Pakistan spinner Noman Ali has been named as the ICC Men’s Player of the Month for October 2024, edging out South African pacer Kagiso Rabada and New Zealand spinner Mitchell Santner to claim the honor.

The 37-year-old left-arm orthodox bowler played an important role in Pakistan’s thrilling 2-1 Test series over England on home soil.

Noman’s outstanding performances across the series saw him take 20 wickets at an impressive average of 13.85, helping Pakistan secure their first Test series win at home since 2021.

“It is a great honour to be named the ICC Men’s Player of the Month,” Noman said in a statement.

“I am deeply grateful to my teammates who supported me throughout this historic home Test series victory against England. Such wins are always special for the team and the country.”

Noman’s heroics were highlighted by two remarkable Test performances. In the second Test, with Pakistan defending a target of 297, he claimed his career-best figures of 8/46, dismantling England’s batting lineup and securing Pakistan’s victory.

In the series-deciding third Test in Rawalpindi, Noman made a critical contribution with the bat, scoring a resilient 45 runs at No.9 to give Pakistan a 77-run first-innings lead.

He followed this with a match-winning six-wicket haul, bowling England out for just 112 to seal the series with a dominant nine-wicket win.

Noman is the first Pakistani male cricketer to win the ICC Player of the Month award since Babar Azam in August 2023.

Muhammad Akhlaq’s swashbuckling half-century, coupled with a disciplined bowling performance powered Pakistan to thump South Africa by 17 runs and qualify for the Hong Kong Super Sixes semi-finals here at Mission Road Ground on Saturday.

Put into bat first, Pakistan accumulated a formidable total of 105/3 in the allotted six overs.

The Green Shirts, however, had a contrasting start to their innings as their in-form batters Asif Ali and Faheem Ashraf perished for a golden duck in the first over with just eight runs on the board.

But the back-to-back blows did not bother Pakistan much as Muhammad Akhlaq, during his partnership with Hussain Talat, launched an astounding recovery with belligerent hitting.

The wicketkeeper batter smashed the Proteas bowlers for seven sixes and two fours and brought up his half-century in just 16 deliveries.

Soon after amassing the milestone, Akhlaq retired out, putting Pakistan in a dominant position as they were 66/2 in four overs.

All-rounder Aamer Yamin and Talat then gave the final touches to Pakistan’s innings with blistering cameos. Yamin scored 18 off six, while Talat scored an unbeaten 27 off 11 balls.

Chasing a daunting 104-run target, South Africa only managed to score 88/4 despite Evan Jones’ blitz.

The five-time champions had a shaky start to the pursuit as they lost two wickets including their captain JJ Smut inside two overs with just 12 runs on the board.

Jones then joined forces with Modiri Litheko and pushed to anchor the run chase with a crucial 48-run partnership for the fourth wicket until Talat drew curtains on his fighting knock.

Jones remained the top-scorer for South Africa with a 13-ball 41, laced with one four and five sixes.

Talat struck again on the next delivery to reduce the former champions to 61/4 in 4.3 overs.

The back-to-back dismissals halted the flow of runs for South Africa and they eventually came up 17 runs short.

For Pakistan, Talat bagged two wickets, while Shahab Khan and Yamin made one scalp each.

Remember, Pakistan are unbeaten in the ongoing edition of the Hong Kong Super Sixes. They started their campaign with a 13-run victory over United Arab Emirates (UAE) before humbling arch-rivals India by six wickets.

South African paceman Kagiso Rabada claimed a record-setting 300th test wicket as Bangladesh were bowled out for 106 in their opening innings on the first day of the first test at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium on Monday.

Rabada became the fastest to 300 test wickets, achieving the feat in 11,187 balls, and with a strike rate of 39.39, to break former Pakistan pacer Waqar Younis’ record of 12,602 balls.

South Africa were 140-6 in reply when bad light stopped play, with a 34-run lead after a day of attrition for batsmen as a total of 16 wickets fell.

Kyle Verreynne (18 not out) and Wiaan Mulder (17 not out) will resume on Tuesday.

All-rounder Mulder took the first three wickets early in the opening session to leave Bangladesh, who had won the toss and elected to bat, reeling at 21-3 before Rabada bowled Mushfiqur Rahim to reach the milestone.

His 300th wicket came in his 65th test. Only five other South African bowlers have taken 300 or more test wickets, with Dale Steyn’s 439 topping the list.

