Broad bowls England to Ashes series win

CHESTER-LE-STREET: Stuart Broad bowled England to a stunning 74-run fourth Test win over Australia with more than a day to spare as they took an unbeatable 3-0 lead in the five-match Ashes series.

Australia, set 299 to win on Monday's fourth day at Chester-le-Street, were well-placed at 168 for two but slumped to 224 all out as paceman Broad took six wickets for 50 runs for a Test-best match haul of 11 for 121.

The victory means England, who had already retained the Ashes, have won three successive Test series against Australia for the first time since the 1950s.

Tharanga, Jayawardene cane India

"Can't seem to win a toss," Angelo Mathews said suggesting he can't catch a break nowadays when Sri Lanka were inserted on a track that has responded to West Indies quicks better than best of butlers. Four hours later, we had the first instance of an innings in a 50-over international ending with just one wicket down. Upul Tharanga and Mahela Jayawardene made a mockery of the teams' suspicion of the damp surface with their 213-run opening, Sri Lanka's second-best stand against India. Under the pressure of the mountain of runs, India huffed and puffed past… Upul Tharanga's score of 174.

South Africa wins decider to take series 3-2

AB de Villiers racked up his third half-century of the series, in which he also scored a hundred, to guide South Africa to victory in their chase in Benoni with six overs to spare, sealing a 3-2 win for the hosts. De Villiers put in his best all-round performance in the decider, as he manned his chargers well and anchored the chase, albeit a modest one.

South Africa closed out the series largely due to Pakistan's inability to do the same, rather than being dominant. Apart from de Villiers' knock, the game changed in the space of four balls in the Pakistan innings when Shoaib Malik and Shahid Afridi both succumbed softly in the 35th over bowled by Ryan McLaren and abandoned the captain and lower order to nothing more than hope.