PAKISTAN WIN OVERSHADOWED BY CONTROVERSY

Pakistan levelled the five-match ODI series with an impressive victory over England yesterday at Lord’s. However, that was rather the secondary story of the day as the match-fixing/spot-fixing scandal surrounding the tour slumped to new depths.
The fixture very nearly didn’t go ahead after the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board accused England’s players of deliberately losing the third ODI between the two teams on Friday. Ijaz Butt was reported to have made claims that “some English players were paid enormous amounts of money to lose” to India’s NDTV Channel. Andrew Strauss and the ECB then released a statement refuting the accusations but vowed to play the remaining two matches of the series.
The implications could be much further reaching for Pakistan cricket than this series alone. After all, who will want to play against a side that for one attracts such negative publicity and two goes around accusing the opposition of deliberately losing matches for financial gain?
The final, and deciding, match of this series will be played tomorrow with England made the 4/7 favourites to prevail by Stan James and the visitors at 11/8 to complete an unlikely comeback.
In football, Cesc Fabregas will miss three weeks of action after limping off in his side’s 1-1 draw with Sunderland at the weekend. The Arsenal captain scored one of the flukiest of goals that you are likely to see in the Premier League before Darren Bent equalised with a late strike to dent The Gunners’ title hopes.
Arsenal are now available to back at odds of 13/2 with Victor Chandler to win the Premier League.