The 29-year-old Rabada, who has a test bowling average of 22, then had Litton Das expertly caught in the slips by Tristan Stubbs’ flying effort as Bangladesh slumped further and went to lunch 60-6.

South Africa took 14 overs after lunch to skittle out Bangladesh, whose opener Mahmudul Hasan Joy top scored with 30 before being the seventh wicket to fall.It was the second lowest total at the venue, after the 87 that Bangladesh scored when they lost by an innings and eight runs to Pakistan in December 2021.

Rabada finished with figures of 3-26, Mulder 3-22 and spinner Keshav Maharaj 3-34 with Dane Piedt taking the other wicket when he bowled Mahmudul at the start of the second session.

Taijul Islam took 5-49 in South Africa’s reply, passing the 200-test wicket mark as the visitors struggled to settle under the home spin attack.Tony de Zorzi (30), Ryan Rickelton (27) and Stubbs (23) all threatened to get going but Taijul had them all caught behind off his turning deliveries.

South Africa’s reply started poorly with stand-in captain Aiden Markram playing on to Hasan Mahmud and being dismissed for six at the end of the first over.

The test in Dhaka is the first of a two-match series with the second in Chittagong next week.

Now in their 15th year together, the original BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have achieved little. Yet at this summit Mr Putin hopes to give the bloc heft by getting it to build a new global financial-payments system to attack America’s dominance of global finance and shield Russia and its pals from sanctions. “Everyone understands that anyone may face US or other Western sanctions,” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said last month. A BRICS payments system would allow “economic operations without being dependent on those that decided to weaponise the dollar and the euro”. This system, which Russia calls “BRICS-Bridge”, is intended to be built within a year and would allow countries to conduct cross-border settlement using digital platforms run by their central banks. Controversially, it may borrow concepts from a different project called mBridge that is part-run by a bastion of the Western-led order, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

The talks will shine a light on the race to remake the world’s financial plumbing. China has long bet that payments technology—not a creditors’ rebellion or military conflict—will reduce the power that America gets from being at the centre of global finance. The BRICS plan could deliver cheaper and faster transactions. 

Those benefits may be enough to entice emerging economies. In a sign the scheme has genuine potential, Western officials are wary that it may be designed to evade sanctions. And some are frustrated by the unintended role of the BIS, a Swiss-based organisation known as the central bank for central banks.

America’s dominance of the global financial system has been a mainstay of the post-war order. It reflects its economic and military heft, but also the fact that dollar-denominated assets such as Treasuries are seen as safe from government confiscation and inflation and are easy to buy and sell. Though central banks have diversified their holdings, including into gold, around 58% of foreign-currency reserves are in dollars (see chart) and the network effects of the dollar put American banks at the centre of the world’s payments systems. Sending money around the globe is a bit like taking a long-haul flight; if two airports are not directly linked, passengers will need to change flights, ideally at a busy hub where lots of other planes connect. In the world of international payments the biggest hub is America, where many of the world’s banks swap foreign currencies from those making payments into dollars and then into the currencies in which the payments are received.

The centrality of the dollar provides what Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, two scholars, call “panopticon” and “choke point” effects. Because almost all banks transacting in dollars have to do so through a correspondent bank in America, it is able to monitor flows for signs of terrorist financing and sanctions-evasion. 

That provides America’s leaders with an enormous lever of power—one that they have been keen to pull as an alternative to going to war. The number of people under American sanctions has exploded by more than 900% (to around 9,400) in the two decades to 2021. America has demanded that some foreign banks are disconnected from SWIFT, a Belgium-based messaging system used by some 11,000 banks in 200 countries to transfer funds across borders. In 2018 SWIFT cut off Iran.

All this paled in comparison with the ferocity of the financial attack on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The West froze $282bn of Russian assets held abroad, disconnected Russian banks from SWIFT and prevented them from processing payments through America’s banks. America has also threatened “secondary sanctions” on banks in other countries that support Russia’s war effort. Even European policymakers, who support sanctions, were alarmed at how fast Visa and MasterCard—two American firms that the euro zone relies on for retail payments—closed shop in Russia. 

And the tsunami crashing over Russia has prompted America’s adversaries to accelerate their efforts to move away from the dollar, and pushed many other governments to look at their dependence on American finance. China views it as one of its biggest vulnerabilities.

