Sydney, Feb. 16: Having beaten Australia in Australia, the South Africans would naturally be cocksure about using their home advantage to challenge Ricky Ponting's team and dislodge it from its championship pedestal, feels cricket columnist Peter Roebuck.

In a column for the Sydney Morning Herald, Roebuck predicts a compelling series in South Africa.

While stating that the Australians ought to enjoy themselves in South Africa, Roebuck said that they could take a leaf out of Graeme Smith and company's book on exhibiting joviality.

Wellington  - The New Zealand government is likely to order the national cricket team not to go to Zimbabwe for a scheduled tour in July, Prime Minister John Key indicated on Monday.

The cabinet had not yet considered the issue, he said at his weekly news conference, "but I'd be deeply sceptical about whether they would be going."

Sydney, Feb. 15 : Australian wicketkeeper batsman Brad Haddin will lead the national team for the first time today in the absence of Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke.

With the squad leaving for South Africa on Monday, the Australian selectors have told Ponting to take a break, while his deputy Clarke is recovering from an injury to his back.

"It''s probably come about in the same way that me opening the batting has come about - with blokes being rested or injured," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Haddin as saying on Saturday.

Sydney, Feb. 15 : Australian one-day fast bowler Nathan Bracken has said that the experience of watching common Australians battling the bush fires in the southern part of the country will stay with him forever.

"As a professional cricketer your career is defined by what you do on the field: the hundreds you score, the wickets you claim or the great catches you take. But it is often the things we experience away from the game that bring emotion and meaning to our lives," Bracken writes in article for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sydney, Feb. 15 : Former Australian captains Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor will lead their celebrity teams in a fundraiser Twenty20 cricket match to gather aid for Victorian bushfire victims.

Waugh and Taylor immediately agreed to play when the proposal of the match was put before them, said David Gilbert, Cricket NSW chief executive.

"They said yes straight away. Once again, they are leading the way, just as they did in their playing days, and the response from players, past and present, plus the personalities has been fantastic," Gilbert stated.

Melbourne, Feb. 15 : Australian cricket team coach Tim Nielsen has said that he plans to reduce the workload of fast bowler Mitchell Johnson during the tour of South Africa, which gets underway from Monday.

The vastly improved Johnson has emerged as Australia''s beacon of hope, ripping through the Proteas to take 17 wickets in three Tests at 25.88. But the Queenslander''s rise to Australia''s top-dog quick has coincided with a gruelling workload.