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Is that your wicket or are you glad to see me?

If cricket is a gentlemen’s game, is it polite to ask a Miss Universe 1994 to open the sport’s premier tournament with a suggestive show?

Sushmita Sen is to appear at the opening ceremony today of the World Cup wearing scarf-sized flags of the 12 participating nations. She is supposed to take the flags off one by one and hand each to a team captain. Organizers have not said what she’ll wear underneath.

Many people in Calcutta, where the ceremony will be held, are aghast. Politicians say Sen’s act will “insult womanhood.”

Master of ceremonies Gianfranco Lunetta says the act does not amount to stripping.

“The beauty of glamour has been totally misinterpreted. It’s very sad and frustrating,” he said.

Opponents so clean they squeak

Here’s a bulletin: The Utah Jazz play dirty.

So say a few of their NBA colleagues, anyway. Sure, Karl Malone’s blasts of Isiah Thomas and Grant Hill are borderline legendary, but is anyone else on the team capable of calculated and underhanded mayhem? “They look like schoolboys,” said Seattle’s Nate McMillan, “but that’s not the way they play. Adam Keefe is one of the biggest cheap-shot artists in the league. (John) Stockton is worse, but he knows what he’s doing.”

McMillan made no mention of Malone, which seemed to upset the big lug. “I’m disappointed I wasn’t on the all-dirty team, too, like Adam Keefe and Stockton,” he said.

After Orlando lost to the Jazz two weeks ago, Magic guard Penny Hardaway accused Stockton of dirty tactics.

“Maybe he ought to watch the tape,” Stockton said. “Maybe he wants you to lay down so he can dunk every time. I’m sorry I played hard.”

Added Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, former tough guy with the Bulls: “Maybe he (Hardaway) wants to play in a tuxedo.”

Something in a powder blue, with a Nike Swoosh on the lapel.

Pebble Marsh

They’re still talking about the rain which washed out the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach last weekend. There had never been a rainout, snow-out or anything else in the tournament’s previous 49 years of existence, although there were some close calls.

The worst might have been in 1962, when a sudden snowstorm hit on Saturday night. Gardner Dickenson practiced putting a snowball, Arnold Palmer got into a snowball fight and Jimmy Demaret said: “I know I got loaded last night, but how did I wind up in Squaw Valley?”

Before he was ready for prime time …

Thomas Tisell, an entrant in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in Charlotte, N.C., next Saturday, was named “most athletic” by his high school classmates at North Fort Myers High in Fort Myers, Fla., in 1986.

The runner-up? Deion Sanders.

The last word …

“I’ve been rebounding all year like this, so what’s the big thing? If it took him this long to figure it out, I’d hate to sit down and do a crossword puzzle with him.”

- Nets forward Jayson Williams, told after a 25-rebound effort that coach Butch Beard might start him

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