murali and Vaas have pushed back Sri Lanka’s boundaries, and given their team a potency that they could never have imagined when they took their first steps as a Test nation back in 1982.Importantly they have also proved successful overseas, which is often the benchmark of the finest teams. As a 20-year-old playing in only his fifth Test, Vaas took 10 wickets to beat New Zealand on their own turf, while Murali’s apogee came at The Oval in 1998, when he ripped England to pieces with 16 wickets in the match.

The first Test between Australia and Bangladesh at Darwin is an unusual one for a number of reasons: it’s being played in the Australian winter; the venue has never been used for even a first-class match; and the Test will be played on a drop-in pitch.This is not the first time that a drop-in pitch has been used in Australia. They were experimented with at the Colonial Stadium in Melbourne during the Super Challenge series against Pakistan. But a Test match is a whole new ball game, even if it is against the weakest Test side in the world. Once the venue was fixed, however, the use of a drop-in pitch became inevitable.”The Marrara Oval at Darwin didn’t have a cricket wicket,” explains Tony Ware, the man in charge of installing the pitch. “The only way to bring cricket here was to use the portable wicket technology.” Ware, who is the head of groundstaff at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), has prepared two wickets for this series. One is the pitch that the first Test will be played on; the other is the one for the tour game against the Chief Minister’s XI, which Bangladesh won.So how long does it take to prepare an artificial pitch? Ware needed three months. The pitches were divided in half and then merged together, using a sophisticated ratchet mechanism, once it was in the ground. That sounds simple enough, but the portable pitch technology used by Ware took him four years to develop.Ware likes the weather in Darwin. With a minimum temperature in the lower 20s (degrees centigrade), a maximum around 31 and a fair amount of humidity, Ware feels that the conditions will bring the best out of his pitch. It is a hard pitch with some grass on it, and Ware says that it will favour the medium-pace bowlers.”Australia will do well on the even wicket and Bangladesh – they are learning about cricket – may find it tough,” says Ware. “With enough humidity and the climate not being too hot to dry the wicket – which would have created cracksit will last for five days or four days or whatever it takes to finish the Test.”Once the series is over the wickets will be moved back into the compound at Marrara and will be maintained for possible further use down the track. “The other main advantage is that we don’t heavily impact on grounds like Marrara, which have other usages. We can move the pitch in and out without disrupting the facility for football games.”Can the players tell the difference between a real pitch and a drop-in one? Karl Johnson, the turf manager at the New Zealand’s High Performance Centre, says, “A a lot of it is new territory and it just doesn’t seem real to some.” But he feels that if a player walks into the Jade Stadium in Christchurch – one of the two stadia in New Zealand with drop-in pitches, the other being Eden Park in Auckland – he would not know which one is drop-in and which is not.As for the anomalies of the weather, the portable pitches can be put in marquees or tents and the trays can be moved under them, where they can be monitored in a controlled environment till they are brought into play. “This is a huge advantage for us,” says Johnson, “as we can have a rugby weekend and, immediately the next week, a one-day international.”Drop-in pitches, although still a new territory, are slowly gaining interest in the cricketing world and with major big stadiums like the MCG being used for various sporting activities they are definitely gathering interest. Johnson says: “[Unofficial] level talks between the West Indies Cricket Board and the Melbourne Cricket Club are on to use the drop-in wicket at Florida, in the United States, one of the possible venues for the next World Cup in 2007.” The moot question there is: the pitch might drop in, but will spectators?

The familiar figure of Andre van Troost was back at The County Ground todaybut only as a visitor.”Rooster” as he was affectionately known during his time with The Cidermen left the county because of injury during the 1999 season, after spending eight years on the staff at Taunton.He moved to Cheltenham and enrolled on a three year Marketing Management course.The giant Dutchman told me, “I’m in the last year of my course and doing a dissertation in sports marketing, so I’ve spent sometime down here today talking to Gianna Tesser and Peter Anderson, who have been a great help to me.” What did he hope to do after his course I asked.Rooster told me, “Preferably a sports marketing job with a professional sports club, I speak several languages and I think that will help me.” I asked if he’d played any cricket this season, to which he replied, “I played the last two games for Cheltenham and got both runs and wickets!” He went on, “Holland have qualified for the World Cup in 2003 which will be played in South Africa, so I need to get myself fit and hope that I can make the team and perhaps play against England.”He told me that he keeps in touch with Somerset cricket by logging onto the Somerset website regularly. I’m sure that everyone at Taunton wishes Rooster good luck with his studies and will watch with interest to see if he makes it to the World Cup!

