Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson ends BBC ban

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has agreed to lift his ban on talking to the BBC.

Ferguson began his boycott of the broadcaster in 2004 after it made allegations against his son, Jason, in a TV documentary.

A statement said: "Sir Alex and the BBC have put behind them the difficulties which led to Sir Alex feeling unable to appear on BBC programmes."

United's next game is against Arsenal at Old Trafford on Sunday.

The joint statement, released on Thursday, follows a meeting between Sir Alex and the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, and BBC North director Peter Salmon.

It added: "The issues have been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

"Sir Alex will now make himself available to the BBC for Match of the Day, Radio 5 live and other outlets as agreed.

"No further comment will be made by either party on this issue."
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World Cup squad to be picked on January 17

The final 15-member Indian squad for the forthcoming ICC Cricket World Cup in the sub continent will be picked by the national senior selection panel on January 17.

"The selection committee is to pick the World Cup squad on the 17th at Chennai," a Cricket Board source said. The selection panel, with Krishnamachari Srikkanth at the helm, has picked a preliminary squad of thirty members for the mega event, and the list would be pruned to the required number as per ICC regulations for the tournament.

The list of probables already picked by the selectors is as follows: M S Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Ishant Sharma, Vinay Kumar, M Vijay, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Sourav Tiwary, Yusuf Pathan, Parthiv Patel, R Ashwin, Wriddhiman Saha, Dinesh Karthik, Shikhar Dhawan, Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Cheteshwar Pujara, Pragyan Ojha, Praveen Kumar.

The World Cup is to be held in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh from February 19 - April 2. India is placed in Group B in the preliminary phase along with co-hosts Bangladesh, England, South Africa, West Indies, Ireland and Netherlands.

India and Bangladesh will kick off the tournament in the latter’s backyard – at the Sher-E-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur.
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