Trisha's touching 'Homeless' story

We are aware that, Hot beauty Trisha has been the brand ambassador for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Recently, the numero uno Actress has also shot a brand-new ad for PETA in which she appears with a rescued dog named 'Bambi'. As a puppy on the streets, Bambi was tormented by a mob of schoolboys before being rescued by a passing motorist.

The ad reads, "Be an Angel: Adopt a Homeless Dog", encouraging people to adopt a dog from an animal shelter or the streets.

Trisha tells the heart warming story of how she rescued her own dog, Cadbury. "I found him ... in Hyderabad while was shooting for a film, we were just driving past, and we saw this small little puppy who was wounded ... and he couldn't walk, and he was lying in the rain. There was no looking back he came back home with me ... and he is like the son I never had."

Hope admirers of Trisha will take this message seriously.

Seniors deserved a break - Raina

Suresh Raina, who is India's captain for the limited-overs leg of the tour of West Indies, has admitted there will be huge expectations from his team despite the absence of some big names.

"[Being captain] is a great challenge to me and I'm really looking forward to that," Raina said on the team's arrival in the Caribbean. "We have good players who want to do well in this series. They have done well in first-class cricket and the IPL or in the World Cup team."

For the ODIs, India will be without regular captain MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, and Zaheer Khan, who have been rested, while Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag miss out through injury or illness. Dhoni and Zaheer are set to return for the Tests, but the other seniors are set to miss the entire series. The tour will also be Duncan Fletcher's first assignment with the Indian side.

Raina said the senior players "deserved a break" and was hopeful the youngsters in the squad would make the most of the opportunity. "We have a young team here and they are focussed on doing well for India and I am excited to see how they perform over the next few weeks."

West Indies lost their recent ODI series to Pakistan and will once again be without opener Chris Gayle, who was the top run-getter in the IPL, but has been left out for the first two ODIs. When India last played ODIs in the West Indies in 2006, they lost 1-4. The two teams subsequently met in the World Cup earlier this year when India won by 80 runs in Chennai, en route to their tournament triumph. Raina, however, said India would not be complacent. "The West Indies team has been playing good cricket for the past few months and we are not going to take them lightly," he said.

The only Twenty20 game will be played on Saturday at Port of Spain, while the five-match ODI series begins at the same venue on June 6.

Meanwhile West Indies beat the High Performance Centre (HPC) team by 11 runs in a practice Twenty20 game in Couva on Thursday. Batting first, West Indies were restricted to 145 in their 20 overs on what appeared to be a good batting pitch. Opener Lendl Simmons carried on his good form from the Pakistan series, top-scoring with a rapid 43, while Danza Hyatt made 22.

Uncapped left-arm seamer Krishmar Santokie, who has been picked in the Twenty20 squad, and Christopher Barnwell shared two wickets apiece as HPC were restricted to 134 for 6. Wicketkeeper-batsman Shane Dowrich was their mainstay with 52 off 41 balls.

Afridi's legal counsel looks to resolve dispute

A legal firm acting on behalf of Shahid Afridi has sent the Pakistan Cricket Board a letter in a bid to resolve the on-going dispute between the two parties, sparked by his removal from the ODI captaincy, and his subsequent announcement of a "conditional" retirement.

The letter is not a legal notice, but attempts to expand on Afridi's contribution to Pakistan cricket and raises the issue of Hampshire, the county Afridi has been prevented from playing for after the board revoked his No-Objection Certificate (NOC), apart from suspending his central contract.

"A firm of lawyers acting on Afridi's behalf have sent the PCB a letter to try and resolve the issue," the player's manager Umran Khan told ESPNcricinfo. "The letter has gone into some depth in explaining the history of Afridi as a player, his contributions to Pakistan cricket and his global standing as a player. The Hampshire issue has also been raised. The club was terrific in organising the last ODI [between England and Pakistan] last summer."

The PCB confirmed receipt of the letter at their end. "We have received a letter from legal firm Mandviwalla and Zafar Associates on behalf of Afridi and as per the rules we forwarded it to the disciplinary committee," PCB spokesman Nadeem Sarwar told AFP.

According to a report in the Dawn, the letter argues that the showcause notice sent to Afridi is "malafide in law and facts and is an attempt to tarnish the image of the seasoned allrounder who is a patriotic, respected and honourable cricketer of Pakistan".

