Indian news round-up

Steve Waugh, Shane Lee to market sports in India: Australian skipper Steve Waugh, along with teammate Shane Lee and New South Wales player Neil Maxwell have joined together to start a new sports marketing company, Sporting Frontier Cricket which has already won the rights to sell advertising at 14 of India's 20 international cricket grounds.

According to the Press Trust of India, Waugh will be non-executive director, Shane Lee, the project director while Neil Maxwell takes the reins as chief executive. Speaking of his role in the company, Waugh said it was "to generate ideas and concepts and the contacts I have made throughout the world particularly in cricket. I see this as a big challenge because I don't know much about business but I want to get involved in it."

The venture is an offshoot of Sporting Frontiers, a company backed by UK venture capital group Pacific Investments. The capital for the venture has come from them, which has a 75 per cent stake in the cricket business. In Australia, the company has signed on as the marketing arm of the Australian Cricketers Association and has plans to move into player management.

Mumbai police have rounded up the guest room staff of the Garware Club House in the Wankhede Stadium following a theft of foreign exchange worth Rs 80,000 belonging to Test cricketer Vinod Kambli.

The theft came to light on the last day of the Ranji Trophy match involving Mumbai and Gujarat at the stadium. Kambli, who was staying in one of the rooms, found his locker burgled. The police have also asked the cricketer for details about the foreign exchange, and why such a huge amount was found with him.

The Sports Journalists Federation of India has condoled the death of veteran sports journalist R Sriman, in New Delhi on Wednesday after a brief illness.

"Sriman was not only a brilliant journalist, but a role model to many a beginner. It is sad that Sriman, a founder member of the federation, passed away just a few days before the silver jubilee celebrations of the SJFI. His contribution to sports journalism was immense and he had rendered yeomen service in the field as the first president of the SJFI. In his death, the sports journalists fraternity had lost a father figure," SJFI secretary R Eswar said in a press release in Bangalore.