Lahore, Mar. 17: PCB's chief selector Abdul Qadir has asked pacer Shoaib Akhtar to prove his fitness if he wants to participate in the World Twenty20 Championship in England.

The 2009 World Twenty20 Championship will be held in England in June. The PCB is going to select its preliminary squad by the end of this month, The Nation reports.

Qadir said a ''fully-fit'' Shoaib would prove to be a huge asset for Pakistan, and hence, will certainly be considered for the team going to participate in the prestigious tournament.

Due to poor performance in ODIs against Sri Lanka, Shoaib was ignored for the Test series against Lankans, and also left out from the upcoming Bangladesh tour.

Cape Town (South Africa), Mar. 17: West Indian umpire Steve Bucknor, who will appear in his 128th and last Test here, has stirred controversy by saying that money power allowed the Indian cricket board to succeed in having him sacked from a Test match in Perth in 2008.

"Some people are more equal than others," the Waikato Times quoted Bucknor, as saying in reference to the explosive second test in Sydney in January 2008 that led to India captain Anil Kumble filing a negative report on the West Indies official.

Hamilton (New Zealand), Mar. 17: New Zealand cricket captain Daniel Vettori has reportedly received some tips from a schoolboy on how to get the wicket of Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar.

According to the Waikato Times, Owen Robinson told the Black Caps skipper that Tendulkar is susceptible to the lofted drive after bowling to the cricket superstar in the nets.

London, Mar. 17: Andy Flower, the assistant coach of the England cricket team, has given a withering assessment of its chances in Twenty20 cricket.

“We’re rubbish and we know we are,” The Sun quoted Flower as saying, adding that England will be among the rank outsiders when they host the World Twenty20 this summer.

Speaking after his team’s six-wicket loss to the West Indies on Sunday, Flower said the plain fact is “England are poor at Test cricket, inconsistent in 50-over games and utterly hopeless at Twenty20.”

Cape Town (South Africa), Mar. 16 : Four of South Africa''s top six batsmen in the forthcoming Test match have brown skins, and had tall left-arm fast bowler Lonwabo Tsotsobe recovered from knee surgery, most of Graeme Smith's team would have included players from previously repressed communities.

We are talking about Ashwell Prince, who blasted 254 of the best at the weekend to remind the selectors about what they had been missing in the two-nil series defeat against Australia.

Another brown-skinned star in the making is Imraan Khan, who stroked a stylish 145 for KwaZulu-Natal at the Pietermaritzburg''s cricket ground.