Vaughan's gobby allsorts put back in their box after failing to walk the walk as India take series lead

• Fired up Zaheer leads victory charge • Captains play down jelly-bean furore • Referee warns teams to cool it

Trent Bridge, second Test: India (481 & 73/3)
beat England (198 & 355) by seven wickets

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INDIA put in a five-star performance to win only their fifth Test on English soil following an easy victory chase today.

The tourists' triumph, however, was overshadowed by a row about jelly-beans - alleged to have been thrown at Indian tail-ender Zaheer Khan by England's slip cordon.

Khan, who said he felt "insulted" by the antics during India's first innings, had the last laugh, ripping the heart out of England's batting line-up yesterday to finish with match winning figures of 5 for 75.

As well as firing up the Indian bowlers the jelly-been contretemps has also cast further doubt on Michael Vaughan's probity at the highest level, following his outburst and then subsequent climb-down over the "Fredalo" affair.

In June Vaughan was quoted in The Guardian as blaming Andrew Flintoff for England's failures at the World Cup, saying "after 'Fredalo' we just started taking it all too seriously"; a claim he subsequently denied.

Then, when presented with an audio copy of his interview, the Yorkshireman made a humiliating about-turn. He said: "I was embarrassed by what I did, but we've got to move on.

"I was embarrassed to deny saying something, then it was proved that I had - and I'm sorry for that - but I'm really pleased with the way the team fought."

    

Many observers who witnessed his denial of the jelly-bean throwing at Trent Bridge, and in particular his failure to censure Matt Prior, may well wonder if he'll have to make yet another grovelling apology to the world's press.

The game itself was a foregone conclusion once India resumed on 10 for no wicket, needing another 63 runs to win, the winning runs coming in fitting fashion, with Prior - who'd kept poorly all game - conceding four byes off Chris Tremlett.

Tremlett had been the only bowler to trouble the batsmen on a final day pitch that remained true to the end, finishing with figures of 3-12 to go alongside his first innings haul of 3-80.

And with India now one-nil up and needing just a draw at the Oval to take the series, Rahul Dravid is confident of a rare overseas triumph.

"I think expectations have increased over the last four or five years," said the India captain. "People don't expect us to just come here and be part of the summer.

"People do expect us to come and perform and we expect ourselves to come here and perform. We don't come here just to be another team."

For England, meanwhile, the immediate future looks bleak, with the prospect of a first home series defeat since the 2001 Ashes looming large, though Vaughan was adamant their defeat had nothing to do with jelly babies.

"It's not the reason we've lost a game of cricket, because of some jelly beans," added the England skipper. "We lost this match because we didn't get enough runs in tricky conditions."

Here is the full match scorecard from Cricinfo.

Here's Johnny!

    

St Albans City 0-2 Stevenage Borough

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JOHNNY Martin continued Stevenage's fine run of results this month to settle a dire derby at Clarence Park.

Martin's strike extended Borough's unbeaten sequence to eight, with Premiership giants Spurs the only team to have defeated them pre-season.

The summer signing capitalised on some poor Saints defending in the dying moments of the first half to turn sharply on the edge of the area, compose himself and rifle the ball left-footed into the bottom right-hand corner of the net.

After a scrappy opening, the visitors had taken the lead in farcical circumstances on the quarter-hour. Paul Bruce, attempting to clear his lines, sliced the ball into his own net, the ball looping up beyond the despairing, agonising dive of keeper James Waite.

James Fayne, meanwhile, had St Albans' best chance going forward midway through the first half, rounding Stevenage number one Alan Julian only to have his shot blocked by John Nutter's fearless lunge.

But in truth the hosts were never in the game, and should have been finished off 16 minutes from time, saved only by the poor technique of Mitchell Cole - clean through and with only the keeper to beat - who leant back and blazed the ball high over the bar.

Star Man: Martin (Stevenage); Entertainment: *

Read my report in full in tomorrow's Non-League Paper.

Trescothick may return - Vaughan

Trent Bridge, second Test: England v India (27th - 31st July)

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MICHAEL Vaughan refused to shut the door on his former opening partner Marcus Trescothick yesterday, insisting the Somerset batsman made the right decision in ruling himself out of touring this winter.

"The last thing I wanted was for him to come out and play too soon because I thought that could be the end of him," said the England captain.

