The 6ft 7in Lincolnshire left-hander has been selected with Tim Henman, Greg Rusedski, Neil Broad and Mark Petchey for the Euro-African zone group one tie. The winners will go forward to the World Group qualifying round from 19 to 21 September, and if Britain were successful against Zimbabwe and in the qualifying round they would return to the World Group of the top 16 nations. One member of Britain's squad will have to be discarded 10 days before the Zimbabwe tie and the odd man out is likely to be Petchey. Henman and Rusedski, who have already reached five ATP Tour finals between them this year, will undoubtedly be the two singles players. But Richardson could make his Davis Cup debut in the doubles with either Henman or Broad.Zimbabwe will be represented by the Black brothers, Byron and Wayne, and will not be easy opponents. Byron Black already has two victories over Henman to his credit..

Chris Waddle walked out of Bradford City with the intention of joining Nottingham Forest yesterday - and straight into a row between the two clubs. The veteran winger hopes to sign for Forest today as a player in time to make his debut against Liverpool tomorrow, but Bradford are seething about the approach. Waddle mistakenly thought he had an escape clause in his contract, but Bradford are demanding a fee for him - or the striker Jason Lee - as compensation.The angry First Division club are also considering reporting Forest to the Premier League for an illegal approach to Waddle, who is under contract for the rest of the season.Waddle announced his departure before training yesterday morning, but was ordered not to travel to Nottingham until a fee was arranged. Instead, he opened a sports shop in Leeds rather than stay at Bradford's training ground.One player happy to join Bradford City is the Bolton Wanderers goalkeeper, Aidan Davison, who is moving to the Valley Parade club on a free transfer after a year in the shadows at Bolton. He stands by to make his debut at Reading tomorrow in place of the suspended Jonathan Gould.Jay Notley, the 18-year-old Charlton midfielder, was yesterday given the go-ahead to resume his football career by the Football Association.Notley failed a drugs test in November last year when he tested positive for cocaine, cannabis and Ecstasy. While serving a three-month ban he underwent rehabilitation at an FA-approved centre He will resume training on Monday.. When he was on a racetrack, Cigar was always a champion, but when it comes to the mating game, he is anything but. Despite more than 30 attempts, the best horse of recent years has so far failed to get a mare into foal, and Allen Paulson, Cigar's former owner, is getting so desperate that yesterday he suggested cloning as a remedy for his horse's ills.

"We are certainly looking at cloning," Paulson told the New York Post. "Up to last week, 16 of 31 bred to Cigar have been tested, and none is in foal There's no life in his sperm at all. It's a big shock." Quite what Paulson might hope to achieve by such a course of action - even if it were possible to overcome the huge technical difficulties - is hard to say. The sperm of a clone of Cigar would, almost by definition, be as lifeless as those of the original. In order to race a clone, meanwhile, Paulson would need to overcome international agreements which ban artificial insemination and, by implication at least, cloning.That Paulson could even suggest such a thing probably says more about his frustration at seeing the most valuable racehorse in the world depreciate even more rapidly than the average betting slip. Cigar's track career, which included a sequence of 16 successive victories, was the most lucrative in racing history, earning prize-money of almost $10m (pounds 6m), and a successful retirement to stud could have taken the total far higher.When Dolly, the cloned sheep, was unveiled by the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh last month, the possibility of performing a similar operation with a horse became a little more credible, but if Paulson believes it is imminent, he is sadly mistaken. "Whether it is transferable to other species, we don't know," Harry Griffin, of the Institute, said.