‘I have a lot of experience and knowledge to pass on and I’m looking forward to it’
By DONNA HALMER – Squash Mad Correspondent

England Squash has finalised a long-term mentoring agreement with Laura Massaro that will see the former World No.1 develop and nurture England’s younger generation of female players.

Massaro, 35, called time on her storied playing career in the summer and is regarded as the most successful female English player of the modern era with 23 titles to her name including one World title, two British Open crowns, three silver Commonwealth Games medals and four British National titles.

The Lancastrian also earned 116 England caps and was part of the England team who won the 2014 Women’s World Team Championships and the European Team Championships seven times.

Massaro will work closely with the national coaching team and impart her world-class knowledge, experience and professionalism through one-to-one mentoring and match-play with England’s young female players, as well as assisting at tournaments and squads.

Massaro said: “I’m really excited to be joining England Squash in a slightly different capacity than I did while competing on tour. I feel I have a lot of experiences and knowledge I can pass on and I’m looking forward to working with some great young potential.”

David Campion, National Coach at England Squash said: “Laura is a fantastic addition to our team at England Squash. She has a huge amount to offer in terms of what it takes to make that very difficult transition from a promising young player into world-class.

“Quite simply, she has done it herself, and it’s those attributes and insights that we would like her to share with the younger generation of players. It’s a perfect fit as we currently have a number of young female players who are embarking on a professional career.” 

Article by DONNA HELMER (England Squash). Edited by ALAN THATCHER. 

Pictures courtesy of  England Squash and Steve Cubbins

Danny Drinkwater is set to return to Burnley on Monday after suffering injuries when he was attacked on a night out.

Drinkwater, who is still battling for fitness after joining Sean Dyche's side on loan from Chelsea this summer, will reportedly meet the Burnley manager to discuss the attack and could be out of action for several weeks.

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The incident took place outside of a nightclub in Manchester last weekend and reportedly left Drinkwater with a black eye, swollen forehead, bruised shoulders and arms, cut cheek and torn ankle ligaments.

Following Burnley's 3-0 defeat to Liverpool in the Premier League on Aug. 31, Dyche permitted his players a short break to coincide with international fixtures.

Earlier this year, Drinkwater was charged with drink-driving after crashing his car in Greater Manchester while under contract at Chelsea.

The midfielder, 29, won the Premier League with Leicester in 2016 before joining Chelsea the following summer on a five-year contract for a fee of around £35 million. He failed to break into Maurizio Sarri's team last season before being sent on loan by Frank Lampard, who took over from the Italian this summer.

Manchester United defender Eric Bailly is targeting an early return from knee surgery, sources have told ESPN FC.

Bailly had an operation in July after damaging ligaments in his right knee during a preseason friendly with Tottenham in Shanghai.

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Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer initially said Bailly would be ruled out for around five months and was not expected back until the end of December.

However, early treatment has gone well and there is hope his recovery may not take as long as first thought.

The 25-year-old, who has not played a competitive fixture since suffering an injury to his left knee in April, is hopeful he could return to training in around two months and make his first team comeback after the November international break.

It is a welcome boost for Solskjaer, who is dealing with mounting injury problems just four games into the new season.

Luke Shaw has been ruled out for a month with a hamstring injury, while Anthony Martial missed the draw at Southampton with a thigh strain.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka withdrew from the England squad with a back injury before Jesse Lingard also returned to Carrington because of illness.

Meanwhile, Paul Pogba pulled out of the France squad after picking up an ankle problem against Southampton, and full-back Diogo Dalot travelled to China for treatment on a hip injury, spending 10 days with Shanghai SIPG injury specialist Eduardo Santos.

Dalot made 23 appearances in all competitions last season, but the 20-year-old is yet to feature this term after the arrival of Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace in the summer.

Twice the sound of Kernkraft 400's electro-hit "Zombie Nation" rang out of the speakers at Hamburg's Volksparkstadion on Friday night. Thanks to Serge Gnabry and Toni Kroos, Germany's new goal music had arrived but beyond the beats lay a spluttering, twitchy Germany performance.

