The fast bowler will need more than a sunny personality

Bomb blasts and arrests marked an opposition-called general strike in Bangladesh today in protest of a court order jailing 33 of the alliance's leaders.

A takeaway boss has been jailed for 15 years after paying under-age girls for sex and inciting others to become child prostitutes.

A jury has retired to consider its verdicts in the trial of a takeaway boss accused of committing a string of child sex offences against seven girls.

A packed ferry boat has capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote north-eastern India, leaving at least 35 people dead and 165 others feared missing, police said.

Somerset batsman Nick Compton has been rewarded for his prolific form in a so-far bowler-friendly season with a place in a 12-man England Lions squad to play West Indies at Northampton from 10 May.

Philip Hensher attempts a complex act of narrative ventriloquism in his eighth novel. Scenes from Early Life is written as a fictionalised memoir, told from the viewpoint of Hensher's husband, Zaved Mahmood. This re-imagining of his partner's childhood in what was then East Pakistan [now Bangladesh] reads like a fictive account that wants to stay faithful to historical reality. It might be this complicated braiding of the documentary and the dramatic, of fiction and reality, that gives early chapters their static, distant tone.

Durham's captain is just one of many county pros playing the shortest form of game all over world. He talks to Jon Culley

Durham's captain is just one of many county pros playing the shortest form of game all over the world. He talks to Jon Culley

This novel – and it is a novel – describes the rich texture of extended family life in pre-independence, conflict-riven Bangladesh

Britain is different now, since George Galloway was elected in Bradford West. Partly this is because he's splendidly unpredictable, so it's possible he'll resign to compete in the Olympics at weightlifting, or discover he's fourth in line to the throne.

The night of light entertainment that never leaves a dry eye in the house

A Bangladeshi child drowns every half hour. So why are so few taught to swim? David Bergman in Dhaka looks at a project trying to change that

One of sport's fiercest rivalries resumes today as India face Pakistan in the Asia Cup. But off the field, the atmosphere is likely to be more cordial as officials of the two countries' cricket boards meet to discuss a the possibility of a lucrative series in England.