Cricket Diary: Indians will not be tested (15 Aug 1998)

15 August 1998

Cricket Diary: Indians will not be tested

Electronic Telegraph

INDIAN authorities have added another dissenting note to the troubled build-up to cricket's debut in the Commonwealth Games next month by saying they will not allow their players to undergo drug tests.

Jayant Lele, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, said: "Cricketers worldwide are not tested for drugs, and we see no need to make an exception during the Games."

India have already caused consternation by ignoring Wednesday's deadline for announcing a team for the Games in Kuala Lumpur.

The first-string team are almost certain to play instead in a lucrative one-day series against Pakistan in Toronto, though the Indian Olympic Association, through which all entries have to be routed for the Games, have said they will not forward the names of the cricket team unless the board agree to send a full-strength squad.

The International Cricket Council said yesterday that the matches would not have one-day international status.

DAVID GREEN had an uneasy sense that history was repeating itself when he was summoned into the Lancashire committee room at Old Trafford last week.

Green was so disenchanted at being sacked by Lancashire in 1967 that he burnt his county blazer in a ritual show of disgust.

He went on to spend four years with Gloucestershire and it was the meeting between his two counties, a game he covered for the Telegraph, which prompted a bit of belated bridge-building.

"You can't sack me now," said a bewildered Green. "You've done it once, you can't do it twice."

Whereupon he was presented with a new Lancashire blazer by Brian Statham, a former team-mate and now president at Old Trafford.

ITALY'S ambitions, or more particularly those of their federation's president, Simone Gambino, are reflected in a short tour by an Italian Under-18 side.

The Italians practised at Lord's on Thursday and are playing five matches, the highlight being a fixture at Hambledon next on Thursday. The full Italian side have been promised a game on the main ground at Lord's in 2001.

WHO said the Corinthian spirit was dead? Fresh from South Africa's dispiriting series defeat, Jonty Rhodes reflected: "I can't believe that someone will pay me for what I'm doing out there. I'm having a lot of fun.

"I'm just running around trying to slow the ageing process down by keeping really busy."

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)