Mr Putin is hoping to capitalise on this dollar dissatisfaction at the BRICS summit. For him creating a new scheme is an urgent practical priority as well as a geopolitical strategy. Russia’s foreign-exchange markets now almost exclusively trade yuan, but because it cannot get enough of this currency to pay for all of its imports, it has been reduced to bartering. In October Russia agreed to buy mandarins (the citrus fruit) from Pakistan paid for with chickpeas and lentils. According to some reports these liquidity strains are growing.

Mr Putin hopes to make life outside the American system more bearable by laying some financial plumbing of his own. BRICS officials have held a flurry of meetings ahead of the summit in Kazan. They have discussed creating a credit-ratings agency to rival the main Western ones, which Russia sees as “susceptible to politicisation”. They also examined creating a reinsurance firm to sidestep Western ones that are blocked from reinsuring some tankers transporting Russian oil, and a payments system to replace Visa and MasterCard. Mr Putin has pushed for creating a common BRICS currency for pricing trade, based on a basket of gold and other non-dollar currencies, but Indian officials objected to this in recent weeks.

By far the most serious initiative is a plan to use digital money backed by fiat currencies. This would place central banks, not correspondent banks with access to the dollar clearing system in America, in the middle of cross-border transactions. In decentralising the financial system, the proposal would mean that no one country could disconnect another. Since commercial banks would transact through their own central banks, they would not need to maintain bilateral relationships with foreign banks, side-stepping the network effects of the current correspondent-banking system.

The “BRICS Bridge” plan was outlined in a report by the Russian finance ministry and central bank in October. Running to 48 pages it critiques Western finance and states that “a new multinational platform for the purposes of cross border settlement needs to be examined in further detail due to its novelty, associated risks, and, potentially, game-changing economics”. With its focus on digital currencies run by central banks it appears to be at least partially inspired by an experimental payments platform called mBridge, which was developed by the BIS alongside the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. Chinese state media say that the new BRICS plan “is likely to draw on the lessons learned” from the mBridge project by the BIS.

That BIS experiment was innocent in design and initiated in 2019, before Russia’s full-scale invasion. It has been stunningly successful, according to several people involved in the project. It could cut transaction times from days to seconds and transaction costs to almost nothing. In June the BIS said mBridge had reached “minimum viable product stage” and Saudi Arabia’s central bank joined as a fifth partner in the scheme. Some 31 other members are observers. By creating a system that could potentially be far more efficient than the current one—and which would weaken the dominance of the dollar—the BIS has unwittingly stepped into a geopolitical minefield.

“If someone is transacting outside of the dollar system for political reasons, you want that to be more expensive for them than the dollar system,” says Jay Shambaugh, a senior treasury department official. The efficiency gains of new kinds of digital money may erode the use of the dollar in cross-border trade, according to the Fed. Reciprocally they could boost China’s currency. Speaking to bankers and officials about mBridge in September, a Hong Kong official said it “provides another opportunity to allow the easier use of the renminbi in cross-border payment, and Hong Kong as an offshore hub stands to benefit”.

Is it possible that mBridge’s concepts and code may be replicated by the BRICS, China or Russia? The BIS doubtless views mBridge as a joint project and believes that it has the ultimate say over who can join. Yet some Western officials say that participants in the mBridge trial may be able to pass on the intellectual capital it involves to others, including participants in the BRICS Bridge. According to multiple sources China has taken a lead on the software and code behind the mBridge project. The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, leads the project’s technology subcommittee and, according to comments made by a BIS official in 2023, its digital ledger “was built by” the PBOC. Perhaps this technology and know-how could be used to build a parallel system beyond the reach of the BIS or its Western members. The BIS has declined to comment on any similarities between its experiment and Mr Putin’s plan.

The BRICS’s foray into the payments race reveals the new geopolitical challenges facing multilateral organisations. At a meeting of the G20 group of large economies in 2020, the BIS was given the job of both improving the existing system and, at China’s urging, of experimenting with digital currencies. Earlier this year Agustín Carstens, its boss, called for “entirely new architectures” and a “fundamental rethink of the financial system”. Yet as different members of the organisation have rival objectives, staying above the fray is getting harder. The world has become more difficult to navigate, acknowledges Cecilia Skingsley, the boss of the BIS Innovation Hub. But she says it still has a role to play in solving problems for all countries “almost independent of what other kind of agenda they might have”.

