IN BRIEF (Page 24)

Cricket

Panesar takes six to spin England to victory

NAPIER, New Zealand: England spinner Monty Panesar claimed six wickets to wrap up the deciding third Test against New Zealand just after lunch on the fifth day yesterday.

New Zealand, chasing an improbable 553 to win, was bowled out for 431 in its second innings to give England victory by 121 runs and a 2-1 triumph in the series, its first overseas success since South Africa in 2005.

Debutant Tim Southee top-scored with 77 not out, including nine sixes, and his half century, off 29 balls, was the fastest by a New Zealander in Tests.

Panesar, who took three wickets to spark a familiar collapse of New Zealand's batting on the fourth day, finished with career - best figures of six for 126.

They were spoiled by Southee's barrage, however, with his three-over spell after lunch going for 31 runs.

Panesar did capture the valuable wickets of Ross Taylor (74) and Brendon McCullum (42) in the morning to realistically end New Zealand's chances of batting out the day.

Doping

WADA slams UCI for lawsuit against former chief

MONTREAL: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) blasted the International Cycling Union (UCI) on Tuesday for filing a lawsuit against former chief Dick Pound and said the money should have been spent on the Floyd Landis appeal.

"This action by UCI in suing WADA's former president is in fact an action against WADA," WADA said. "WADA will be taking all steps necessary to ensure that the court is fully informed of issues and facts relating to doping in Cycling.

"WADA will instruct legal counsel to represent WADA and its former president in this regard, and to robustly defend and reject the unfounded allegations made by the UCI."

Last week, the UCI and its former president Hein Verbruggen filed a complaint in a Swiss court over what they call Pound's "continual injurious and biased comments."

Motor sports

McLaren says it needs to raise its game

LONDON: McLaren must raise its game after losing out to Ferrari in Malaysia at the weekend, the Formula One team's chief executive Martin Whitmarsh said on Tuesday.

"We knew it would be quite a challenge to beat Ferrari in Malaysia and I think ultimately we underperformed," he said in a team de-brief of Sunday's second round of the season.

McLaren won the season-opener in Australia with Lewis Hamilton, but Ferrari's world champion Kimi Raikkonen triumphed at Sepang.

McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen was third while Hamilton finished fifth and had his championship lead over Raikkonen cut to three points.

"Our next major evolutionary step will be in Barcelona (the Spanish Grand Prix on April 27), but we tried one or two minor developments on the car in Malaysia and the same will be true in Bahrain," said Whitmarsh.

Baseball

Oakland beats Boston 5-1, splits Japan series

TOKYO: Rich Harden pitched the Oakland Athletics to a 5-1 win over the Boston Red Sox yesterday, taking the finale of a two-game Major League Baseball season-opening series in Japan.

Harden kept the World Series champion from sweeping the first MLB games in Japan since 2004, backed by Emil Brown's three-run homer off of Boston starting pitcher Jon Lester.

The Oakland right-hander fired nine strikeouts in six innings and gave up only three hits, while former Red Sox Alan Embree pitched the ninth inning for the A's.

(China Daily 03/27/2008 page24)