Three of the teams ahead of United are in action on Sunday.

In a recent piece in the Australian, the peerless Gideon Haigh described the life of a fringe first-class cricketer, Steve Cazzulino. The beauty of the story is that the most powerful words come from Cazzulino himself and not the wordsmith.It is that time of year in Australian cricket when representative careers are made or broken, sometimes forever. For Cazzulino, a damn fine cricketer who played 13 first-class games, it sounds like he harbours lingering regrets that his career did not kick on. In some senses, when you get close enough to being selected for Australia, the equation becomes simple. If youre in the frame, it mostly boils down to runs and wickets, allowing for incumbency rights. Shaun Marsh v Joe Burns v Usman Khawaja v Cameron Bancroft. Jackson Bird v Peter Siddle v Joe Mennie.Auditioning for the first-class stage, though, is not quite as straightforward as comparing apples with apples. For many talented youngsters, like Cazzulino when he was an elite junior, making it into the representative ranks and being selected in Under-17, U-19 and development squads can be make or break. If your card is not marked, if youre not identified in the talent ID pathway, if youre not looked at by the selectors, it is not as simple as just scoring big runs or taking wickets.Unlike, say, athletics or swimming, where your chances are determined by the clock or the tape measure, cricket selectors have more of a juggling act to perform. And at that crucial juncture in a players life, somewhere between 17 and 20 years of age, when they have to juggle choices like university, job prospects, or giving cricket a red-hot go, if they miss out on selection, it may be the last we see of that person.That could have been Matthew Haydens story. Overlooked at underage levels but burning with disappointment, he just piled on so many 1st Grade runs and then Shield runs that it became impossible not to pick him for the next level up. Not every cricketer can tell that story. For many (most?), trying to get noticed by the pathway selectors is often the fork-in-the-road moment. I witnessed the Hayden story first-hand (we were team-mates during that period) but Ive also seen the kind of heartbreak, doubt and sadness that Cazzulino so courageously opens up about.As the father of a young 13-year-old who has dreams of making more rep teams, Im forever torn between encouraging him to chase that dream with a single-minded determination and being fearful that he might take my advice and still fall short. Have I set him up for an almost inevitable fail or fall? I keep telling him that its all about putting numbers on the board, but I know my words are hollow - its not as simple as that. Its also about team balance, opportunity, luck, umpiring decisions and selectorial vision (or blindness). Yes, when it comes to Sheffield Shield cricket and youre in a straight shootout, it might come down to the pure numbers, but to get to that stage, how much of it is in the lap of the gods - the selectors? Spare a thought for Bird, possibly the first No. 11 batsman to be judged on his batting ability! One can only hope he gets another shot at redemption.Selecting Test teams must be hard but picking underage rep teams must be a nightmare. Every parent and district coach thinks their child has a powerful case and can quote statistics to prove their point. Selectors on the other hand have to weigh up whether 25 runs opening the batting in 1st Grade is worth more than a century batting in the middle order in 3rd Grade. What allowances do you make for a kid who nicks off to a peach of an outswinger, or gets a poor lbw decision in contrast to someone else who gets dropped early and can murder mediocre bowling? How do you allow for someone who plays on green seamers, which is reflected in their numbers, as distinct from a spinner who never really gets the chance to bowl on a wearing pitch because most junior rep cricket doesnt go for long enough to bring that skill into play?If youve got the luxury of time, years in some cases, you will eventually sort the wheat from the chaff. But when you have to balance that long-term view with a commitment to rewarding form and runs on the board, how do you walk the tightrope? I know of recent cases where someone who has opened the batting in 1st Grade and faced first-class bowlers (men) for an hour has been overlooked for a 3rd grade batsman who peeled off 80 against boys his own age. The numbers tell one story but anyone who has eked out a tough 20 on a green pitch in Brisbane in the first session will tell you that you sometimes need to be in good form to nick one.As a medium-fast bowler myself, when I was in form I almost preferred to bowl to better batsmen because there were more chances of them nicking the late outswinger. So often a marginally slower bowler will find that elusive edge because the batsman has that extra fraction of a second to catch up with the ball. When that same bowler gets selected to play at the next level up, a superior batsman will make him look ordinary. Which selector would have the guts and the vision to look past the numbers and pick the cricketer who is more likely to succeed higher up? When that does occasionally happen, they run the risk of getting pilloried for picking someone who hasnt performed well on paper. For every gut-feeling