One option for America and its allies is to try to hobble new payment systems that compete with the dollar. Western officials have warned the BIS that the project could be misused by countries with malign motives. The BIS has since slowed down its work on mBridge, according to some former staff and advisers, and is unlikely to admit any new members to the project. Another option is to improve the dollar-based system so that it is as efficient as new rivals. America is already gearing up to compete. 

In April the New York Fed joined six other central banks in a BIS project aimed at making the existing system faster and cheaper. The Federal Reserve may also link its domestic instant-payments system with those in other countries. SWIFT said this month that it plans to conduct trials of digital transactions next year, leveraging some of its incumbent advantages including strong network effects and trust, says Tom Zschach, its innovation chief.

Any rival BRICS payments system will still face huge challenges. Guaranteeing liquidity will be difficult or require large implicit government subsidies. If the underlying flows of capital and trade between two countries are imbalanced, which they usually are, they will have to accumulate assets or liabilities in each others’ currencies, which may be unappealing. Distrust of China runs deep in India, a key BRICS member. And to scale a digital-currency system, countries must agree on complex rules to govern settlement and financial crime. Such unanimity is unlikely to win the day in Kazan.

Yet, for all that, the BRICS scheme may have momentum. There is a broad consensus that the current cross-border-payments system is too slow and expensive. While rich countries tend to focus on making it quicker, many others want to overturn the current system entirely. 

At least 134 central banks are experimenting with digital money, mostly for domestic purposes, reckons the Atlantic Council, a think-tank. The number working on such currencies for cross-border transactions has doubled to 13 since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This week’s BRICS summit is no Bretton Woods. All that Russia and its pals have to do is move a relatively small number of sanctions-related transactions beyond America’s reach. Still, many are aiming higher. 

Next year the BRICS summit will be held in Brazil, chaired by its president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who fulminates over the power of the greenback. “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” he said last year. “Who was it that decided?”

© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com

Shakib Al Hasan’s participation in the upcoming home Test series against South Africa next month appears to be on track, barring any injury concerns or selection issues, according to a Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) official.

The uncertainty around Shakib’s availability arose after a murder case was filed against him, linking him to the death of a garment worker during protests on August 5.

Shakib, a former Awami League lawmaker, is one of 146 individuals named in the case, which was filed at Dhaka’s Adabor Police Station on August 22.

Speaking to Mirpur reporters, BCB’s in-charge cricket operations, Shahriar Nafees, reassured that the interim government has made its stance clear. “I think the Hon’ble Chief Adviser, Hon’ble Law Adviser, and Hon’ble Sports Adviser have spoken very clearly regarding Shakib Al Hasan. There is a clear message from the Bangladesh government that no one will be harassed unfairly in the cases that have been filed”

Shahriar further noted that the final decision lies with the selectors. “Once the squad is announced, we’ll know who is in. As of now, I see no reason for Shakib not to play,” he added.

At present, Shakib is in Chennai with the national team, preparing for the second and final Test in Kanpur after a 280-run defeat to India in the opening match.

His participation in the upcoming game is uncertain due to a finger injury, which limited him to bowling 21 overs without taking a wicket.

Shakib is also dealing with an eye issue, visible as he was seen biting his helmet strap while batting, where he managed scores of 32 and 25 runs.

Following the conclusion of the India-Bangladesh Test series, South Africa is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka on October 16. The first Test between Bangladesh and South Africa will begin on October 21 in Mirpur, followed by the second Test in Chattogram on October 29.

CNN
 — 

Brad Binder had a front row seat for one of the most terrifying crashes motorsport has ever seen at this weekend’s Austrian MotoGP.

The South African was right behind Johann Zarco’s Ducati when it collided with Franco Morbidelli’s Yamaha with the riders racing at full throttle. Zarco and Morbidelli were sent flying, while their bikes carried on, becoming potentially lethal projectiles.

That both motorcycles missed hitting Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales was as miraculous as it was extraordinary. Rossi later admitted that the “saint of motorcyclists” must have been watching over him and his teammate.

“I think the luckiest guy in the world right now is Valentino Rossi,” Binder told CNN Sport. The 25-year-old KTM rider shudders when considering what might have happened.

“Honestly I prefer not to even think about,” he admits. “You know the bikes are probably still going at more than 200 kph, and a bike weighing in at 185kgs flying at close to 200 kph, if that hits somebody, I think we all know how that might end.”

Remarkably both Zarco and Morbidelli were able to walk away from the incident, though the Ducati rider has since told L’Equipe that he will undergo surgery for a fractured wrist later this week.

