Motor Sport: Williams' Formula One youngster Jenson Button could be driving for Eddie Jordan's Jordan Mugen-Honda team next season it was revealed yesterday.
The Irishman's outfit has emerged as a likely outlet should Williams decide to replace Button with Colombia's Championship Auto Racing Team (CART) driving ace Juan Pablo Montoya, who became the first rookie since Graham Hill in 1966 to win the Indy 500 nine days ago.
Team chief Frank Williams has asked 24-year-old Montoya's boss Chip Ganassi if his former test driver can be released from his three-year contract a year early.
Sources close to Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen indicate the German is to switch to Jaguar to partner Eddie Irvine in 2001.
That would leave Jordan looking for a replacement - he may need two if young Italian driver Jarno Trulli moves to Benetton - and Button would fit the bill.
Tennis: Owen Casey takes on Croatia's Ivo Karlovic, who is ranked 318 in the world, in the opening round of the ITF Futures series at Mount Pleasant today.
While Casey got the tough end of the draw, Stephen Nugent, one of four Irish wild-card entries was unfortunate to be drawn again to Scott Barron, who is the fancied home player to reach the semifinals, if not go the whole way.
David Mullins beat Britain's Graeme Darlington after losing the first set.
Ireland's new Davis Cup recruit Peter Clarke is ranked over 60 places above his opponent Andrej Kracman, but success would put him directly into the path of either the number two seed Luke Milligan or last week's runner-up Grant Doyle of Australia.
Cycling: Former Tour de France champion Marco Pantani was ordered yesterday to stand trial on charges of sporting fraud in relation to high red blood cell levels recorded in a 1995 race.
Investigating judge Stefano Celli ruled there were grounds to send the Italian rider, who won both the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia in 1998, to trial.
Pantani was not in court in the north-eastern Italian town of Forli to hear the decision, which related to a blood test in October 1995 during the Milan-Turin race in which his hematocrit (red blood cell) level was found to be 60 per cent.
Riders are automatically banned if they have red blood cell counts of more than 50 per cent.
Cricket: South African cricket goes on trial today when retired Judge Edwin King opens an inquiry launched after former national captain Hansie Cronje admitted taking money from bookmakers.
Cronje was sacked as captain on April 11th after confessing he had accepted up to $15,000 from bookmakers for providing pitch and weather information. Journalists and officials from Britain, Australia and India arrived in Cape Town yesterday to monitor the government-appointed inquiry, which some officials say could last several months.
