George Bush has a ball on the beach!

US President George W Bush temporarily switched roles on Saturday from commander-in-chief to cheerleaderin-chief at the Olympics, stopping by to offer support for the American volleyball and softball teams.
He made a surprise visit to the beach volleyball venue, where he watched the US men's and women's teams practice. But it took a little coaxing to get Bush out on the sand court.
The 2004 gold medal winners Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh asked if he would play a little "pepper," a warmup drill bumping the volleyball back and forth. Bush initially tried to steer clear, replying "No, I'm a pretty good spectator."
But after watching for a few minutes, the bikini-clad players eventually drew him on to the court in which he hit two but missing the third try as the ball fell a little short.
Before moving over to see the men practice, May-Treanor jokingly bent over and offered Bush a chance to give her a spank on her rear __ a custom in many sports for players to offer each other encouragement.
Instead, he playfully used the back of his hand to tap her on the small of her back.
Before dropping by the practices, Bush, an avid mountain biker, took a ride on the Olympic course, which he described as "really, really difficult."
"That's why I'm an amateur and they're Olympians," he told reporters.
Joined by his wife Laura and daughter Barbara, Bush spent the evening watching the US women's basketball team beat the Czech Republic team 97-57. At halftime, stars of the men's US team –– LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Jason Kidd and others __ sitting behind one of the baskets waved to Bush and he smiled and waved back, drawing loud cheers.
Earlier before the basketball game, Bush visited the US women's softball team to offer his encouragement and watch them take batting practice. The former president is an big baseball fan who once co-owned the Texas Rangers Major League team.
Before going through their stretches and take some batting swings, the team huddled around the president. "Who do we play for?" Bush quietly asked the group after being prompted by the coach. "USA!" the players shouted in return.

Honours even despite Sehwag century

ndia started promisingly in their quest to exorcise the ghosts of the SSC Test before being thwarted by double-strikes from Ajantha Mendis and Chaminda Vaas. Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir played India into a position of domination but, after a rain break that accounted for the middle session and 75 minutes, Sri Lanka struck gold, taking four wickets for 11, bringing the memories of the collapses in the first Test back to roost.

Like the pitch at the Galle International Stadium, which comprised two polar halves -­ one cracked and unreliable, the other flat and damp -­ the first day's play featured startling contrasts. In the first half of the day Sehwag and Gambhir put behind them not only the debacle at the SSC but also thoughts of how, early in the piece here, they played and missed, and how the ball misbehaved when it hit the cracks. They got India off to a flier; Sehwag fell just short ­- for the second time in his career -­­ of a hundred in the first session of a Test, a session in which India scored 151 runs, registering the second biggest opening stand in Galle.

What made Sehwag and Gambhir's partnership - which came at more than five an over ­- remarkable was that both batsmen were troubled amply by the bowling. Nuwan Kulasekara was the most testing,­ and the most unfortunate, of the bowlers in the first session, getting the ball to move both off the seam and off the cracks. In his first three overs he beat Gambhir and Sehwag more than once each, even getting a leading edge from Gambhir, and used the variable bounce well, bowling shooters and bouncers.

Gambhir was the first to counter the cracks: he stood outside the crease, and then walked down the pitch, almost like Matthew Hayden, as the bowler ran in. The lbw was ruled out, and a game of tip-and-run got underway, with the batsmen taking singles almost intuitively.

Soon Sehwag shook off the early jitters and shifted gears. No bowler was spared: only a soggy outfield saved Ajantha Mendis from being hit for a four in his first over. Muttiah Muralitharan was hit for a four off the first ball he bowled. Mendis was hit for a six for the first time in Tests.

Kulasekara employed a similar field for Sehwag as at the SSC -­ two fielders in the deep on the leg side. Here he bowled a head-high bouncer again, and Sehwag went for the pull again, but this time he got on top and hit it to cow corner. This was a batsman who reached a triple-century with a six, after he had tried -­­ and failed -­­ to get to a double the same way. Sehwag was true to character in his approach to moving from 90 to 100. The first ball he faced after the break, he edged Vaas to gully, who collected it first bounce. The second ball, he moved his front leg out of the way and almost hit it into the Galle Fort. Two balls later he bludgeoned a straight boundary to get to his 15th century.

Is world cricket heading for an inevitable split?

World cricket is facing a crisis because of issues ranging from terror attacks in Pakistan to the rebel ICL tournament, causing major concern among top players of a split along racial lines __ though nobody's mentioning the R-word __ and the end of the game as we know it.
Voices in the West muttering darkly about BCCI's "muscle flexing" during the ugly row in the India-Australia series Down Under which saw umpires being changed and a ban on Harbhajan Singh being revoked had provided early signals of fault lines developing, but a split was something nobody was willing to speculate about in public.
That's now changed with Australia's vice-captain Michael Clarke and former skipper Steve Waugh publicly acknowledging that the possibility exists while hoping that matters wouldn't reach that pass. Two more or less simultaneous, though unrelated, developments have brought things to a head. The first of these is that BCCI, the richest and most powerful board, and the traditionalist England and Wales Cricket Board have declared a virtual war against each other.
Both are stubbornly going ahead with their own versions of the T20 Champions League after differing over issues like player participation in IPL and recognition of banned ICL players __ some of whom play county cricket in England __ and squabbling over revenuesharing patterns.
The other has a terror angle to it. Australia and New Zealand, along with England and South Africa, have voiced serious reservations about playing the Champions Trophy one-day tournament in Pakistan in September because of the threat of attack from Islamic fundamentalists and the perceived lack of foolproof security arrangements.
Their stance has antagonized the subcontinental countries, with the recent serial blasts in Ahmedabad and Bangalore only reinforcing the point that all of them are susceptible to such incidents of violence and hence cannot afford to isolate Pakistan on the issue.
BCCI reacted strongly to Clarke's comment that any split between Asian and Western countries would herald "the end of cricket," with secretary Niranjan Shah telling TOI: "Let Clarke say what he wants. Terror is a global phenomenon and it can strike anywhere, why only in Pakistan? Can anyone say with certainty that there will not be a terror attack in Australia? The cricket fraternity must get together on this. There are rules and regulations in cricket and everybody must follow those. As for our differences with ECB, if everyone has agreed not to support unauthorised activities (read ICL) and share revenue in a particular manner in the Champions League, why can't ECB? Why say only BCCI is rigid?"