Lee's jingle, Pup's Bingle

Michael 'Pup' Clarke seems have run into red-hot form. Of course he made 57 in the CB series opener at Melbourne but here's what matters: according to news.com.au he's "emerged as the latest casualty in model Lara Bingle's pursuit of champion sportsmen". Clarke's girlfriend of nearly eight years Erina-Lea Connelly confirmed that "the man I thought I was going to marry'' had called off their relationship.

Now starts the fun. Connelly's comments were in stark contrast to what AFL star Brendon Fevloa's wife thought. Mrs Fevola said that her life had been "turned upside down'' by Bingle's behaviour. She said Bingle had continued to call her husband after news of their alleged affair broke. A snippet from last week adds further tension to this nail-biter: Bingle was among the guests at the Ashes-winning party on James Packer's luxury yacht on Sydney Harbour. She boarded with allrounder Andrew Symonds. Her car remained in a hotel car park, her coat and handbag inside it.

Spare a thought for assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Saifuddin Ahmed - hero to villain in 24 hours. He dared to fine Mahendra Singh Dhoni for violating rules and using tinted glass in his Mitsubishi. In less than 24 hours, he informed his superiors that he had not, after all, collected the fine, claiming Dhoni had a letter that allowed him to use tinted glass. His bosses, who'd already told the media that Dhoni had been fined, were forced to take back their statement. Ahmed soon paid the price, being shifted three kilometres away to Bahubazar from the central point of Albert Ekka Chowk.

The bosses claimed that what Dhoni had shown Ahmed was an application he had addressed to the deputy commissioner. "This ASI is a fool," bristled a police officer, "because he let off the traffic rule violator without assessing the legal value of the paper shown to him." A completely unrelated aside - Jharkhand, Dhoni's home state, finished at the bottom of the Plate B Group and failed to win a single game.

It's been a hectic week for Brett Lee and Mark Butcher. One soared to No.4 in the Indian music charts, the other was strumming away on a reality TV show called 'Just the Two of Us'. "We had a break in between games last year, so I wrote the lyrics in half an hour and we headed up to a studio in Mohali to record it," blushed Lee of his duet with veteran Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle. "Then we hired a room in our hotel in Mumbai to shoot the video. I have been shooting commercials since I was 20, so it all came pretty naturally ... I have about a dozen offers on the table for roles in Bollywood movies, which I would love to do, but it is difficult because you need 50 or so days to shoot them." What a shame.

Butch, though, veered towards the philosophical: "It's not a blood sport; this is music. It's not about hurting people it's about making you feel good, and hopefully we did that tonight."

Brian Lara launched a cancer treatment centre in his name in Port of Spain. Lara, whose mother suffered from cancer for 10 years and died in January 2002, said: "What a bittersweet moment for me. As Trinidad and Tobago is about to inherit the first state-of-the-art cancer treatment centre, it also brings back to me memories of my loving parents. My dad passed away in 1989 of a heart attack, another concern for all in the medical field, and also my mom who passed away in 2002, and that is definitely something that has an alliance to this because she died of cancer."

"There's this perception that I'm too old and it's cr**" - 'Dizzy' Gillespie attains enlightenment.