NEW DELHI: Cricket board secretary Jayant Lele played truant at a press conference he was to address on Monday. Reporters gathered at South Delhi's Taj Palace hotel at 3 pm for a briefing on the decisions taken at the Board's tours and fixtures committee meeting earlier in the day.They waited in vain for him for nearly an hour and searched for him all over the hotel, in which the hotel staff too joined, only to discover that Lele had checked out at noon. No other board official was available either.Today's incident comes close on the heels of the confusion created by the eleventh hour change of venue for the selection committee meeting here on Saturday.

Report submitted

MUMBAI: Justice YV Chandrachud submitted a 90-page voluminous report to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Monday. Justice Chandrachud was heading the one-man inquiry commission appointed by the BCCI to probe the betting and match-fixing allegations.

The BCCI's Annual General Meeting, held earlier this month at Chennai, had authorised its working committee to go through the report and decide on the course of action, if any, to be taken on Prabhakar who had alleged in a magazine interview that an attempt was made by a teammate to bribe him to tank a match on the 1994 tour to Sri Lanka.

Cricket telecast

NEW DELHI: The three-Test series between India and Sri Lanka will be telecast live by ESPN. The channel will also telecast one hour highlights of the day's play every evening as well as before the start of the play on the next day.

The first Test will begin at Mohali on Thursday and the second and third Tests will be held at Nagpur and Mumbai respectively.

Pavanasam in lead

SALEM: Fide Master AP Pavanasam of NLC maintained his lead with five points when he accounted for his IM Lanka Ravi in the fifth round of the Salem Silver Jubilee Open Fide Rated Chess Tournament on Monday.

Following the leaders are IMs K Murugan and P Mithrakanth (both from NLC), IM V Koshy of ONGC, BT Murali Krishnan of Southern Railway, N Sanjay of Income-Tax and J Venkatramana of ICF with 4.5 points each.

C Rly victorious

KOLHAPUR: Central Railway (Mumbai) beat Indian Navy (Lonavala) 63-33 to win the three-day state-level basketball competition basketball for the Late Tatyasaheb Kore Memorial Trophy Warnanagar near here on Sunday.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.