Cricket: England have recalled bowler James Anderson, all-rounder Ben Stokes and leg-spinner Adil Rashid to a 14-man squad for the second test against Pakistan at Old Trafford starting on Friday. Lancashire’s Anderson and Durham’s Stokes have been facing each other in the County Championship and came through the first innings of the match without any trouble from recent injuries. England are aiming to bounce back in the four-test series after Pakistan’s 10-wicket bowler Yasir Shah inspired the tourists to a 75-run victory on Sunday.
Wrestling: Bulgarian junior national team coach will replace freestyle wrestler Lyuben Iliev at next month’s Rio Olympics after the 27-year-old went missing. “He (Iliev) just sank out of sight, we can’t reach him,” Bulgarian freestyle wrestling team coach Valentin Raychev told local media yesterday. “We’ll rely on (junior team coach) Dimitar Kumchev at the Olympics.” Raychev described Iliev as “emotionally unstable” and said the wrestler went missing on July 4 when the national team returned to Bulgaria following a training camp in Russia.
Tennis: Wimbledon champion Andy Murray has pulled out of next week’s Rogers Cup in Toronto so he can give his body time to rest before he sets out in defence of his Olympic singles title at the Rio Games. Britain’s Murray won his third Rogers Cup title last year in Montreal but the defending champion said that after reaching the final round in each of his last five events he needed to take some time off. Murray’s decision marks the first time the three-times grand slam champion has skipped the Canadian tournament since his first appearance in 2006.
Match-fixing: Tennis accounted for the majority of suspicious betting activity flagged up by the European Sports Security Association (ESSA) with 34 incidents in the second quarter of 2016. The sport, hit by match-fixing allegations before this year’s Australian Open and undergoing an Independent Review of its anti-corruption procedures, made up 83 per cent of total suspicious activity reported by ESSA. Soccer had four alerts with the one each in beach volleyball, handball and snooker.
Rio Games: Fencer Gu Bon-gil will carry the South Korean flag at the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Games, the Korean Olympic Committee announced yesterday. The world number four won gold in the men’s team sabre at the 2012 London Games and was a silver medallist in the team and individual events at the 2014 World Championships in Kazan, Russia. South Korea has targeted at least 10 gold medals in Rio to finish in the top 10 of the medal standings for a fourth successive Olympics. The Koreans tallied 13 golds at the 2008 Beijing Games and matched that total in London four years later, where they finished fifth in the standings.