Allan Donald hasn't been much discussed in recent months. He's still in the frame, of course. Just nearer to the edge of the picture than he used to be.

The South African cricket World Cup side is so full of fresh and exciting talent -- Jacques Kallis, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Herschelle Gibbs, Mark Boucher -- that the focus has drifted away from the 32-year-old bowler from Bloemfontein. So he can't have been too surprised when the match adjudicators at the Oval on Saturday decided that four for 17 off eight overs against England did not merit a man-of-the-match award.

Many of the 18,500 people at the ground disagreed. Donald is as good as one of their own. He's married to an Englishwoman and settled in the Birmingham area. He's been applauded and lauded at Warwickshire since the late 1980s. Donald himself had said before the World Cup that if he played against England at Edgbaston during the tournament, ``they'll probably cheer me but want South Africa tolose.''

Twose of a kind

New Zealand's clash with The West Indies tomorrow will see the two best left-handed batsmen on the planet facing each other. Well, according to Roger Twose anyway. When Brian Lara -- widely regarded as the world's best left-hander -- was signed by English county side Warwickshire in 1994, shortly after scoring a World Test record of 375, he was greeted by a sign on his changing room clothes peg that read: ``Welcome to the second best left-hander in the world.'' Twose's tongue-in-cheek joke was soon put in perspective when, a few weeks later, Lara scored 501, the highest individual innings ever made in first-class cricket, against Durham.