Sporting Digest: Cricket

ARJUNA RANATUNGA, the Sri Lanka captain, heads a powerful batting order in the first Test against Zimbabwe in Harare, which starts today. He hit 119 against Mashonaland Country Districts and an unbeaten century in the match against a Zimbabwe President's XI.

SQUADS FOR FIRST TEST, ZIMBABWE v SRI LANKA (HARARE): Zimbabwe: G Flower, M Dekker, A Campbell, D Houghton, A Flower (capt), W James, G Whittal, G Martin, H Streak, D Brain, S Peall, M Jarvis.

Sri Lanka (probable): R Mahanama, A Gurusinha, S Jayasuriya, S Ranatunga, A de Silva, A Ranatunga (capt), H Tillekeratne, P Dassanayake, M Muralitheran, P Wickremasinghe, R Pushpakumara, C Vaas.

PAKISTAN have dropped Zahid Fazal for the first one-day international against Australia in Multan on Friday. Zahid performed poorly in the second Test against Australian in Rawalpindi which ended in a draw at the weekend, leaving Pakistan one up in the three-Test series.

PAKISTAN SQUAD, TRIANGULAR ONE-DAY SERIES v AUSTRALIA AND SOUTH AFRICA: Aamir Sohail, Saeed Anwar, Atif Rauf, Aamir Malik, Salim Malik (captain), Inzamam-ul-Haq, Rashid Latif, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Akram Raza, Mushtaq Ahmad, Mohsin Kamal, Asif Mujtaba, Kabir Khan.