SYDNEY // Michael Clarke, the Australia captain, said his young team leave for their tour of Sri Lanka determined to work their way up the world Test rankings, but acknowledges it will take some time.
Clarke was among the five players in the 15-man Test squad who left Australia on Thursday. The other 10 were already part of the Twenty20 or limited-overs international squads which left last month.
Australia have slipped from No 1 to No 5 in the world Test rankings, one place below Sri Lanka.
"I really hope we can turn things around straight away. It is going to take time for us to work our way back up the rankings," Clarke told reporters at Sydney Airport.
The Australians travel to Sri Lanka for three Tests, then have a series in South Africa before hosting New Zealand and India in Test series starting in December.
The Test squad include the uncapped pacemen Trent Copeland and James Pattinson, the spinner Nathan Lyon and the batsman Shaun Marsh, all hoping to push for places in the 11.
Australia are still No 1 in the one-day international (ODI) rankings and will play five limited-overs matches in Sri Lanka, along with two Twenty20 games.
Clarke said he was optimistic the new spin pair of Lyons and Michael Beer will perform well in Sri Lankan conditions.
"It's good to have two different spinners as a bowling partnership in tandem. They can really work well together," said Clarke, who is yet to meet Lyons.
"He's got an opportunity to grab it with both hands and, by all reports, I'm pretty confident he'll do that, so he's certainly got a lot of talent," Clarke said. "Now it's about giving him a go and seeing how he handles playing cricket for Australia."
Clarke said the inclusion of so many rookies was positive.
"I love the fact we've got some new fresh faces that are excited and itching for their opportunity," he said.
"But the facts are we have to have some success, we have to play good cricket, we have to improve from our recent results.
"We need to get better and we know that as players, and I can guarantee we're working as hard as I've ever worked in my career, so hopefully we can turn that around sooner rather than later."
Australia play Twenty20 matches tomorrow and on Monday, before the ODIs on August 10, 14, 16, 20 and 22.
The first Test will begin at Galle from August 31 followed by matches at Kandy from September 12 and Colombo from September 20.
Clarke will be in charge of the Test squad for the first time since replacing Ricky Ponting, the No 3 batsman who stood down as the Australia captain following their World Cup quarter-final defeat to India, the eventual champions, in March.
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Director: Sriram Raghavan
Producer: Matchbox Pictures, Viacom18
Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu, Radhika Apte, Anil Dhawan
Rating: 3.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
Five films to watch
Castle in the Sky (1986)
Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Only Yesterday (1991)
Pom Poki (1994)
The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013)
More on Quran memorisation:
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Director: Shady Ali
Cast: Boumi Fouad , Mohamed Tharout and Hisham Ismael
Rating: 3/5
Ziina users can donate to relief efforts in Beirut
Ziina users will be able to use the app to help relief efforts in Beirut, which has been left reeling after an August blast caused an estimated $15 billion in damage and left thousands homeless. Ziina has partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise money for the Lebanese capital, co-founder Faisal Toukan says. “As of October 1, the UNHCR has the first certified badge on Ziina and is automatically part of user's top friends' list during this campaign. Users can now donate any amount to the Beirut relief with two clicks. The money raised will go towards rebuilding houses for the families that were impacted by the explosion.”
New schools in Dubai
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Multitasking pays off for money goals
Tackling money goals one at a time cost financial literacy expert Barbara O'Neill at least $1 million.
That's how much Ms O'Neill, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University in the US, figures she lost by starting saving for retirement only after she had created an emergency fund, bought a car with cash and purchased a home.
"I tell students that eventually, 30 years later, I hit the million-dollar mark, but I could've had $2 million," Ms O'Neill says.
Too often, financial experts say, people want to attack their money goals one at a time: "As soon as I pay off my credit card debt, then I'll start saving for a home," or, "As soon as I pay off my student loan debt, then I'll start saving for retirement"."
People do not realise how costly the words "as soon as" can be. Paying off debt is a worthy goal, but it should not come at the expense of other goals, particularly saving for retirement. The sooner money is contributed, the longer it can benefit from compounded returns. Compounded returns are when your investment gains earn their own gains, which can dramatically increase your balances over time.
"By putting off saving for the future, you are really inhibiting yourself from benefiting from that wonderful magic," says Kimberly Zimmerman Rand , an accredited financial counsellor and principal at Dragonfly Financial Solutions in Boston. "If you can start saving today ... you are going to have a lot more five years from now than if you decide to pay off debt for three years and start saving in year four."
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Hili 2: Unesco World Heritage site
The site is part of the Hili archaeological park in Al Ain. Excavations there have proved the existence of the earliest known agricultural communities in modern-day UAE. Some date to the Bronze Age but Hili 2 is an Iron Age site. The Iron Age witnessed the development of the falaj, a network of channels that funnelled water from natural springs in the area. Wells allowed settlements to be established, but falaj meant they could grow and thrive. Unesco, the UN's cultural body, awarded Al Ain's sites - including Hili 2 - world heritage status in 2011. Now the most recent dig at the site has revealed even more about the skilled people that lived and worked there.
How to register as a donor
1) Organ donors can register on the Hayat app, run by the Ministry of Health and Prevention
2) There are about 11,000 patients in the country in need of organ transplants
3) People must be over 21. Emiratis and residents can register.
4) The campaign uses the hashtag #donate_hope
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants
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The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
