SYDNEY: Pakistani asylum-seeker Fawad Ahmed has signed to play with Australian state side Victoria for the next three seasons, Cricket Victoria said on Friday.
Leg-spinner Ahmed, who could be in contention to play for Australia in the Ashes series in England in July if he is granted citizenship on time, was named in Victoria's squad for the next Australian season. "Fawad Ahmed was the success story from last year and we're extremely happy to have signed him for the next three seasons," Victoria coach Greg Shipperd said in a statement.
The 31-year-old leg-spinner was handed a permanent visa to remain in Australia in November after leaving his home in the border region near Afghanistan, where he said he was targeted by Muslim extremists.
But to play for Australia in the Ashes from July he needs fast-tracked citizenship and an Australian passport.
Otherwise, under International Cricket Council rules, he will not become available until August 18, before the fifth Test at the Oval.
Ahmed played three Sheffield Shield games for Victoria late last season and took 16 wickets at 28.37, bringing him to the notice of Australian selectors given a dearth of spin bowlers of Test quality. "Fawad Ahmed is a mature and very good leg-spinner," chairman of selectors John Inverarity said last month. "I've seen quite a bit of him and all those who have played against him, and the coaching staff, rate him as a good bowler. "He would certainly come under consideration. It will all be considered on merit. He will be treated no differently from anybody else."
Of his chances of playing for Australia, Ahmed told reporters last month "Playing Test cricket is the dream for any single cricketer, very, very exciting. "Like a dream, especially playing for Australia in an Ashes against England. That would be a dream for me and would be amazing. I just only can imagine."
Cricket Victoria also announced Friday that former Australian all-rounder Dan Christian would be playing for Victoria from next season. (AFP)


AFP

PARIS: Enigmatic traces of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter came from a comet that crashed into the giant planet in 1994, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.
Astronomers have been debating the water for 15 years after telltale molecules were spotted by an infrared telescope.
Some argued the water brewed up from lower levels of the gassy planet, but others said it could not have crossed a "cold barrier" separating the stratosphere from the cloud level below.
ESA's deep-space Herschel telescope has now found that most of the water is concentrated in Jupiter's southern hemisphere.
The molecules are clustered at high altitude around the sites where 21 fragments from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 whacked into Jupiter in July 1994 in one of the most spectacular recorded events in astronomy.
The collisions left dark scars in Jupiter's roiling atmosphere that persisted for weeks.
"According to our models, as much as 95 percent of the water in the stratosphere is due to the comet impact," said Thibault Cavalie of the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory in southwestern France.
Other potential sources, including water vapour disgorged by one of Jupiter's icy moons or interplanetary particles of icy dust, can be ruled out, he said in a press release issued by ESA.
The study appears in the European journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Comets are believed to be primeval balls of ice and dust left over from the building of the Solar System.
Cometary bombardment is believed by some experts to have provided the infant Earth with its abundance of water, the stuff of life. (AFP)

LONDON: Nearly a century after they were killed in action, four British First World War soldiers will Tuesday finally be laid to rest with full military honours.
The soldiers, two of whom have been identified, are to be re-interred in the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) Cemetery at Ecoust-Saint-Mein near the northern town of Arras in a ceremony attended by relatives and Prince Michael of Kent.
Lieutenant John Harold Pritchard and Private Christopher Douglas Elphick were both killed during an attack by German forces near Bullecourt on the Hindenburg Line on the morning of May 15, 1917.
Their bodies were discovered with two other sets of remains in 2009 when a local farmer was clearing a field.
Pritchard, 31 at the time of his death, was identified by a silver identity bracelet, and Elphick, 28, by a signet ring bearing his initials.
A former chorister and head boy at St Paul's cathedral school, Pritchard had joined the HAC as a reservist in 1909 and was part of the first wave of British soldiers to be sent into action when war broke out in 1914.
Injured in 1915, he could have opted for a desk job in London but chose to return to France, surviving the horrors of the Somme in 1916 before being slain as he led his men into a battle in which they were almost all killed.
Elphick, an insurance clerk, had joined up in 1915 and arrived in France in November 1916, three months after the birth of his son, Ronald Douglas, who was to serve in the HAC during World War II.
Ronald Douglas's sons, Chris and Martin Elphick, are due to attend Tuesday's ceremony while the Pritchard family are to be represented by his nephew Harold Shell and great nieces Janet Shell and Jennifer Sutton.
Prince Michael, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, will be present in his role as HAC Royal Honorary Colonel.
The two sets of unidentified remains will be interred as "HAC soldiers known unto God."
It is understood DNA samples have been taken to enable positive identification of the unknown soldiers should any relatives come forward in the future. (AFP)