Afridi has been summoned to appear before a three-man disciplinary committee formed by the PCB on June 8 in Lahore, to face charges that he has breached two clauses of the code of conduct with his retirement announcement and subsequent criticism of the board. Afridi, in his first response to the show-cause notice, accepted that his comments were a violation of the code but Khan clarified that no apology had been made. "He accepted the violations, he did not offer an apology," Khan said. Khan did confirm that Afridi would be appearing before the committee.

The matter has ballooned into far more than just a dispute between player and board; Afridi's stature as successful ODI player and captain and his public popularity has raised the stakes against an administration that has sought zealously to quell player power over the last year and a half. Afridi has appealed directly to Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari, who is also patron of the PCB. On Thursday Rehman Malik, the country's interior minister, also tweeted he would try to resolve the dispute, and it is believed that pressure has been applied from his quarters on the board to do just that.

A handful of parliamentarians have expressed their ire at the handling of the situation. On Thursday Dawn reported that the sports ministry had been asked by the offices of the prime minister and president to submit an independent report on the dispute within a week.

Time to Check the Bench Strength

"Life is jokey but it's bloody serious. You got to plan. West Indies didn't do it." Ralph, an old caretaker of an inn, drawls as he lights up a cigarette. It's 11 pm and the small neighbourhood in Port of Spain is quiet. The glow from his cigarette lights up his grizzly beard. "We were too arrogant when we were winning and didn't plan for the future. Talent is all dried up now and we are watching the ego fights between the board and the players. It's all downhill. It's good to see India planning for the future by bringing in the younger players."

It's a puzzling series in many ways. The weaker team is ignoring its stars and testing its bench strength. The stronger team is being forced to test its bench strength while its stars choose to rest, some in fatigue, some following injury. The agenda is still pretty simple and straightforward: It's India's series to lose. They are the new world champions and will have to win this ODI series. Never mind that they are missing a couple of big players - a champion team can't have any excuses.

West Indies ran out of excuses for their decline a long time ago and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel of hope. It's a grim scenario. The evidence screamed out when the flight from London descended on Barbados. It was a breathtaking visual - a sparkling sea framing the houses like a jewel - but the question that immediately came to mind was, how on earth did such a tiny island produce a battery of world-class players? Now that same smallness offered another scary thought. How on earth will they find world-class players from such a small area? Trinidad is a much bigger place but big, of course, is relative.

Sometimes a win can just prove to be a setback. Is West Indies' recent Test win over Pakistan a boon or a bane? Will it make the hardliners in the WICB turn more adamant in their vision for a future that doesn't involve the bigger stars like Chris Gayle? Or does that win offer concrete proof of their new vision? This series against India can help decide it.

It was a series against India in 1976 that turned the corner for West Indies in many ways. That bloodbath in Sabina Park when Clive Lloyd, hurt after India chased down 403 in the previous Test, unleashed his fast men against the hapless visitors is a landmark event in West Indian cricket history. That victory made Lloyd, and by extension West Indies, realise that pace was the way to go and his gang of fast men went on to unleash such joyous violence - that still stirs the heart of cricket fans - around the world. Fire was raging in Babylon and Lloyd wasn't fiddling. Nostalgia is fun but not when the present is bleak.

If West Indies are to do well in this series, they can't reproduce tracks that were on offer in the series against Pakistan. If India has a weakness, it's against pace and bounce and West Indies, despite having a legspinner as their strike bowler, need to exploit it - like they did so successfully in the World Twenty20 held in the Caribbean region. Will they go for it?

For India, the absence of the seniors is the best thing that could have happened. This squad is perfect to test the bench strength. It's also the perfect setting for the new India coach, Duncan Fletcher, to ease himself in. He has been ostensibly roped in to help India prepare for a future sans the big names. Now he doesn't have to wait for the end of India's tour of Australia early next year to prepare for that eventuality. This series gives him a taste of things to come.

In the Tests, India are going with a new set of openers and in the ODIs, they will also be infusing fresh blood into the middle order. If West Indies are able to produce tracks that aid bounce, this Indian team can be tested by the likes of Kemar Roach, Ravi Rampaul and Andre Russell. It still won't be easy, but at least it will give them a chance.

If the tracks are flat, this could well turn out to be like the 1971 series between the two teams, when a debutant named Sunil Gavaskar gorged on a second-string attack to pile up the runs and launch himself into a calypso. This Indian team might not have anyone in the calibre of a Gavaskar but it's a team filled with ambitious young men, desperately seeking success and fighting for the few available spots when the bigger stars return for sterner tests. It's almost a fight for survival for many. Life is jokey but it's bloody serious.

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