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On each occasion Flintoff took charge and guided the team home by scoring 65 per cent of the runs

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On each occasion, Flintoff took charge and guided the team home by scoring 65 per cent of the runs."Freddie has had a pretty special series," his delighted captain, Vaughan, said at the conclusion of the match. "I have never seen a player dominate a one-day series in such a manner. His presence at the crease, with either bat or ball in his powerful hands, has become a reassuring sight for England supporters.In each match of the series, England have not been in a crisis when Flintoff walked out to bat but they have been in positions from which they have lost games in the past. Flintoff has now won five Man-of-the-Match awards and two Man-of-the-Series awards in his last six one-day games for England. In these matches he scored three half-centuries and plundered 177 runs off only 138 balls.Under Michael Vaughan England are paying greater attention to fitness than before but it seems wasted on Flintoff. After accumulating 132 - 10 sixes and 22 fours - of his 177 runs in boundaries it appears that running between the wickets is becoming unnecessary.The first of yesterday's four sixes - a huge slog-sweep off Mohammad Rafique over deep midwicket - would have been special to Flintoff because it took his tally of maximums in one-day cricket for England past that of Ian Botham, who struck 44 during his career.When the Lancastrian's exploits with the bat are added to the 7 for 63 he took in 29.4 overs with the ball, it should come as no surprise that he won Man-of-the-Match awards in all three games. Galicia is anxious to use the race as a platform for telling the world that the oil spillage clean-up, which affected its tourism and fishing, has been successful.Russell Coutts, the skipper of Alinghi, who won his third successive America's Cup in March after leading both a challenge and a defence for his native New Zealand, was in Barcelona yesterday to pick up the World Sailor of the Year award at the annual meeting of the sport's governing body, the International Sailing Federation Norway's Siren Sundby, 20, won the women's award..

Jason Lee's reign as the Great Britain men's team leader got off to a winning start with a 7-1 victory over the hosts in the Hong Kong Super Cup. And he celebrated by scoring Britain's last goal three minutes from the final whistle.The tourists led 2-0 at half-time through Surbiton's Ben Hawes (penalty corner) and Western Wildcats' Vishal Marwaha, one of three Scots in an otherwise English squad.Just after the break, Dave Mathews netted a penalty corner and despite a goal from the Hong Kong captain, Farooq Saeed, the Guildford striker Danny Hall (two), Reading midfielder Mark Pearn and Goudie completed the rout. Today Great Britain take on the Olympic silver medallists, Korea, who beat Japan 4-2 yesterday.. John Higgins yesterday became the first player to compile a maximum break in successive matches. Higgins, who knocked in a 147 during last month's LG Cup final, made another en route to beating Michael Judge 5-1 in the second round of the British Open in Brighton yesterday. "I've had quite a few 147s in practice before I came down here," he said.

"I never used to play for maximums but just lately they've been going in quite regularly." The perfect break was the fourth of Higgins' career. He had not even made one in practice until he had become world champion in 1998, and his first in a tournament came at the 2000 Nations Cup He followed that with another in the Irish Masters. Only Stephen Hendry, with eight, and Ronnie O'Sullivan, with six, have made more maximums. It was the 48th maximum in professional snooker history, the 27th in a world-ranking event and 24th to be made on television.Steve Davis, who had returned to the elite top 16 after a three-year gap, was beaten 5-3 by Joe Swail. The 46-year-old, who lost 5-4 to Shaun Murphy in last month's LG Cup, again failed to find his form as Swail clinched a place in the last 16.Swail, twice an Embassy World Championship semi-finalist, dropped out of the top 16 last season "It's a very good win," he said.

"I'm still a bit low in confidence because I've been on a losing run for a couple of years but a few more wins like this should give me a boost.". One of the most controversial suggestions in a newly-published blueprint for the revival of jump racing is that the Cheltenham Gold Cup should become a contest for which qualification is necessary via a golf-style order of merit. Yesterday Toby Balding, trainer of one of the longer-priced winners in the race's history, the 25-1 shot Cool Ground, gave the notion the thumbs-up, for the sake of the bigger picture. But the jump racing product is under threat and this idea has to be seen in the context of how we make the best use of the available herd, particularly at the top level, in promoting it."We want to create a structure to get people to run horses and an order of merit, with a prize fund of its own, would provide a decent incentive to qualify, even without actually winning a Gold Cup. In practice we'll have to look carefully at how it is worked but in principple I'd approve of restricting entry to horses who have proved a certain level of ability."The Gold Cup is much less liable to be won by an apparent no-hoper than the Grand National, or even the Derby. Only three horses - Norton's Coin at 100-1 in 1990 and two 33-1 chances, Gay Donald in 1955 and L'Escargot in 1970 - have won at more lucrative odds than Cool Ground, who took the Blue Riband in 1992. Another 25-1 outsider, Cool Dawn, won in 1998."A horse has to be pretty bloody able to win the race," said Balding.

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