Britain Sensation Adlington has make Britain proud with her performance. Rebecca Adlington has succeeded in making Great Britain win first Olympic gold medal in swimming in the women’s 400m freestyle after 20 long years. The young star whose age is just 19-years rushed back down the final length and beated American swimmer Katie Hoff by a very small margin of 0.07secs to make Britain proud again after 20 years.
Great Britain Team celebrated twice as their swimmer Joanne Jackson also won the bronze medal for his country.  Rebecca finished the race in 4mins 03.22secs and became the first female of Britain to win the gold medal in the pool after Anita Lonsbrough in 1960. She is the first British woman to succeed in winning a medal of any kind after Adrian Moorhouse did it once in 1984 and Rebecca s also the first Britain swimmer to win a gold medal since in Seoul in 1988. And there can even be more medals to be received by this talented Mansfield swimmer. Her favorite event of 800m free is still to be played, and also the 4 x 200m freestyle relay. Jackson came third and finished the race in 4:03.52 minutes.

Indian Team has lost the third and final test at Colombo by eight wickets. India’s poor batting have led them down through out the series. All big batting guns of India failed to solve the riddle of the Lankan’s top spinner Murliadharan and the mystery spinner Ajanta Mendis. Performance of master blaster Sachin Tendulkar was just all below the expectation and he failed to leave his mark in the series. There were many records, which were there for Sachin to be taken, but he missed them all. Now he will have to wait for the series against Australia in October. Another failure was the Bengal tiger Sourav Ganguly. He just could not find his form through out the series. Rahul Dravid is no longer the wall of the Indian Team or there seems to be some crack on this Indian Wall. Captain Anil Kumble himself struggled through out the series and his show was poor. Ishant needs to improve his match fitness. He just gets injured every second match. VVS Laxman did not proved out to be very very special. One positive that came out of this series is the opening pair mystery. Sehwag and Gambhir gave the opening half-century stand for India in every innings of the series. All these small failures contributed to the big failure of Indian series loss.

India’s Loss against Sri Lanka will definitely raise many questions on the present capabilities of many senior members of the team. All senior guns of the team have badly failed in this series. This black list includes Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, and V.V.S. Laxman, including the captain Anil Kumble.  Many questions on the captaincy skills of Anil Kumble will also be raised. India’s fielding is also proving out to be of ordinary standard due to slow reflexes of these players. These slow reflexes are probably due to their growing age. This is a perfect time for the introduction of youngsters in the Indian Team. A good bunch of youngsters are coming at this stage. Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Yousuf Pathan, Pragyan Ogha are among them. These players are just knocking the doors of test match every time during the selection. Indian Tri Star Sachin, Sourav, Rahul have just not clicked at the right time. They have just disappointed the team when the team needed them the most. It’s because of these senior players poor form that India lost the opportunity to win the series in Sri Lanka.

Kiwi’s team leader Daniel Vettori has asked his country’s cricket governing body to take a combined decision on involvement of New Zealand cricket team in next month’s Champions Trophy which will be held in Pakistan, in spite of asking players separately.
Vettori admitted that security worries are there, about their tour to the troubled nation, which has recently experienced a series of bomb blasts, but he also said that it is unfair to ask some of the younger, promising players of the kiwi cricket team as their decision might influence their international future.
Vettori also said “It’s all good and fine me refusing, that I’m not going after playing for a long time, but it really will be unreasonable to put Tim Southee or Daniel Flynn in that position. I just wish to have a combined decision and not put in front of youthful guys because the they perhaps don’t have the similar options as the more experienced players.”
He added: “I am sure that the New Zealand Cricket Board will pay full attention to the security problems first before coming to the conclusion of participating in the Champions Trophy.”

Recent FIFA rankings have witnessed many up and downs in the team’s ratings. In spite of not playing since taking on Trinidad and Tobago on June 1, England have moved up one spot up to 14th in the recent FIFA rankings. Fabio Capello’s team has overtaken Cameroon, who have plunged two spots from 13th to 15th.
Spain retains their top position after their Euro 2008 win, while the side they banged in the final, Germany, have demoted Italy to shift into second spot. Brazil’s poor form in World Cup has taken them to sixth, which is their worst position since last fifteen years. Scotland is still two places below England in 16th, whereas Republic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland grip their positions in 32nd and 41st respectively. Wales are now positioned between Saudi Arabia and Hungary in 51st position after their promotion of three places. France is out from the first ten for the first time after their world cup wins in 1998. Raymond Domenech’s side dropped to 12th, following their exit from Euro 2008 at the group stage.

