News about Mahela Jayawardene

NASSER HUSSAIN: If Sri Lanka lose this Test, they will look at the first hour on Friday and ask themselves if they were completely switched on and ready, because it was such a contrast to the fight they showed across the first two days. Test cricket is like an arm wrestle - you can't drop your concentration at any stage - and I thought they were sloppy and lethargic in the morning. They were almost not ready for the start of play. It was a mess. They planned for Asitha Fernando to bowl from the Brian Statham End but were told he'd bowled the last over on day two from the James Anderson End so he couldn't.

DANIEL MATTHEWS OF GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas, USA: By 8.30 p.m., when Ali Khan began his run, the temperatures in this part of Texas hovered around 102 degrees. A warm breeze blew across the wicket, but there was barely a cloud or a patch of green on the wicket. All told, optimal batting conditions. Not that Khan - the LA Knight Riders' opening, would have toss the ball to someone else. This was a moment to reminiscence for the actor. He was charged with bowling the first ball of Major League Cricket in this country's newest professional sports league and the sport's new attempt to break America. Broadcasters called it a 'British leap across the Atlantic.' 'Cricket's American dream'

The findings of an independent commission investigating Sri Lanka's off-field activity during the World Cup revealed a litany of misdeeding among players, executives, and associates on Thursday. In their first match, Sri Lanka, the Asian champions, were stunned by Namibia and did not progress to the knockout rounds after placing fourth in their Super 12 group. Chamika Karunaratne, a bowler from last year, was fined and given a suspended suspension for an unidentified occurrence.

INTERVIEW - BY RICHARD GIBSON: As Rehan Ahmed considers the possibility of being part of England's pre-Christmas Test tour of Pakistan, he gains confidence from his answers. Leicestershire's teenage all-rounder has appeared in just three first-class games, and in his most recent match against Derbyshire, he scored his first hundred and took his first five-wicket haul. That rated him as the most exciting English cricketer of his time, as well as the possibility that he be promoted from a pre-series training camp in the UAE. For some time, England has known Ahmed, 18, because his leg-spin was testing Test players in Lord's practice, not long after he left primary school and has made several reappearances as a net bowler. Jack Leach, the only frontline spinner chosen among the 15 names for December's three-match series, will be heading to Pakistan in a similar manner.