91Èȱ¬

was good for Pakistani cricket, good for English cricket and good for Test cricket in general.

Good for Pakistani cricket because it suggested that, after a torrid 18 months which included , the subsequent cancellation of international cricket in Pakistan, and some woefully inept performances in England, skipper Salman Butt's side might have turned a corner.

Good for English cricket because after two relatively powder-puff series against a weak Bangladesh outfit, Andrew Strauss's side were sorely in need of a few tough rounds before this winter's Ashes series, a haymaker or two coming back at them to provide a bit of seasoning, to fully focus the mind.

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91Èȱ¬ Sport at The Oval

Watching Alastair Cook was like watching a man encased in ice thaw out before your eyes.

A frost-bitten play-and-a-miss against Mohammad Asif in the third over followed by two timorous pokes through the slips, it was also clear from an early stage that England's under-pressure opening batsman was going to need one or two favours for his transformation to be complete.

And then he got the big one - a potentially place-saving favour, a potentially career-saving favour, the sort of favour that makes cricket such a compellingly mysterious game: an ugly carve to a ball too close to him outside off-stump, an edge, and he should have been gone. But neither slip went for it - and Cook could start to plan for the future.

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One of the more irritating aspects of Australia's dominance over England in the 1990s and much of the 2000s was the fact that, as well as being superior cricketers, the Aussies rather dwarfed their arch rivals in the personality stakes.

There was , , - and then there was , who did plenty of charity work between producing a few dozen books-worth of off-field controversy.

Then, when they'd had their fill of thrashing the old enemy, they'd turn up periodically on Test Match Special and reveal that, contrary to what most Englishmen thought, they were actually rather convivial chaps and, most irritatingly of all, thoroughly good blokes.

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91Èȱ¬ Sport at The Oval

When it comes to , the England selectors only need to ask themselves one question: would the Australians like to see him walking out to bat on the first morning of the first Ashes Test in Brisbane on 25 November? Of course they would - they'd love it.

Which is why England must drop the Essex opener for the fourth and final Test against Pakistan at Lord's next week, certainly if he fails again in his second innings at The Oval.

With 106 runs in eight innings this summer, 25-year-old Cook has been less a walking wicket at the top of the England innings than a shuffling, shambling, groping one - groping at good deliveries, groping at bad deliveries, groping for answers.

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If you are a teenager with a double-digit handicap reading this, you might think your chances of making it as a pro golfer are nil. After all, , while at the same age .

But it might be worth putting the girls (or the boys) and the grog on the backburner for a little while longer, because for every teenage 'phenom' scorching through the ranks there is a late developer grafting under the radar: big on talent, hamstrung by circumstance.

When Ross Fisher won a scholarship to Wentworth aged 13, he didn't have a handicap at all, discounting a lack of funds, which had precluded him from joining a club before then. His first official handicap was 16 and by the age of 16 he was down to six. Very good, although hardly .

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You'll be hearing a lot about over the next two years - but you might not be hearing much from her. That's the thing about : they hit hard but chatting's never a strong point.

"She lets me do the talking for her," says Tim Coulter, her coach at the Headland boxing club in Hartlepool. "It's nothing personal, she's fine in the gym, it's just when she sees that pad and pen. She's spoken to journalists before and said 'just put anything down you want'." Refreshing, yes. Worrying, slightly more so. Let's hope those closest to her think the same.

In an age when you cannot move for vacuous pronouncements from our sportsmen and women, some might think a taciturn boxer, in particular, a breath of fresh air. But the 19-year-old Marshall, who defends her European middleweight crown in Hungary next week, has a compelling story to tell and will be asked to tell it often in the lead-up to London 2012, when women's boxing will make its debut.

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