International Sporting Saturday

What a day for watching, viewing and listening yesterday! International football, cricket and rugby dominating. England managed a rare hat-trick of victories and Scotland maintained Euro 2008 ambitions.

Cricket first - having attended Wednesday's series-levelling one-dayer at the Oval, I was pleased to hear that England managed a win to take the series 4-3 at Lords yesterday. Freddie Flintoff was back to inspire England, although India were undone by their own batting performance. Good too to see my man-of-the-match from Wednesday, Dimitri Mascarenhas, put in another good perfomance and seal a call-up to the World 20-20 squad.

I watched the New Zealand - Italy rugby World Cup match yesterday on the box and whilst it went to form, you couldn't help noticing the power of the Kiwis, especially in the first half. They were foot and hand perfect as they rampaged through the Italian line time and again. Hopefully, the performance shows a weaker than anticipated Italy side, because New Zealand looked untouchable otherwise. Australia went one better later in the day racking up 91 points against Japan and England got off the mark against the USA with what was a disappointing performnace by all accounts.

For the main event, I was at a sunny Hampden Park to see Scotland beat Lithuania 3-1. Chris Boyd opened the scoring with a diving header from a quickly taken free-kick in the first half. Lithuania equalised from the spot early in the second half from what was a terrible dive from Hearts' player Mikoliunas (oh dear!). For 15 minutes Lithuania had their best spell without creating the chance they needed for the lead. Alex McLeish then made two substitutions that settled the game. Sean Maloney was introduced at a Scotland corner. He collected the ball immediately and sent a probing cross which Celtic team-mate McManus anticipated batter than anyone else in the box to bundle home. With less than 10 minutes on the clock, substitute McFadden found space outside the box and popped a superb shot into the top corner to secure the points. Paris on Wednesday will be a different proposition altogether.

England comfortably beat Israel to maintain momentum in their group ahead of the midweek home game against Russia, a win in which should put them in the driving seat for a trip to Austria and Switzerland next year - maybe then the press will lay-off poor Steve McLaren and give him and the players he has fit a little bit of credit.

Northern ireland lost in Latvia but their Euro chances were boosted by Iceland managing a 1-1 draw with Spain.