The beachball looks perfect, Guy

Re: "The lighting is not what it should be..."

As you look further towards the background, it gets dark quite fast. (ie. the front lights falloff well before the end of the plane) Since you're doing a beachball, they make you think of daytime, so to get more of what you want, you'll want to not use point light sources, but rather a Sun lamp or an Area lamp (with the intensity turned down a lot or it floods the whole scene).

Another (secondary) option is to go in the World settings and give it a very small amount of Environment Lighting to compensate for the lights.

James