MUMBAI, November 5: Steve Bucknor of the West Indies and Cyril Mitchley of South Africa are the neutral umpires appointed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for the three-Test series between India and Sri Lanka commencing later this month.

Bucknor will officiate in the first and third Tests at Mohali (November 19-23) and Mumbai (December 3-7) while Mitchley will officiate in the second Test at Nagpur (November 26-30).

The Indian umpires to officiate with Bucknor and Mitchley in the three Tests would be named by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Chess put off

KOCHI: THE Grandmaster tournament scheduled to be held at Kozhikode in November has been postponed to February. All India Chess Federation secretary PT Ummerkoya said the decision was taken in view of the hectic schedule for top chess players at the end of the year when they have to play in the world championships in Groningen.

The new dates of the event would be after the Goodricke annual open GM tournament at Calcutta in February.

Fed Cup hockey

CHENNAI: The Federation Cup hockey tournament will be held at Hyderabad from December 5 to 13.

Indian Hockey Federation secretary K Jyothikumaran, in a press release, said that ten teams, including eight quarterfinalists of the senior National Championship, the National Games winners Punjab and hosts Hyderabad will vie for honours in the tournament, which would be played on league-cum-knock out basis.

The eight quarterfinalists are: National Champions Indian Railways; runner-up Tamil Nadu; Air-India, Bombay; Indian Airlines; Services; Karnataka and Gujarat.

Seeds through

CALCUTTA: Seeded players in both the men's and women's section faced little resistance from their opponents to cruise into the next round of the Eastern India table tennis championship here today.

Barring strong contenders S Ramaswamy and S Sriram, who were stretched to five sets by their first round opponents, none of the other seeded players in the men's section faced much difficulty in moving to the second round on a day which saw no upsets at all.

Betting report

CHENNAI: YV Chandrachud, the one-man enquiry commission appointed by the BCCI to probe into betting and match-fixing allegation levelled by ex-Test star Manoj Prabhakar, is yet to submit his report to the BCCI. According to sources, the ex-Chief Justice of Supreme Court, who finished his enquiry and who was supposed to hand over the report containing his findings for the annual general body meeting to discuss it, has, till Wednesday night, not sent it to the acting secretary.

Secretary JY Lele alleged that former BCCI president IS Bindra had signed a three-year contract with Pepsi during September 1996 at Toronto without the Board's knowledge for sponsoring matches in India.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.