"This is not the way we want to play," Joachim Low said afterward. That much was obvious, but how Germany do want to play is not so clear.

Low's latest rebuild -- one that some observers feel should be happening without him -- has seen him change assistant coach, enforce retirement on Mats Hummels, Thomas Muller and Jerome Boateng, and move away from the possession-based style of play that won them the World Cup in Brazil. And yet, their display in Friday's 4-2 defeat to Netherlands was confusing.

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In the first half, Germany had less of the ball, sat a little deeper and looked to be explosive in transition. For the most part, it worked. One of Low's key changes in his latest rebuild is to make Germany faster, something a front three of Marco Reus, Timo Werner and Gnabry proved they could execute. Gnabry, the man Low says will always play, still looks the most dangerous player in a Germany shirt and in the first half, he made the difference.

But the reactive nature of Germany's first-half performance didn't appear to be the plan. Low suggested afterwards that a bit more access to the ball and a little less running would have been desirable. Both Joshua Kimmich and Nico Schulz talked about not having enough control, while Reus was keen to stress how much of what happened had been avoidable. In any case, the respect Germany showed the Dutch at home in the first 45 minutes was telling; even Virgil van Dijk admitted he was a bit surprised.

Indeed, a host of errors and general passivity hid whatever Germany's plan in the second half might have been. Germany continually gave the ball away, notably while trying to move forward.

So what is this Germany side supposed to look like?

Victory against Netherlands earlier in the year prompted much belief that Germany had turned a corner. Kroos even said before this game in Hamburg that for a team with a new faces, a new system and a new style, Germany had pushed on quite a bit. On this evidence, they don't know even where they're going yet let alone where to turn. This Germany team isn't as far along as the hype suggested, and the Dutch looked further down the track to becoming a force.

The attack is supposed to be the strong point of this team, but Low's inability to get the best out of an in-form Werner or Reus, currently loving his club football, is concerning. The eventual return from injury of Leroy Sane will obviously be welcomed but this defeat was not about Manchester City star's absence. It was about the lack of impact from the front three and, in the midst of this confusion, Low threw on Kai Havertz in the hope he would make something happen. Havertz is the playmaker that can add more balance to this side and he must not be forgotten in Low's pursuit of pace.

Playing Kimmich in midfield might allow for moments of genius, such as the assist for the opening goal, but it does leave Germany weaker at right-back. With holding midfield hardly a position short of options (see Emre Can or Ilkay Gundogan), placing Kimmich in that role is even more confusing.

Then there's the defensive unit. Jonathan Tah had an unfortunate night (scoring an own goal) and is clearly still a work in progress. Schulz has all of the positives of an attacking wing-back, but sadly also most of the negatives. Niklas Sule must be disappointed that the two strongest aspects of his game, his strength and his relative speed, were not strengths at all against a Dutch team that's further ahead in their own rebuild.

Low will rightfully take the blame for this. The move to transitional football has not yet clicked and the in-game adjustment back to a possession-based style of play wasn't promising either. Germany are not a team in balance yet, which is perhaps understandable given all that has happened in the wake of the World Cup debacle. Nevertheless, there are good enough players in this team to perform better than they did against Netherlands.

As for whether or not Low is the right man to get this team there is no longer a question. The DFB failed to plan for his successor five years ago or, at the latest, after the Euros in France in 2016, which has allowed this sense of stasis to take root.

Maybe that has now changed, and those who make such crucial decisions are putting a road map in place for the national team. In the meantime, the embattled manager must make sure he gets this team back in some kind of shape. They appear unlikely to challenge for the Euro 2020 title this time, and that's ok, but Low must find a way to turn the ship around soon.

Just six months ago, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was handed a three-year contract as Manchester United manager. Three months later, Mauricio Pochettino was leading Tottenham out in Madrid for the club's first-ever appearance in a Champions League final.

Yet as the dust settled on a weekend which saw Javi Gracia become the first managerial casualty of the season in Premier League, with the Spaniard sacked by Watford after one draw and three defeats in their opening four league games, Solskjaer and Pochettino found themselves as joint-favourites with the bookmakers to become the next manager to leave their job this season.

