World's tallest professional basketball player, Sun Mingming from China, has signed a contract to play for Fuerza Regia in the Mexican basketball season 2007-08.

Sun, towering at 7 feet 9 inches, taller than his more famous compatriot Yao Ming, said that Fuerza Regia was the best place for him to pursue his dream of playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) of the United States.

"Playing here will be a great challenge. I have already heard about this league and I want to take that challenge," a news agency quoted Sun, 24, as saying in Monterrey, in northern Mexico on Wednesday.

Sun will wear shirt number 79, a reference to his height.

A 3.20-meter bed was built specially for his Mexican home.

Last season, Sun had played for the Nighthawks, a Premier Basketball League team based in Maryland, USA.

Sun, a centre, will try to help Regia stand out in the next Mexican season, he said.

Sun is 8 cm taller than Yao Ming, centre for NBA team theHouston Rockets.

Sun was diagnosed two years ago with macromegalia, a condition that triggers excessive growth in limbs.

He had to have an operation to have a tumour, the cause of the macromegalia, removed from his pituitary gland and his medical bill was footed by donation worth USD 70,000 from the American fans.

The Venus and Serena Williams are teaming up again for the first time since 2003 at Wimbledon, where this year's play begins on Monday.

"They requested a wild card and they got it," Venus Williams' agent, Carlos Fleming, said by telephone Wednesday.

The sisters haven't been doubles partners at any tournament since losing in the fourth round at the All England Club four years ago.

They've won the Wimbledon doubles championship twice, in 2000 and 2002, part of a career Grand Slam in doubles that also includes the U.S. Open and French Open in 1999, and the Australian Open in 2001 and 2003.

In singles, they've won a total of 13 Grand Slam titles, five at Wimbledon: Venus won at the All England Club in 2000, 2001 and 2005, while Serena did in 2002 and 2003.

In its bid to prevent fresh controversies, BCCI has given strict instructions to the members of Indian cricket team, currently on a 80-day tour to UK, not to leak happenings in the dressing room and team meetings.

A letter, written by BCCI's Chief Administrative Officer Ratnakar Shetty, has directed the team members to keep under wraps "the talks in dressing room and team meetings".

Quite obviously, the BCCI wants to avoid the sort of explosive situation that had erupted when Greg Chappell was the coach and Sourav Ganguly, the captain, and the duo got involved in one of cricket's most talked about public spats during the tour of Zimbabwe in 2005.

They have also been told not to give interviews to the media without the prior permission of the team management, a continuation of the practice that has been followed for the last few tours.

Last day skipper Rahul Dravid had made it clear at the pre-departure media conference that the players would not give exclusive interviews to the media during the tour.

"On match days the performer on that day will be asked to meet the media through a common media conference," he said.

This too has been included in the letter given by the Board which states that on practice days the team management will decide which player will talk to the media.

"On match days the performer of the day should be available for the media briefing," says the letter, which, to an extent, conforms to the edicts followed by the Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women's Tennis Association who even levy fines for the non-appearance of players at mandatory media conferences.

The Austrian government has agreed to introduce a new anti-hooligan measures to deal with potential local troublemakers at next year's European Championship finals.

Following a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the government announced that known hooligans would be told to report to police stations four hours before particular matches in an effort to stop them causing trouble at stadiums.

The new rules, which still need parliamentary approval, were originally criticised by Justice Minister Maria Berger who said the concept of ''preventative custody'' could violate civil liberties.

Berger has said that the phrase had been removed from the government's new wording, which instead calls for past offenders to be lectured on Austrian law during their visit to the police station.

Austria and neighbouring Switzerland are staging the 2008 tournament which runs from 7th June till the 29th June.

Switzerland has already introduced similar anti-hooligan measures which came into force at the beginning of this year.

Caribbean legend Viv Richards' son Mali, an all-rounder, has joined the West Indies team as temporary cover for the warm-up match against England A to be played on Thursday.

Mali is one of the three cricketers who have been asked to join the visiting squad along with pacer Esaun Crandon and batsman Kirk Edwards.

Earlier, pace duo of Andrew Richardson and Ruel Braithwaite joined the squad on Wednesday.

West Indies is grappling with injury problems with pacer Corey Collymore already being ruled out of the match against England A.

Another pacer, Ravi Rampaul, underwent a fitness test on Wednesday after which he was advised to skip the match to fully recover from the groin injury he had sustained during a warm-up match.

In all, West Indies brought in seven players as cover for the solitary warm up game against Worcester and the list also includes Jerome Taylor and Sylvester Joseph.

23-year-old Mali is a middle-order batsman who doubles up as a seamer. Unlike his father, he is a left-handed batsman, who drew attention with a century for Antigua under-15 following it with a 319 against Combined Virgin Islands.

He also played for Gloucestershire second XI and Oxford UCCE with limited success.

Cracking its whip on the five-man playing control team that had reduced the World Cup final to a farce, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has decided not to appoint them in the ICC World Twenty20 championship in South Africa in September.

On-field umpires Steve Bucknor and Aleem Dar, reserve umpires Rudi Koertzen and Billy Bowden and ICC match referee Jeff Crowe were made to pay for the blunder that saw Australia beat Sri Lanka under the Duckworth-Lewis system in semi darkness to lift the World Cup in Barbados.

The unit had incorrectly ruled that, after a stoppage for bad light, the match would have to be completed the following day even though the minimum 20 overs in the second innings had already been bowled.

"In the wake of what happened ICC Manager - Cricket David Richardson carried out a full investigation which included seeking the interpretation of all five officials. The result is the penalties imposed," ICC said in a statement on Friday.

"It would have been easy to let sleeping dogs lie an pretend nothing happened," said ICC Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Speed.

"But the reality is that the playing control team made a serious and fundamental error that caused the final of our flagship event to end in disarray and confusion.

"That was not acceptable for such experienced and talented officials and although we do not like to have to take such action, we felt it was necessary to decline to appoint them for our next event, the ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa," Speed said.

"We feel that to stand them down for this two-week tournament is a proportionate measure," Speed added.

Reacting to the decision, Crowe said, "While it is never easy to take criticism, I think it is right that there are consequences for our actions as match officials. In this instance I understand that the ICC could not merely let it go.

"We set ourselves high standards as match officials and at the end of that day we did not reach those standards. It was not a pleasant experience for us but hopefully now we can look forward and learn from it."

ICC, however, did not name match referees and umpires for the Twenty20 World Championship.

Left arm pace bowler Zaheer Khan is yet to recover from a groin injury and seemed uncertain to play the one-off one-dayer against Ireland at the Civil Service Club ground in Belfast today.

Zaheer "Zaheer Khan has had an injury coming here. So we are trying to just ease him into the tour. We are still trying to assess how well he progressed after two days of practice," skipper Rahul Dravid said on Friday.

"Both Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar can bowl a bit of seam and we have other options so we got to take a look at that."

Zaheer suffered the injury while bowling in the Afro-Asia Cup series back home in India earlier this month.

India and South Africa play a game each against the hosts before squaring up against each other in a three-match series.

Dravid, however, made it clear that his team would mean business against Ireland.