Sporting briefs

Violence: Visiting Poland fans clashed with Lithuanian security forces on Friday as the home side beat the Euro 2012 co-hosts 2-0 in a friendly. Around 200 travelling Poles hurled fireworks, stones and bottles at police in the streets around Kaunas’s stadium, ahead of and during the match. Riot police responded with tear gas and used dogs to ward off the fans.

Kjaer: Wolfsburg will have to do without their defender Simon Kjaerfor their crucial relegation battle with Eintracht Frankfurt this week after he damaged ankle ligaments while on international duty. The Danish defender was forced to pull out of his nation’s matches with Norway and Slovakia after tearing ligaments in training.

Di Vaio: Veteran striker Marco Di Vaio will stay at Bologna after agreeing a new two-year contract with the club. The 34-year-old’s existing deal expires in the summer. “I have reached an agreement with the club,” Di Vaio said. “There were no problems. I wanted to remain and the club wanted to keep me.”

De Michelis: Martin Demichelis would be interested in returning to Bayern Munich next season should his new club Malaga be relegated from the Primera Liga. “I am certain that we will stay up because there is a lot of quality in the team, but if we don’t manage it, against all expectations, and the new Bayern coach wants me, then I can imagine a return to Munich,” he said.

Volz: St Pauli defender Moritz Volz will miss the rest of the season after breaking his shin in training. The 28-year-old suffered the injury during a tackle with Gerald Asamoah yesterday and had to be carried to the treatment room.

Cricket: New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori and paceman Kyle Mills along with South Africa’s Faf du Plessis were yesterday slapped with heavy fines for their ugly bust-up during the World Cup quarter-finals. The fines followed a stormy clash at the end of the 28th over of the South Africa innings on Friday when du Plessis and the Kiwis exchanged angry words following the fall of AB de Villiers. Mills, who was not part of the playing eleven, was on the field at the time, carrying drinks for his team-mates.

Basketball, NBA: Derrick Rose scored Chicago’s last seven points to help the Bulls hold off the determined Memphis Grizzlies 99-96 and stretch their lead atop the NBA’s Eastern Conference on Friday. Rose nailed two free throws with 2 1/2 minutes to play to give the Bulls the lead. Then he drove past Tony Allen and scored over Marc Gasol with 10 seconds left. Rose drew a foul on the play and made the resulting free throw as Bulls fans chanted “MVP” – a nod to Rose’s Most Valuable Player-calibre season.

Tennis: Tennis stars led by Kim Clijsters and Robin Soderling helped raise some $300,000 Friday for stricken Japan as players collected donations from fans at the $9 million WTA and ATP Masters event. Telephone and online pledges helped make up the total collected Friday in the “Tennis for Japan” initiative, which was also attended by women’s world No. 3 Vera Zvonareva and all of the Japanese players at the tourn-ament: Kei Nishikori, Kimiko Date-Krumm and Ayumi Morita.

Horse Racing: Victoire Pisa led home a Japanese 1-2 in the world's richest race, the Dubai World Cup, at the Meydan racecourse yesterday with Transcend finishing second in an emotional victory coming in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami disaster that struck the country. Victoire Pisa, trained by Yoshimi Ichikawa, was brilliantly ridden by Mirco Demuro, who sported a black armband in honour of the tsunami victims, to see the four-year-old 12/1 shot home and become the first Japanese horse to take the 10 million dollar prize.