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Solskjaer and Pochettino share the dubious distinction with Steve Bruce, who has endured a difficult start to his reign in charge of Newcastle, but it has been longer than anyone cares to remember since any Newcastle manager was able to work without some kind of uncertainty hovering over his job security. Bruce walked into the job at St James' Park knowing exactly what to expect, especially having previously managed bitter north-east rivals Sunderland, so the 58-year-old was always going to have to start well to silence his critics. His team didn't start well, but four points from Newcastle's last two games suggests that the bookmakers might soon start to lengthen the odds on Bruce joining Gracia on the managerial scrapheap.

Pochettino and Solskjaer now need a similarly positive reaction from their players after the international break in order to banish the storm clouds that are beginning to loom large over them. Results will ultimately dictate the fate of both men, as is the case with any manager, but while the circumstances surrounding Pochettino and Solskjaer's situations are different, they each have to shoulder a decent portion of the blame for the pressure they are now beginning to feel.

The doubts over Pochettino's future at Spurs are largely of his own making, with the Argentine speaking on numerous occasions over recent months about how even he doesn't know how long he will stay at the club or if, indeed, he wants to. In Singapore, during the club's preseason tour, Pochettino even went so far as to admit that he would have considered leaving his job had Spurs beaten Liverpool in the Champions League final last season.

Pochettino has helped Spurs navigate themselves up football's version of Everest during his five years in charge, transforming the club from perennial underachievers to Champions League regulars and North London's top club. Winning the Champions League would have been like reaching the summit, so perhaps he was, or is, ready for a new challenge. But by speaking so openly about potentially coming to the end of the road at Spurs, Pochettino has created uncertainty and given the likes of Christian Eriksen justification for rejecting a new contract at the club in order to pursue a new challenge of his own somewhere else. There are similar doubts over the futures of Jan Vertonghen, Danny Rose and Toby Alderweireld and, all of a sudden, Spurs look like a team on the verge of being broken up and the sense of everyone looking out for themselves is inescapable.

They sit in ninth position, with just one win from four so far in the league, and they went into the international break having thrown away a 2-0 lead at Arsenal to draw 2-2 against their biggest rivals. Pochettino went into that game denying rumours that he was preparing to quit, so the air of uncertainty is understandable and it is reaching the stage where it would be no surprise if the 47-year-old called time on his spell at Tottenham.

It is a different scenario with Solskjaer, who retains the backing of the United supporters and has yet to be subjected to suggestions that the club's owners, the Glazer family, are growing restless with recent results. But those results are why the bookmakers are being less than generous with their odds on Solskjaer losing his job.

United have made their worst start to a season since 1992-93, winning just once in four games, and they have offloaded several experienced players since the closure of the Premier League transfer window without replacing them. The optimism which flowed following the Norwegian's appointment as caretaker manager last December in the wake of Jose Mourinho's sacking has long since evaporated, largely because results have been so bad. United have not won away from Old Trafford in any competition since the remarkable 3-1 Champions League victory at Paris Saint-Germain on March 6 and they have kept just one clean sheet since the 0-0 draw with Liverpool in mid-February. Under Solskjaer, United have won just three of their last 16 games in all competitions, losing nine of them.

Solskjaer has embarked on a squad rebuilding process that has left United with just three forwards -- one of them the 17-year-old Mason Greenwood -- and no new midfielders, so he must now somehow find a way to keep his wafer-thin squad in contention in all competitions until the chance arrives to sign reinforcements in January. But the big question is whether the former United striker will survive long enough.

Solskjaer and Pochettino were seemingly untouchable in their current positions just six months ago, but football can change quickly. Just ask Javi Gracia. In May, he was being shortlisted as a potential new manager by Chelsea having guided Watford to their first FA Cup final since 1984. Now, he is out of work. That's the nature of the game for football managers, so it would be foolish to think there is no cause for concern for Pochettino and Solskjaer.