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Mominul Haque provided the lone resistance for Bangladesh A with a half-century•Raton Gomes/BCB

Bangladesh A’s meek capitulation continued on the final day of their tour as they took only 28.3 overs on the third morning to lose their last eight wickets. They began the day needing 147 to make India A bat again, but never threatened to do so. Only captain Mominul Haque resisted with a stroke-filled half-century, but he too fell in a soft manner, lobbing offspinner Jayant Yadav to extra cover. The visitors ended the tour with one one-day win against India A, but lost everything else: two other one-dayers to India A and a three-day game to Ranji champions Karnataka.On the first two days, Bangladesh batsmen – Sabbir Rahman and Anamul Haque – have insisted this is a flat pitch, a fact that bears testimony in 411 for 5 plundered by India A quite effortlessly, but the Bangladesh batsmen have failed to show the patience and shot selection required at first-class level. Anamul even suggested that the Bangladesh batsmen don’t play much cricket of the longer variety, which is why they were struggling to bat judiciously.On the third morning, in the first exchanges, Mominul and wicketkeeper Liton Das prevailed but did so playing their shots. Varun Aaron’s four-over spell cost India 24 runs, the 50-run stand came up for the third wicket, but it didn’t last too long. Ishwar Pandey came on and dealt the knockout blow in his first over of the day. To the right-hand Das, Pandey bowled from round the wicket and somehow managed to hit the top of off. The batsman had simply failed to cover the line of a shortish ball pitched outside leg. Later in the over Sabbir was given out lbw, but he didn’t look happy with the decision, pointing at his bat while slowly walking off.From the other end Abhimanyu Mithun became the beneficiary of a defensive shot from Nasir Hossain that rolled back on to his off stump. Soon he saw Shuvagata Hom flirt with a wide ball, and give gully a safe catch. Mominul kept playing his shots, some of them quite attractive, but when he went hard at a Jayant offbreak, from around the leg stump, all he managed was a mis-hit to extra cover. After that it was only a matter of time, especially with the injured Rubel Hossain not available to bat.After the game, Mominul rued his team’s approach towards long-form cricket. “Our team… most of the guys are ODI players,” Mominul said. “One-day and Test is a lot different. That is the main problem. We played these as ODI matches. We went chasing the ball too early in the innings.”

The secret to understanding sport is examining a series of moments which explain how a game is won or lost. Take the first six overs of the T20 between South Africa and New Zealand, for example.In that period, the hosts were barely hanging on. They were still sussing out the early-season surface, which was not sprinkled with the usual spice of a South African strip. Their seamers steered away from a short-ball barrage and pitched it up instead. Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson took advantage of the fielding restrictions and the width on offer, and found the boundary 10 times in the Powerplay. New Zealand were stringing together what they thought would be the foundation of their success and AB de Villiers was unhappy with the lack of bite from his bowlers.

August pitch earns praise

South Africa had never played an international in August before Friday and they will be pleased to know pre-season is actually a perfect time to host cricket, at least in Durban where summer rainfall often pours a wet blanket on the action in the peak period. Both captains described the Kingsmead pitch as a “good wicket” with enough in it for both batsmen and bowlers. Kane Williamson went as far as to say it was “probably a 180 wicket” even though his team could only muster 151. AB de Villiers agreed but added that there was also some spice for the seamers and surprisingly, turn for the spinner, Aaron Phangiso, who also expressed surprise at the assistance he got. “I got value for shots,” de Villiers said. “But then the ball also beat the bat and that’s the kind of cricket you want to see: high scoring games but always something in it for the bowlers.”

“It’s an area we will discuss again – the first six overs because we are not as good as we wanted to be there. We wanted to be a little more aggressive,” de Villiers said. “A couple balls were maybe a little bit too full, which is not a bad thing, but you also want to see the aggression.”The game changed, however, in the moments after that. Immediately after the Powerplay, de Villiers gave the ball to left-arm spinner Aaron Phangiso, his last hope in stemming the flow. Phangiso’s first over ended with the wicket of Williamson, who admitted he was hoping to take on the spinner but could not. “Phangiso bowled nicely and changed his pace. With the short boundaries, you think you can go after the spin but he controlled his length,” Williamson said.Phangiso, who finished with 2 for 29 in four overs, was also pleased with the show of confidence from his captain. “It was great to see the captain give me the ball under pressure,” Phangiso said. “All players want to succeed under pressure. I enjoyed the pressure and I enjoyed the confidence of the captain giving me the ball at that time.”The sequence of events that followed explain how South Africa went on to win the game. David Wiese took pace off the ball, Kagiso Rabada and Morne Morkel held back the lengths and Kyle Abbott mixed it up to keep New Zealand guessing, prompting de Villiers to call the team’s bowling comeback “near perfect”.”We slowed the game down and turned the momentum around and then ran with it,” de Villiers said. “All the seamers who came back for their second spells bowled really well. We mixed it up exceptionally well. The last 15 overs of our bowling performance was near perfect.The guys had really smart plans. When I spoke to them between balls, the guys knew exactly what they wanted to do. I saw all the variations from them: yorkers, good length balls and bouncers.”As much as South Africa applied the chokehold, New Zealand allowed themselves to be cornered. “We weren’t quite at our best in the last 10 overs. We know we have the firepower in that lower middle order to cash in on situations like that and we weren’t quite on top of things,” Williamson said.The collapse of 7 for 40 was partly due to no one in the middle order taking responsibility of the latter part of the innings and Williamson has challenged his team-mates to change that in the next match. “It’s a fine line when you lose wickets, and we lost two wickets in a row a couple of times which never helps but it takes one other bloke or two other blokes to get going and get the score moving.”