Globalsport

Globalsport

Pak manager faces boot
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) sacked team manager Yawar Saeed on Friday and appointed a retired brigadier as the manager for next month's triangular series in Australia. Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, who was appointed PCB chairman on December 14 by the military regime, named Brig (retd) Khwaja Muhammad Nasir as new manager to replace Saeed.

Games budget cut
SYDNEY: Sydney Olympics organisers today said they were forced to slash up to 100m Australian Dollars (US $ 64m) off the 2000 Games budget due to sponsorship woes.

``We're looking at cuts somewhere in the vicinity of a 50m-100m Australian Dollars,'' Olympics minister Michael Knight said.

SOCOG chief executive Sandy Holloway said he did not rule out the possibility of staff cuts. But International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the cuts would not affect the Games, only eight months away.

Meca sets record
TARIFA (SPAIN): Spanish long-distance swimmer David Meca smashed the record for swimmingacross the Straits of Gibraltar as he continues his campaign against a doping ban. Meca, the world long-distance swimming champion, swam the turbulent stretch of water in two hours 27 minutes on Thursday, bettering the previous record of three hours 10 minutes.The Spaniard was angered by a four-year doping ban slapped on him for testing positive for Nandrolone at a World Cup meeting in Brazil in January.IOC is to hear his appeal at Lausanne next week.

Football fatwa
TEHRAN: Iranian Football Federation has warned that its National team will not play a match in The United States if it has to face the same difficulties entering the country as Iranian academics encountered when they arrived for a seminar. Iran are scheduled to play a friendly match against the US National team on January 16 at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

The team then travels to Mexico for another friendly.

--Agencies