The Melbourne Renegades have signed England opener Tammy Beaumont as their replacement for absent skipper Amy Satterthwaite ahead of the new Women's Big Bash League season starting in October.

Beaumont played for the Adelaide Strikers in second and third seasons of the WBBL but did not play the last one. She was named in Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year for 2019 and produced her sixth ODI century during the recent Ashes series in England.

Beaumont, 28, joins England team-mate Danielle Wyatt and New Zealand's Lea Tahuhu as the overseas players at the Renegades after Satterthwaite was ruled out of the tournament after recently announcing she was pregnant.

"I'm thrilled to be heading back to the Big Bash," Beaumont said. "I've played against a lot of the talent in the Renegades line-up so it'll be nice to be playing alongside them this time. The Renegades are a side on the rise and the Big Bash is such a tough competition so I'm looking forward to testing myself against some of the best players in the world."

Cricket South Africa (CSA) has appointed former Mumbai batsman Amol Muzumdar as batting coach for South Africa's three-match Test series against India, which starts on October 2 in Visakhapatnam.

The 44-year-old last played at the first-class level for Andhra in 2013 and has since held several coaching positions, besides being a TV commentator. Muzumdar's specialist role for this tour mirrors the one former Sri Lanka batsman Thilan Samaraweera played for New Zealand during their Test series in Sri Lanka last month.

"Amol is a perfect fit for us," CSA acting director of cricket Corrie van Zyl said. "He brings an intimate knowledge of Indian playing conditions and the challenges our batsmen are likely to face. He also assisted us at the spin bowling camp we held recently in India and thus has already built up a good working relationship with Aiden Markram, Temba Bavuma and Zubayr Hamza."

South Africa last toured India in 2015-16 and found it particularly difficult to tackle India's spinners, going past 200 in only one of the seven innings they batted in. A full encapsulation of their struggle against spin came in the last innings of the fourth Test, when they made an all-out commitment to defence, batting 143.1 overs as they were eventually bowled out for 143 chasing 481.

Muzumdar's 20-year career as one of the best players in Indian domestic cricket - he made 11,167 runs at 48.13 - is expected to help on that front.

"Cricket has always been and will continue to be my calling," Muzumdar said. "Having spent 25 years on the pitch as a player, I intend to spend the next 25 tapping and grooming talent on the cricket field. I am very excited about this new chapter to my coaching career."

Muzumdar holds high-performance coaching certificates from the BCCI, Cricket Australia as well as in the UK through both Lancashire and Yorkshire. He has been batting coach for Rajasthan Royals at the IPL, coached India's Under-19 and Under-23 sides at the National Cricket Academy, and was briefly a batting consultant for the Netherlands men's team. He had applied to be India's batting coach earlier this year but couldn't make the shortlist.

Muzumdar now joins a select group of Indians who have worked with other international teams, such as Sridharan Sriram (currently with Australia men's team), Sunil Joshi (spin consultant with Bangladesh men's team till recently), Wasim Jaffer (part of the coaching staff at the Bangladesh High Performance Centre) and Lalchand Rajput (worked as head coach of Zimbabwe and Afghanistan men's teams).

Bangladesh's poor showing, especially with the bat, against Afghanistan has led to a heated - and public - difference of opinion between captain Shakib Al Hasan and BCB president Nazmul Hassan. The statements - made in separate press interactions on Sunday, the fourth day of the Chattogram Test - come on the back of a disappointing World Cup, where Bangladesh finished eighth out of ten teams.

Speaking to newspersons in Dhaka, Nazmul raged, "Do I explain to them how to play Tests? How they prepared themselves, the way they planned, there must have been something wrong there. I feel the plan wasn't correct. We have to sit with the coach, the captain and the operations chairman [former captain Akram Khan] to understand why these things happened."

One of the president's grouses was about the selection, especially of players he feels are not cut out for Test cricket. "Soumya Sarkar, Liton Das and Sabbir Rahman are not Test player; we play them for specific reasons," he said. "I don't even want them to be Test players. Then what would happen to my T20 and ODI teams? We have Mominul [Haque] and Shadman [Islam], but we need more Test players in the side."

