Cape Town (South Africa), Apr. 16 : Former Australian leg spinner and captain of the IPL franchisee Rajasthan Royals, Shane Warne, has praised the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for selecting former Zimbabwe captain Andy Flower as the England cricket team director.

"England have taken a step in the right direction by appointing Andy Flower, and I think the new job title as team director is the right one," Warne wrote in The Times newspaper.

Woking, Britain  - Ron Dennis quit Formula One racing for good after 28 years on Thursday when he left his post of McLaren Racing CEO for the executive position in the company's automotive division.

Dennis, 61, had earlier this year resigned as team principal of the McLaren-Mercedes F1 team. The new team boss Martin Whitmarsh was also named Mclaren Racing leader on Thursday.

Muzaffarpur (Bihar), Apr 16 : A criminal case was slapped against Indian Cricket Team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh in a court here on Thursday for disrespecting the prestigious Padma Awards.

Senior advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha filed the case against the cricketers under sections 499 (defamation), 500 (punishment for defamation), 503 (criminal intimidation) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace).

Perth, Apr. 16 : A University of Western Australia bio-mechanist has said Proteas off spinner Johan Botha's action is similar to Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan.

According to Bruce Elliot, Botha has an action that looks "not quite as different as Murali but heading in that direction."

London - We've been here before. English domination of Europe is becoming a habit.

Statistics don't always tell the full story, but in this case they are incontrovertible.

For the third season running, three of the Champions League semi-finalists come from the Premier League.

In the past five seasons, the Premier League has provided 12 of the 20 Champions League semi-finalists while Spain, in the same period has yielded four semi-finalists, Italy two and the Netherlands one.

London  - Roman Pavlyuchenko will seek talks with Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp after losing his first-team place at White Hart Lane, according to media reports on Thursday.

The Russia forward has not started a game since the first week of March, when he scored in the 4-0 win over Middlesbrough.

"The situation with Roman sitting on the bench is not good," said Pavlyuchenko's agent, Oleg Artemov. "It is my intention to talk to Harry Redknapp."