■ Cricket
Piper pinched for pot
Warwickshire's Keith Piper was suspended for the rest of the English county cricket season Friday after testing positive for cannabis. The wicketkeeper, who tested positive at a county match against Glamorgan on April 14, was banned until Sept. 30 by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). Piper, 35, had a one-day contract with the county champion, and the suspension could end his playing career. Piper pleaded guilty to using cannabis at a May 12 hearing and had been suspended from all cricket since then. The ECB also ordered Piper to attend a drug counseling course and undergo another doping control check. He could be target-tested as many as six times in the following 18 months. Piper, who toured India and Pakistan with the second-tier England A team in 1994 and 1995, also paid £250 (364 euros) toward the cost of the hearings by a three-man disciplinary panel. In 1997, Piper was banned for one match and fined £500 by Warwickshire after testing positive for cannabis.
■ Soccer
China league failing
China's ailing professional soccer league faces collapse unless a management crisis is stemmed, a top official for the sport was quoted as saying. Asian Football Confederation General Secretary Peter Velappan said he was seeking talks with Chinese officials following allegations of mismanagement and corruption made by the recently sacked coach of last year's league champions Shenzhen Jianlibao. "The crisis at Shenzhen must be solved urgently, or Chinese football would collapse," Velappan was quoted as saying in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. He was in the city Friday to announce new programs to boost soccer in the region. Shenzhen fired coach Chi Shangbin earlier this month after a disastrous winless start to the season. Chi blamed failures on the team, saying players were deliberately performing poorly after salary cuts. Chi's assistant, Yang Saixin, who resigned in protest, went further, calling players "ruffians" and accusing them of fixing matches and gambling. Most of the teams in China's one-year-old super league are mired in financial woes following the loss of major sponsors. Velappan said poor management was behind the crisis.
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