South Africa`s cricket skipper Graeme Smith has said that England’s new leader Kevin Pietersen should be given at least half a year to show his leadership capabilities. “Kevin Pietersen will not experience much of the pressures right now. He will be tested in the coming time and in the next couple of series. This will be the time when he will start to understand what captaining a team and getting a side to play for you is all about. It will be exciting for him to learn,” Graeme Smith said this before the last test starting at Oval.” KP will be extremely excited and tense, and he will have a lot of energy for this game. It’s simple to make one-off decisions when you know that it doesn’t actually matter in this Test. But after six months from now, can you maintain the team you desire to play and the brand of cricket you want to see from your team? That will be the time of pressure,” added Smith.
It was the excellent century that made Michael Vaughan resign the captaincy, and from there a chain of events have begin and will terminate when KP will walk for the toss on Thursday at Oval.
“I will speak one thing that the captaincy of England will definitely make KP think twice about playing an aggressive shot like he usually play,” Smith said.

Indian pace man Ishant Sharma has been rested for the Sri Lankan ODI series starting from 18th August. India’s Under-19 captain Virat Kohli has been picked in the ODI squad against Sri Lanka. The Selection Committee, which met on Thursday at the Cricket Centre, selected talented Delhi middle order batsman Virat Kohli for Sri Lankan series as well as for the Champions Trophy. Irfan Pathan in spite of his poor form has been picked up for both the upcoming tournament. Dhoni continues to be the Indian captain for one-day matches with Yuvraj Singh being the vice-captain. Robin Uthappa due to his poor form has been dropped from both the tournaments. Yousuf Pathan and Piyush Chawla too fall in the same category.
One moral booster for the side is the come back of Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar in the shorter version of the game. Indian spinner briefly named terminator will also be seen in action in the upcoming series. He was banned for 5 one-day matches after he slapped Shreesanth during the IPL matches.
Team for Sri Lankan one day series: M.S. Dhoni (capt.), Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Parthiv Patel, Zaheer Khan, R.P. Singh, Munaf Patel, Praveen Kumar, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha
Team for ICC Champions Trophy: Dhoni (capt.), Yuvraj, Sehwag, Gambhir, Tendulkar, Raina, Rohit, Kohli, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer, R.P. Singh, Praveen, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan, Ojha.

Indian Wicket Keeper for the first two tests in Sri Lanka, Dinesh Kartik flop shows are still continuing. He has shown a ridiculous show both in front and behind the stump. In spite of so many chances he is failing to make his mark in the India side. His performance in Sri Lanka has been below ordinary. He has played innings of 9,0,7,20 in his four innings in two tests. His average in four tests in Sri Lanka is of 9. He has also shown some sloppy performance in wicket keeping dropping several catches in these two tests. Dinesh Kartik has been preferred over Parthiv Patel in the starting two tests.
However Parhiv Patel is currently in the best form of his life. He has been impressive in IPL as well. It is very likely for Parthiv Patel to get a chance in the last test starting on 8th in Colombo. Now at this stage of the series India just cannot afford to have any poor performance by any of their eleven players. We must hope that who ever out of the two gets the chance to play will give his heart out to give a good show for his team and India may win.

Sri Lankan new spin sensation Ajanta Mendis has created the terror in the minds of all batsmen in the world after playing just two tests for his country. After the coming of Mendis, worlds leading wicket taker in tests Muttiah Muralidharan is proving out to be even more dreadful. When both these bowlers are bowling in pair, pressure is being created from both ends and it becomes very difficult for the batsman to score runs out of them or not to give them wickets. Good footwork is very much required to play them well. Sehwag did exactly that in the second test at Galle. Mendis carom bowl is his most impressive weapon and he uses it to great effect. It’s very difficult to pick their bowl from the hands. Best way to play these bowlers is to get to the pitch of their bowl. Mendis already have had a great impressive start to his international career picking up more than 15 wickets in two tests.
This pair not only pick up wickets but also did not gives away any easy runs. If they will keep bowling the same way, one can be sure that this team will emerge up as a very strong component in world cricket.

Kevin Pietersen accepts the hardest challenge of his profession already full with incident and argument when he will be the captain of England against his native South Africa in the last test at the Oval on Thursday.
Pietersen was declared as England’s new leader on Monday after Michael Vaughan concluded his time was up following South Africa’s third test win at the weekend.
Graeme Smith’s side has already taken an incontrovertible 2-0 lead in the four-match series at Edgbaston to turning out to be the first South African side ever since 1965 to succeed in a series win in England.
Pietersen’s unexpected promotion has given an erratic curl to the final test of the English summer.
Pietersen, 28, has not missed self-confidence ever since his first appearance against Australia in 2005 when he took the attack of Australia’s all time best Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne with two consecutive 50s.
“I am going to accept this challenge,” he told during a news meeting on Monday. ” I’m going to give this task a real high-quality go like I gave till now to everything in my life.”