Lampard red card rescinded

London, Jan 03: The red card received by Frank Lampard in Chelsea's 2-0 defeat by Liverpool was rescinded on Tuesday after the Football Association upheld the England midfielder's appeal for wrongful dismissal. Lampard was ordered off for what referee Mike Riley saw as a dangerous challenge on Liverpool counterpart Xabi Alonso in Sunday's match at Anfield.

Television replays showed that Lampard had taken the ball cleanly. If anything, Alonso's approach to the 50-50 challenge was more reckless with the Spaniard's boot going over the ball with studs showing before catching Lampard on the lower shin. The incident happened just before the hour mark and Liverpool went on to claim all three points with two goals from Fernando Torres in the closing minutes.

The FA's decision will leave everyone at Chelsea deeply aggrieved given the damage that Sunday's defeat has done to the club's chances of winning the Premier League title. Chelsea are now five points adrift of leaders Manchester United , who have a game in hand, and manager Luiz Felipe Scolari has admitted it will be difficult to bridge the gap.

Bureau Report

Sehwag’s presence made batting easier: Yuvraj

Colombo, Feb 03: India decimated Sri Lanka by 147 runs in the third ODI played here on Tuesday to take an invincible 3-0 lead in the five match series.

The win also gave the visitors only their second bilateral series victory in Sri Lanka, and also extended their winning streak to eight. Addressing those present during the presentation ceremony, Yuvraj Singh, who was declared Man of the Match for his superb 117 off 95 balls, said that Virender Sehwag’s presence at the other end was extremely helpful.

"I share this Man of the Match award with Sehwag. He has been brilliant today and took pressure off my shoulder," he said."In a partnership, normally one guys works off the pace, nudging the ball around. But both of us were devastating today. We put bad balls to boundary," he said.Heaping praise on Sehwag, Yuvraj said, "I think it`s a big achievement to score a century ahead of Sehwag. He generally gets there within a blink."

Mahela Jayawardene, the Sri Lankan skipper said that his team should have capitalised on the two early wickets they took. “Yuvi and Veeru batted really well, brilliant partnership took the game away from us, played some good shots put our bowlers under pressure. It was a disappointing day for us, we came in with a lot of hopes," said Jayawardene."We did have our chances but we could not capitalise on those. They really played good and put our bowlers under pressure. It was always difficult to come back after that," he said.Jayawardene admitted there were some grey areas for the team and felt it was important to win the next two matches even if the series was already lost."There are certain areas we need to tighten up. Against a good opposition like India, certain things were not upto the standard.”"We`ll definitely have a chat with the selectors now but we need our best team to win the next two matches, which is very important to get back the confidence. We have a lot of cricket ahead," he said.

India’s skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni praised the team for another outstanding performance and said that it was good to see the boys enjoying their game.Asked if the Indians were aiming to set a record for the maximum number of consecutive ODI victories, Dhoni said: We are not really looking at the record, we are looking to play the players who have not played so far, that`s the priority."We are 3-0 up and have already won the series. It gives us an opportunity to play those players. For us, this is the priority.”"The team is not looking at the record but giving chance to those players," Dhoni said.Looking at today`s match, Dhoni said the 221-run stand between Yuvraj Singh (117) and Virender Sehwag (116) made all the difference."They way they batted, it was just brilliant. They forced the Lankan bowlers to bowl in bad areas by scoring off the good deliveries," Dhoni observed.

SEBI team in Hyderabad jail to interrogate Raju bros

Hyderabad, Feb 04: Nearly a month after Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju was arrested after confessing to over Rs 7,000 crore fraud in the IT company, market regulator SEBI on Wednesday finally got its chance to interrogate the tainted ex-chairman. A five-member Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) team this morning arrived at the Chanchalguda Jail in Hyderabad where Raju has been kept since his arrest by the Andhra Police last month.

SEBI will interrogate Ramalinga Raju and his brother Rama Raju for three days. The Supreme Court yesterday allowed the market regulator to interrogate the two Raju brothers. The SC granted permission to SEBI’s investigating officer to commence the questioning from today. The apex court also directed SEBI to intimate the jail authorities about the duration of the interrogation. SEBI’s investigating officer will question the two Rajus the presence of a prison official. According to sources, jail officials -- be it Superintendent, Deputy Superintendent or Jailer -- would remain along with the SEBI investigation team during the questioning.

A senior prisons official said a decision on providing a separate place for the interrogation or allow it to take place in the cell would be taken after reading the court order. The market regulator had on Monday filed a plea through Solicitor General GE Vahanvati and counsel Pratap Venugopal to the Bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan to interrogate the Raju brothers.

With Raju continuing to elude SEBI even after spending weeks behind bars, the market regulator had moved the SC after the Andhra Pradesh High Court last week deferred to February 9, hearing on its request to quiz the tainted ex-chairman and his brother Rama Raju. SEBI had moved the High Court challenging a lower court order, which denied it permission to interrogate the Raju brothers, who were arrested by the state police on January 9 -- the day a SEBI probe team had summoned them to appear before it in Hyderabad. In its request to SC, SEBI had said that it was constrained to approach the apex court for urgent relief related to the most serious financial scam that had large-scale national and international ramifications. The Raju brothers, along with Satyam's former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, are now in judicial custody.

A probe team from SEBI had landed in Hyderabad on January 8, a day after Ramalinga Raju disclosed the massive accounting fraud in the IT company. According to the market regulator, the High Court should have seen that the Raju brothers cannot use judicial custody as a shield to avoid probe by expert agencies. SEBI further said that just as police apply for custody, any other agency can also apply for access or custody and the same can be granted and the refusal to permit SEBI even to record the statements of the accused while in the custody was "arbitrary, unreasonable and perverse". According to SEBI, merely because investigations by different agencies like CID, Enforcement Directorate, Serious Frauds Investigation Office, Registrar of Companies etc may overlap, it cannot be said that they cannot investigate simultaneously pursuant to the power conferred on them under their respective statutes.

Tata Capital's Rs 500 cr bond issue to start tomorrow

New Delhi, Feb 01: Tata Capital's Rs 500 crore bond issue will start tomorrow, a move that will help the company fund various financing activities including lending and investing, repaying existing loans and business operations among others. Tata Capital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, proposes to enter the capital markets on February 2, 2009 with a public issue of Secured Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) aggregating to Rs 500 crores, a company statement said. The issue would also have an option to retain over-subscription of up to Rs 1,000 crores and has in this regard filed a prospectus with the Registrar of Companies, Maharashtra, the statement added.

The issue that opens tomorrow would close on February 24 or earlier or on such date as may be decided at the discretion of the Committee of Directors of Tata Capital subject to necessary approvals. Tata Capital would offer 12 per cent interest for the annual and cumulative interest payment options and 11.25 per cent for those opting for quarterly interest payment which will have an annual yield of 11.73 per cent. The tenure of all the NCDs would be of five years with varied put and call options and for each category of investors, over subscription allotment would be on a first-come-first-served basis. ICICI Securities, Citigroup Global Markets India and DSP Merrill Lynch are the lead managers for the issue while Tata Capital Markets would act as the advisor to the issue.

Bureau Report