Sport

Stressed Clarke pulls out of T20

The Australian vice-captain Michael Clarke has declared himself unavailable to play for New South Wales at the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 tournament in India next month.

SYDNEY // The Australian vice-captain Michael Clarke has declared himself unavailable to play for New South Wales at the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 tournament in India next month. The stylish right-hander cited his playing workload with the national team for opting out of the lucrative two-week tournament starting on October 8. But the Blues will be taking the likes of captain Simon Katich, Nathan Bracken, Brett Lee and Stuart Clark.

New South Wales represent Australia in the tournament of 12 teams along with Victoria. The teams are divided into four groups of three with the top two qualifying for the semi-finals. New South have been grouped with English T20 champions Sussex and South African runners-up the Diamond Eagles. Marcus Trescothick will return to India, the country where he announced his retirement from international cricket citing a stress-related illness.

The former England international has been included in the 15-man Somerset squad who qualified along with Sussex. If Trescothick opts to join his teammates, it would be the first time the opening batsman has travelled to Asia since pulling out of England's tour in 2006 as a result of his mysterious illness, which reports had him linked with marital problems. The club included him with the hope that Trescothick has recovered from his problems after he was able to travel to Australia as part of the 2007-08 Ashes tour.

However, he dropped out at the last moment at London's Heathrow airport early last year when he was scheduled to travel to Abu Dhabi for his club's pre-season trip to play in the ProArch Trophy. "Marcus Trescothick is in the squad as ways are sought to enable him to overcome the problems with travelling abroad to play cricket he has experienced as a result of his stress-related illness," a statement said.

* Agencies

What is graphene?

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.

It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.

But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.