"Where are the pacers? We played in sporting wickets at the World Cup. Why the reversal in plans? I have to know who came up with these plans first" Nazmul Hassan

Speaking a short while later, Shakib said: "There is room for huge planning, and it is a long process. Whenever we play badly, we talk about these things. When we win, we don't talk about it. It is important to find the right balance."

On the wrong side of spin

The lack of practice against quality wristspinners, Shakib said, was one of the reasons for Bangladesh's poor batting. "We have both technical and mental shortcomings. We are not used to playing any kind of wristspin, although we planned and prepared against our legspinners in the nets," he said. "Unless you are successful in the middle, that practice doesn't work. I don't think anything was wrong in the approach, but there are problems in our execution, or playing with a big heart.

"When you are fearful, your execution doesn't quite come off. Liton hits everything well in T20s, but he couldn't do it in Tests. The coach also said that we should play with a bigger heart. We play with a lot of pressure and fear. At the end of the day, it is a cricket match. But it is not everything. We end up taking so much pressure on ourselves, we make performing harder. And when we can't perform, the pressure increases."

He, however, conceded, that "we are getting at least a thousand times more facilities now than compared to ten years ago, so our performance should also be a little more consistent".

Pace bowlers in the Test XI - yes or no?

Bangladesh went into the Test match without a single fast bowler. They had left out Mustafizur Rahman and picked three in their squad, but fielded not one of them; Sarkar, the part-time medium pacer, was in the mix, but bowled just four overs in the Test. Afghanistan, however, picked one, Yamin Ahmadzai, who got them their first wicket in the first Bangladesh innings, but was also bowled rarely.

"I said before the Test match that the pace bowlers must deserve a place in the team," Shakib countered. "Interestingly, I was seeing their stats today, and their economy rate is 4.41. If they bowl 90 overs, they will concede 400. We are out of the game on the first day.

"If they bring it down to 2.8 or 2.9 and they have a good strike rate, we can pick them. Just check their stats from their home Tests in the recent past, and you will see what I mean."

Nazmul, however, feels that the strategy is wrong, and pace bowlers should have been picked as he expected the Chattogram pitch to be similar to those in England during the World Cup. "First thing is, where are the pacers? We played in sporting wickets at the World Cup. Why the reversal in plans? I have to know who came up with these plans first," he said. "They [Afghanistan] have the best spinners. So we wanted to contest them with spin. The one person who had the courage to do that, took that decision. I don't know if it might be a case of overconfidence. I thought we were going to play on a sporting wicket."

The rot runs deeper

Quality fast bowlers have not come up the ranks, yes, but the quality of batsmanship has also gone down because of lack of practice against quality bowling, Shakib argued.

"We have to find out what is wrong with the player first. I think it is wrong to expect the same medicine to work for everyone. Whether it is because they are playing in the NCL [National Cricket League], or not because of playing in the NCL. It could be both," he said. "It maybe so that the bowling is so easy to play in the NCL that they end up hitting four or five double-hundreds, but when they come to international cricket, they can't score four or five runs."

For Nazmul, though, it is the shift from the three-year-old strategy that has been the bigger problem.

"We were under a particular strategy before Steve Rhodes came. It was known that we would play against teams from the subcontinent in one kind of wicket and a different kind against the rest," he said. "I think everyone has a lot to learn from this. I thought the likes of Mushfiqur [Rahim], Shakib, [Mahmudullah] Riyad and Mominul will score centuries. No reason not to, since their [Afghanistan's] batsmen did."

Interestingly, while the Bangladesh batsmen have struggled, Rahmat Shah became Afghanistan's first Test centurion, Asghar Afghan hit back-to-back half-centuries, and debutant opener Ibrahim Zadran gave a good account of himself with innings of 21 and 87. Was it the pitch? Shakib said it was the "complete opposite" of what the Bangladesh team wanted, while the Afghanistan camp expected the track to be flat but were taken by surprise when it turned out to be bone dry. What went wrong there?