"This decision could give him a chance of playing again. It must be very difficult after what he's gone through because I know the one thing that Tres loves doing more than anything is playing cricket for England."

Vaughan was speaking ahead of this morning's second Test in Nottingham, for which he named an unchanged XI - as did opposite number Rahul Dravid.

And India's embattled skipper believes it's time for his country's famed middle-order of himself, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly to come to the table.

Dravid said: "We would like more runs in the middle order - there's no secret. The positive we took from the last game was the bowling. The batting is an area we know we can improve on.

"Hopefully the next couple of Test matches we should be able to do a lot better than we did at Lord's and we'll need to."

Listen live to full coverage of every day of the second Test on
BBC Radio 4 198LW from 11:00am.

Ra ra Rasmussen, Lover of the dreaded weed ...

There was a cat that really was gone;
Ra ra Rasmussen, Denmark's greatest doping cheat,
It was a shame how he carried on ...



THE credibility of the Tour de France was left hanging by a thread following the sacking of race leader Michael Rasmussen late last night.

Rasmussen, kicked out of Denmark's Olympic team a week ago, suffered the ultimate ignominy yesterday evening when his Dutch Rabobank team expelled him from their ranks for lying about his whereabouts during pre-tournament testing.

The Dane, however, remains unrepentant, describing team boss Theo de Rooy as "a desperate man" at "the end of his nerves".

"My boss is mad," said Rasmussen in an interview with Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende. "I wasn't in Italy, no way.

"That's the story of one man [former cyclist and now an Italian television presenter Davide Cassani] who thinks he saw me but there's not the slightest proof.

"I'll maintain that I have been in Mexico, it is what I have told the team."

"It's all very enormous," he added. "I've been left broken and destroyed."

    

Rasmussen's dismissal follows the unmasking of Cristian Moreni and Alexandre Vinokourov for an abundance of testosterone and blood doping respectively.

Keen to avoid a repeat of last year when Tour winner Floyd Landis was stripped of his title after the race, Rabobank acted fast to axe the man in posession of the yellow jersey and this year's overwhelming favourite for the title.

Britain's David Miller - himself benned for two years for drug taking - believes Rasmussen got what was coming. "I think it's a great day," said the Scot. "If we didn't have this out-of-competition testing this would never have arisen.

"This is really good for the sport. Finally team management and sponsors are assuming their responsibilities which they weren't before, which is why and how it has got to this degree.

"The fact that they are doing something like this is a very strong statement and a very big step. It goes to show that they are reacting rather than putting their heads in the sand.

"We're moving in the right direction but by bringing in these more stringent controls we are going to pay a higher price in the immediate future.

"He was playing the system. He had to go."

Cristian feeds his teammates to the lions

    

THE Tour de France was plunged into yet more controversy tonight following the withdrawal of Cofidis - British Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins's team.

Cofidis acted after Italian cyclist Cristian Moreno tested positive for testosterone, the second proven doping violation of this year's race and the second in the space of 24 hours, coming hot on the heels of double stage winner Alexandre Vinokourov's failed drugs test.

And with today's mountain stage from Orthez to Gourette-Col d'Aubisque being won by Michael Rasmussen - under suspicion after being booted out of the Danish national team following a series of missed tests - the future of the 2007 Tour remains shrouded in controversy.

How different it all is from the sizzling midsummer afternoon on the streets of London which kicked off this year's carnival of cycling. Though only three weeks have passed, to those of us who were there, it feels a lifetime ago.

Jagshemash? Kazakh dope fiend thrown out of Tour

KAZAKHSTAN'S number one sportsman Alexandre Vinokourov saw his dreams of winning the Tour de France go up in smoke today after failing a drugs test.

Vinokourov's Astana team have withdrawn from the race with immediate effect, even before the pre-race favourite's B-sample had been analysed. "It's a mistake," he protested. "I never doped, that's not the way I see my profession.

"The setting-up of our team made a lot of people jealous and now we're paying the price. It's a shame to leave the Tour this way, but I don't want to waste time in proving my innocence."

"Leaving the Tour is a shock for the team," added boss Marc Biver. "It's catastrophic. Everybody is shocked."

