The poorly drafted policy left out defending European champion Zoe Baker and, despite pressure to intervene, Sweetenham refused to step in.”Their selection policy is wrong, so I gave them my selection policy and said: ‘You choose which policy you want, yours or mine. If it’s yours, I want nothing to do with it.’ So they chose their own policy and now want me to add swimmers like Baker at my discretion. But I’ve only been here a month, I don’t know the swimmers well enough.”The team will be announced this week. The hangover from the previous administration, which returned from Sydney empty-handed, may be about to vanish.. The Spanish Paralympic Committee warned today it would impose harsh penalties if allegations that several of the country’s athletes at the recent Sydney games were not handicapped prove to be true. The Spanish Paralympic Committee warned today it would impose harsh penalties if allegations that several of the country’s athletes at the recent Sydney games were not handicapped prove to be true.
“We’ll have to see how this plays out,” the national news agency Efe quoted chairman Jose Maria Arroyo as saying at a press conference.

“We’re the ones with most interest in clearing this up.”He said a special commission would investigate the allegations and take appropriate measures.The Spanish sports world took a jolt last week when Carlos Ribagorda, a member of the country’s gold medal-winning intellectually handicapped basketball team in Sydney, claimed that he and others medal winners were not any way mentally deficient.”It’s very hard for us to accept that the role and performance of the paralympics should be sullied,” Arroyo said.Ribagorda, who made the allegations in Capital magazine for which he works as a journalist, said up to 15 members of Spain’s paralympic team, in categories such as track, table tennis and swimming, were not handicapped.Backed by the editor of his magazine, Carlos Salas, Ribagorda said he had played with Spain’s paralympic team for the past two years but had never undergone any intellectual ability test.Spain came third in the medal table at Sydney’s paralympic games last month winning 107 medals, including 37 gold.Fernando Martin Vicente, chairman of the Spanish Sports Federation for the Intellectually Handicapped (FEDDI), denied Ribagorda’s allegations last week and said only someone of low human quality could “infiltrate” an area like this for two years and then denounce something which he insisted “could not possibly happen.”The paralympic committee last week also claimed that it had fulfilled all regulations for Sydney but stressed that it was the FEDDI that was responsible for screening participants. Arroyo said that for the moment Martin would keep his job.”It’s one person’s word against that of another,” Efe quoted him as saying. “Vicente says has carried out the checks and examinations of the athletes and I understand he has the certificates.However, in remarks that appeared to back Ribagorda, Spanish paralympic powerlifter Domingo Garcia told Efe on Monday he could see there were “irregularities” with several of the basketball teams, not just Spain’s, in the Sydney games.There were no further details as to what he meant.Also, the Australian Paralympic Committee’s chief executive Brendan Flynn said he was suspicious of Spain’s intellectually disabled basketball team adding that some of the Spanish players were so talented they could play in Australia’s National Basketball League.”We”re very upset but out conscience is at ease,” added Arroyo “The investigation will be rigorous If the result is negative well, that’s fine. But if the allegations are true, then we will act severely.”He said no deadline had been given for the commission’s findings..

England’s cricketers travelled to Faisalabad by road yesterday and, depending on the route taken, would have arrived either shaken or stirred. But if that sounds confusing, it pales in comparison to the tale of the two pitches here, allegedly prepared to offer the Pakistan coach, Javed Miandad, a choice of ensuring that the second Test does not end in a draw. England’s cricketers travelled to Faisalabad by road yesterday and, depending on the route taken, would have arrived either shaken or stirred. But if that sounds confusing, it pales in comparison to the tale of the two pitches here, allegedly prepared to offer the Pakistan coach, Javed Miandad, a choice of ensuring that the second Test does not end in a draw.
While the choice of journey was simple, offering motorway or non-motorway, the comfort factor between the two differed by a factor of 10. The same will apply regarding the pitches: one of which looks like a carbon copy of Lahore’s surface; the other a hard, grassy pitch that would not look out of place in South Africa.England would prefer to play on the well-grassed option, bringing to the fore as it would, bowlers such as Darren Gough, Andy Caddick and Matthew Hoggard, whose eight wickets in the last match at the Bag-e-Jinnah have brought him into contention for a place.

It would also allow them to solve their main headache by dropping Ian Salisbury.They may drop the leg-spinner anyway, irrespective of the surface, and yesterday’s decision to keep Andrew Flintoff with the squad until the end of the tour has given substance to the whisper that either he or Michael Vaughan might replace the leg-spinner in Wednesday’s line-up for the next Test.With just 83 overs a day, and with some of those likely to be unbowled due to the fast-fading light at this time of year, England could go into the Test with just four frontline bowlers and not be exposed. In the first Test, Salisbury only bowled 15 of the 106 overs it took Pakistan to save the follow-on anyway.Yet, if that was a fair reflection of Salisbury’s ineffectiveness on a slow-turning pitch, it would still be a massive vote of no confidence were England to replace him with a man who edged his only first-class ball in Pakistan to second slip or, even worse, one who is barely half fit.The options will become clearer when England find out which strip they are due to play on. Mind you, according to the stadium manager, Tayyur Nasir, only one pitch, the bare cracked one, will be available for this Test.It is a claim contradicted by the groundsman who, through an eight-year old interpreter, said two strips had been prepared, a claim borne out by the fact that both, unlike the rest of the square, had been rolled bone hard.Perhaps even more confusing is that the bare strip looks as if it was used last week, with old crease marks, bowlers’ footmarks and the scrapes batsmen make to mark their guard still clearly visible.While the groundsman again bore this out, confirming there had recently been a game, Nasir told journalists that the pitch had not been played on for two years and that local club matches were played on other grounds nearby.The truth, although tending to be many-headed in these parts, will doubtless be revealed over the next few days. Most likely is that the final choice of pitch will not be made by cricketers, coaches, groundsmen, or even the Pakistan Cricket Board, but by a TV producer. In the economics of the modern game camera positions are far more important than paying spectators, which, given their scarceness in Lahore, are not exactly voting with their wallets.Faisalabad, an austere-looking city some 90 miles south-west of Lahore, is known as the Manchester of the Punjab, a sobriquet earned not because of the number of fervent United fans but because of its thriving textile industry.It is also a regular Test venue for Pakistan, who with three spinners in their squad, including new boy Danish Kaneria, will surely want a surface conducive to spinning and weaving – not pace and seam.* Mark Ramprakash said yesterday that he is considering leaving Middlesex. The 31-year-old batsman, who was not named on any of this winter’s tours, said: “A new county could give my career fresh impetus I need a fresh challenge.