selection, theres an aggrieved cricketer (like Cazzulino) who wonders why the benchmark was not a tangible, measurable, justifiable number. As a parent with experience of all this now, I must force myself to look beyond the obvious when my kids miss out. I must confess that it is an easy statement to make in a hypothetical situation.Cazzulinos tale, brought to life so eloquently by Haigh, is going to be compulsory reading for my sons. Having gone through that same process myself 25 years ago, daring to dream but knowing in my heart that I wasnt good enough to crack it full-time, I yearned to reach out and claim every word of the piece as my own. In my case, I was never quite good enough but I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Oxford, which satisfied some of that hunger while opening another door. If my sons have inherited anything from me, I hope it wont be my talent but rather the ability to have dreams that can be pursued in a non-mutually exclusive way. As Cazzulino opines when asked if it was difficult to be a rounded person at cricket: Absolutely. I think you either need to be incredibly smart or incredibly thick-skinned. Or in the case of Bird, you just need to score more runs at No. 11. Denny Mclain Athletics Jersey . PETERSBURG, Fla. Joe Rudi Jersey . -- If this was Aaron Gordons final home game at Arizona, and it almost certainly was, then he went out in style. https://www.cheapathleticsonline.com/1355m-bert-campaneris-jersey-athletics.html . After Gasquet beat fifth-seeded Ivan Dodig of Croatia 7-5, 6-3, Tsonga followed up with a 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-2 win against sixth-seeded Edouard Roger-Vasselin in an all-French match. Jose Canseco Athletics Jersey . -- The St. Johns IceCaps weathered a wild first period with the help of goaltender Jussi Olkinuora, before finding offensive inroads in the second. Mark McGwire Jersey . 24 Baylor in a Big 12 clash between teams trending in opposite directions. Andrew Wiggins made 10-of-12 from the foul line and scored 17 for Kansas (14-4, 5-0 Big 12), which capped a stretch of four straight games against ranked opponents unscathed. LONDON -- As fog engulfed English stadiums, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Diego Costa illuminated the Premier League on Saturday.And the 35-year-old Ibrahimovic is fast catching the striker seven years his junior on the scoring leaderboard with only two goals separating them.Ibrahimovic provided both goals at the Hawthorns as Manchester United rolled over West Bromwich Albion 2-0 for a third consecutive league victory -- a header after five minutes and a deflected second-half strike.He is great to play alongside because he makes such great runs, United winger Jesse Lingard said. That makes him easy to link up with.At Crystal Palace in south London, Chelsea clocked up an 11th consecutive win for the first time in a Premier League season. Costa secured a 1-0 victory for Antonio Contes side by heading in his 15th goal of the league campaign in the first half.And Costa is far ahead of Ibrahimovic on a more significant table. Costas Chelsea tops the Premier League, still 13 points ahead of Ibrahimovics sixth-place United.Thats an unsettling gulf for United manager Jose Mourinho, who celebrated a third consecutive victory on the first anniversary of being fired by Chelsea for a second time.Returning United to the top four Champions League places, let alone challenging for the title, is a tough mission for Mourinho.Three of the teams ahead of United are in action on Sunday. Theres a meeting of Arsenal and Manchester City -- third versus fourth -- at the same time fifth-place Tottenham hosts Burnley.Heres the rest of Saturdays action:STOKE 2, LEICESTER 2Struggling champion Leicester conceded twice after Jamie Vardy was sent off before staging a late comeback bbut still slipped to 15th place.ddddddddddddVardy saw red in the 28th minute for a tackle on Mame Diouf. Danny Simpsons hand ball then gave Stoke a penalty that Bojan Krkic converted, and Joe Allen sent the hosts into a two-goal lead at halftime.Leonardo Ulloa began the recovery in the 74th and Daniel Amartey headed in his first Leicester goal in the 88th to give Leicester only its second point on the road.MIDDLESBROUGH 3, SWANSEA 0Middlesbrough climbed four points clear of the relegation zone while Swansea is only off the bottom on goal difference.Alvaro Negredo scored two first-half goals and Marten de Roon added a third in the 58th. Bob Bradleys Swansea has conceded 11 goals in its last three away games in the league and scored only once.When I came here I knew what I was getting into and Im not backing down from it now, Bradley said. Thats the challenge -- when the team has put itself in a tough spot everybody has got to stick together during the toughest times and fight the fight.WEST HAM 1, HULL 0West Ham has five league wins this season and all were achieved with 1-0 scorelines.Mark Noble, who clinched Wednesdays win over Burnley after missing a penalty, netted from the spot at the Olympic Stadium as Hull slipped to the bottom of the standings.SUNDERLAND 1, WATFORD 0Sunderland moved off the bottom thanks to Patrick van Aanholt tucking the ball in off the far post four minutes into the second half.A fourth league win in seven games took Sunderland a point from safety. Watford is seven points ahead in 12th place. ' ' '