    

The fall from grace of Petropavlovsk's most famous son will come as a bitter blow to his native Kazakhstan, which has for years strived to shed its image as a nation of Azamat Bagatovs.

But the question remains: Where did Vinokourov get his drugs? Were they given to him by government scientist Dr Yamak, famous for his groundbreaking research which concluded that women's brains are the size of squirrels', or did he buy them on the street from Borat?

Jak sie masz, Sasha? The answer, I feel, would be unrepeatable!

England wave adieu to victory as darkness descends

Lord's, first Test: India 201 & 282/9
drew with England 298 & 282

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ENGLAND were left rueing their luck after bad light and then rain denied them a deserved win over India today.

The hosts fell agonisingly short of success, narrowly failing to take the tenth Indian wicket to draw their fourth Lord's Test in a row having looked odds-on to go 1-0 up in the three-match series.

England skipper Michael Vaughan, however, refused to be downcast. "There were no complaints from me," he said. "If I had been on the batting side I would have wanted to go off because it was pretty dark.

"It has been a tough week for the players but we are looking forward to the next game, it's a great challenge playing against these Indians.

"India have a very skilled bowling attack, an experienced batting line-up and they play the game in the right spirit so it's going to be another good contest at Trent Bridge."

    

Not even the presence of Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe could lift the gloom, the boy wizard - who turned 18 today - unable to wave his wand and summon the sun out of its slumber.

It was left to Indian pin-up Mahendra Singh Dhoni to provide the fireworks, scoring an unbeaten 76 to save his country from defeat after England's inexperienced attack had reduced the tourists to 145 for five, to the relief of captian Rahul Dravid.

He said: "We just got out of jail here. There were some good efforts by the boys, but truly we were saved by the weather. England were on the front foot. We didn't start well, and they had us on the run for most of the game.

"We fought back well, and at various stages our seamers brought us back in, but we were lucky to get away in the end. We need to correct that in the next two games. Our batsmen have to get the runs so that our bowlers can get the 20 wickets.

"We'll look at what we've done in this game, have a couple of days of good nets and see how we do. I'd hope that we can keep improving from here. We have to utilise the lessons from this game."

Here is the full match scorecard from Cricinfo.

Little Master looks to set record straight

Lord's, first Test: England v India (19th - 23rd July)

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SACHIN Tendulkar has vowed to end two decades of hurt at the home of cricket and "make the most of" his final Test appearance at Lord's.

Tendulkar, just like contemporaries Ricky Ponting and Muttiah Muralitharan, has yet to get his name on the honours board at Lord's, and the Indian believes it's now or never as he looks to right this wrong.

"It looks like this is going to be my last England tour," he said on the eve of the first Test. "It's extremely special to be out in the middle at Lord's and one would want to make the most of it."

The Test century record holder - 37 tons in 137 games - has endured a poor run of scores at Lord's, averaging under 20 with 31 his best effort in three previous outings dating back to the early nineties.

But for the pride of Mumbai, the love affair with St John's Wood hasn't waned. "It's an extremely special ground for me," added the 34 year old.

"The first time I ever saw Lord's on television was when India were in the 1983 World Cup final. I was only 10 and didn't really know what was happening, but I joined in all the celebrations even though I was too young to understand it.

"I also remember visiting here as a 14-year-old kid and I had a photo of myself taken sat next to the sight screen at the Nursery End - as a kid you have big dreams and one of them was to be out there and play.

"This is a ground where all the batters dream of getting a hundred and I'm no different."

Also looking to fill their boots on their farewell tours to England are fellow middle-order veterans VVS Laxman, Saurav Ganguly and captain Rahul Dravid.

Dravid said: "We're really not too concerned about whether it's the final tour or not, there is no additional pressure on us.

"Every time you play for your country there's pressure and responsibility that comes with it.

"I'm not looking too much into the future, just the next three Test matches."

Listen live to full coverage of every day of the first Test on
BBC Radio 4 198LW from 11:00am.

A great picture of a great man

DIVING into sub-zero waters at the top of the world, Lewis Gordon Pugh makes history by swimming a kilometre in a time of 18 minutes 50 seconds in temperatures of -1.8°C (-29°F).

The curvature of the Earth, the bleakness of the sea, the ice floes melting away ... the cameraman captures the scene perfectly.

A full report can be seen in The Daily Telegraph.