Binder says the risks of racing are always there.

“It’s a danger that everybody knows, that we really just try to keep in the back of our minds and not think about. Unfortunately, the only way to do this job is to approach things in that way. If you’re worried about the risks and the things that could happen, I don’t think you could ever do this job for a living.”

READ: Maverick Vinales – Top Gun by name, top rider by nature

Binder finished fourth after the red-flagged race eventually restarted, an impressive achievement from 17th on the grid. It capped the end of a rollercoaster week for the man born in Potchefstroom, in South Africa’s North West province.

Just seven days earlier, Binder became the first ever South African to win a premier class race, at the Czech Republic GP in Brno, riding in only his third MotoGP.

The victory was also KTM’s first ever MotoGP victory, and Binder was the first rookie to win a race since Marc Marquez’s maiden win at the GP of the Americas in 2013.

“It’s been absolutely fantastic,” he says. “I don’t think we quite expected it so soon, especially in only my third grand prix. It was honestly a dream come true, something that you work towards getting right your entire career as a motorcycle racer.”

READ: The power behind Marquez’s MotoGP throne

Rugby and cricket

Binder and his family moved to Krugersdorp, just outside Johannesburg, when he was 10 years old. He admits that motorsport is not something typically associated with South Africa.

“For sure, when you think of sport and South Africa you think of rugby and cricket or something like that,” he said.

“When I was younger and I started racing in South Africa it was a lot more busy, a lot of racing was going on there and a lot of support, but things died off a bit, but it is slowly coming back.”

The rookie’s success has been well-received at home.

“It’s really cool, because the news really blew up at home,” he says. “I must say, South Africans are always fantastic at backing anyone in sports, and especially their own, so it’s been great to see all the support I’ve had.”

READ: Will 2020 be Rossi’s final season in MotoGP?

Covid-19 has presented an extra challenge for Binder, and his younger brother Darryn, who competes in the Moto3 class.

“It’s really difficult at the moment with South Africa’s borders being closed,” Binder explains.

“It’s nearly impossible for us to go home. After this weekend’s race we have two weeks off and it would have been great to have shot home and caught up with friends and family for a week and come back. But unfortunately, the way things are at the moment, we’ll just be staying here.”

He admits to being a little homesick.

“South Africa in general is an amazing place, for sure. The main thing about South Africa, I don’t really know how to explain it, it’s just home, you know? It’s that place that I go to and I know exactly how everything works.

“It’s just amazing to go back and go to the places where I grew up and see all your friends and stuff, the stuff I’ve been doing my whole life. It’s all those things. I hope everything gets back to normal soon.”

Life on the road is, however, nothing new for the Binder brothers.

“We’ve both been spending most of our time in Europe and doing this together since 2014,” he says.

The older Binder has been racing in Europe since 2011, winning the Moto3 title in 2016, and finishing a close second to Alex Marquez in last season’s Moto2 championship.

When not competing, he is often found honing his skills in Spain.

“The good thing about Spain is that there are a lot of different tracks and it’s really good for training,” he added.

“The weather’s also good. Spain is always a place I try to go back to if I can’t go home.”

READ: Marc and Alex Marquez united in MotoGP

In spite of his nine years’ racing experience, Binder admits the step up to MotoGP was daunting.

“A MotoGP bike is a completely different beast to a Moto2 bike, you have more than double the horsepower and the bike’s actually even lighter, so it’s really tough to get your head around it at the beginning. Each time I get on the bike I feel more and more comfortable,” he said.

This year’s KTM looks to be a formidable package, and a serious challenger to the other factory teams. The arrival of Dani Pedrosa, Marc Marquez’s former Honda teammate, as a test rider is widely credited with turning the team into contenders.

“I actually had a ride on the 2019 bike at the end of last year,” Binder says. “When I got on the 2020 bike in Malaysia you could feel it was a huge step forward, much, much better and much easier to ride too. KTM have been working flat out, Dani has been working incredibly too.”

Ominously for the rest of the field, Binder sees that upward trajectory continuing.

“It’s awesome to see these huge steps forward, and in general I think there’s more to come,” he added.

For now, the exiled Binder is focused on building on his early success in this strangest of MotoGP seasons.

A return visit home would definitely be welcome, but he admits he does keep a little taste of South Africa with him.

“I try to keep a bit of biltong on me – but it’s not always easy to find!”