I saw a letter in The Sun - 'I don't see why we should give so much money to Pakistan when it turns out they are cheating at cricket.'

I reckon most sport is fixed. You think any team could really play as badly as the England World Cup team?

A leading Sri Lankan cricketer has been investigated by the anti-corruption unit of the International Cricket Council (ICC), BBC Sinhala understands.

The unnamed cricketer has been seen with a suspected match fixer and was reported to the ICC by the team's then manager, Brendon Kuruppu.

Three Pakistan players are being investigated by the ICC for alleged spot-fixing allegations.

World governing body the ICC has not commented on the Sri Lanka case.

Chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) DS de Silva told the BBC that it was too early to discuss the allegations.

It is understood the ICC sent a special team from the anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) to Sri Lanka following the report by Kuruppu.

Police later initiated a probe into the allegations but no charges were filed against any of the players.

The ICC did not want to divulge the exact nature of the ACSU's involvement.

A spokesman said: "We don't discuss the details of investigations being carried out by the ACSU."

SLC secretary Nishantha Ranathunga told the Sri Lankan Sunday Times that the police investigation was still under way.

Kuruppu, who has since been replaced as team manager, was issued with a special recommendation by the ACSU appreciating his work.

Match-fixing is considered a more serious charge than the spot-fixing claims faced by Pakistan's Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir.

Spot-betting involves gamblers staking their money on the minutiae of sporting encounters, such as whether the first ball of a cricket match will be a wide or a no-ball.

Match-fixing, however, involves illegally influencing the outcome of an entire match.

Someone pressed mine and my neighbour's buzzer at 8.40am this morning. I'm guessing it was a Jehovah's Witness.

Bayern Munich star Arjen Robben has insisted Tottenham are now finally as good as their north London rivals Arsenal.

Robben, a Dutch team-mate of Rafael van der Vaart, believes Spurs have bridged the gap between the clubs with their signing of the midfielder from Real Madrid.

Robben said: 'Before Rafa signed, I’d still have had Arsenal down as the stronger team - but now I don’t think there is anything between them.

'With Rafa on board, Spurs really do have one of the very best midfield players in the Premier League, maybe even the best.'

Robben admitted he wanted Van der Vaart to join him at Bayern, and is sure Tottenham have made a shrewd move.

He told the Daily Star Sunday: 'I don’t know why he didn’t join Bayern in the end. I really wanted him but Spurs have bought a gem.

'In terms of his vision, his range of passing, his ability to split a defence and his eye for goal he is as good as Cesc Fabregas, Steven Gerrard and of course Frank Lampard.

'He is that bridge for Spurs that makes them go from a very good Premier League club to a team capable of taking on and beating any side in Europe on their day.

'When you consider the amount of money Real Madrid and Manchester City have spent on players, it’s almost unbelievable to think what Spurs reportedly paid for Rafa.

'Madrid almost gave away one of the best players in the world – but that’s their style.

'They got rid of me and Wesley Sneijder in the same summer and I went on to win my domestic league and get to the Champions League Final while Wesley went on to win the Treble and become the best player in the world.

'Madrid’s mistake will very much be Spurs’ gain.'

Robben also believes that Arsenal star Robin van Persie had been trying to tempt Van Der Vaart into a move to the Emirates.

'I knew of his interest in England and that van Persie had been speaking with him about how great life in London was. I think when Robin was trying to convince him how great London and the Premier League was, it was as though he was trying to convince him to join Arsenal.

'It’s kind of backfired on Robin a little bit now, though, because he has signed for their biggest rivals.'

Meanwhile it has been revealed that Robben could be out of action until after the Bundesliga winter break.

The 26-year-old tore a muscle in his left thigh in a World Cup warm-up match, and even though he came back to play in the tournament he now seems to have aggravated the injury.

'It is more than questionable whether Arjen will be able to play for us in the Bundesliga's round of matches before Christmas,' Bayern's director of sport Christian Nerlinger said.

'The healing process is unsatisfactory. It will take a long time before Arjen is fit again.'

Sprint king Usain Bolt has revealed that he wants to pursue a second sporting career as a footballer.

The 24-year-old first wants to set a 100m record of 9.4 seconds - a time he says will "probably never be beaten".

Then the Jamaican says he will turn his attention to the beautiful game in about four year's time.

"I'm definitely a good player - a defensive or attacking midfielder," the Olympic 100m and 200m champion told BBC 5 live's Sportweek programme.

Bolt, a ManYoo fan, believes he has what it takes to make a name for himself on the pitch.

"I always watch those guys and I think I could be a professional footballer," he told Sportsweek.

"I'd like to play football for two years. Maybe I could get into a good side or even an average side."

Earlier in the week, Bolt told CBBC Newsround that had he not made it in athletics he would have been a cricketer.

"I was playing cricket one day and my coach said, 'You know what? Try track and field', because I was running pretty quickly."

On a more serious note, Bolt spoke of what he believes is the growing reputation of athletics for dealing with drugs cheats.

"In track and field they're doing a really good job of catching the cheats, so it's hard to cheat.

"It will get cleaner and will be back to a sport with no problem. We need nothing but time."

Because he's shit.

That's from the Sunday Mirror.

FREDERICO!

Hi MATES.  I've not been on here since I was drunk, embarrassing myself no doubt.

Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read.

The University of Haifa team say people use both sides of their brain when they begin reading a language - but when learning Arabic this is wasting effort.

The detail of Arabic characters means students should use only the left side of their brain because that side is better at distinguishing detail.

The findings from the study of 40 people are reported in Neuropsychology.

When someone learns to read Arabic they have to work out which letters are which, and which ones go with which sounds.

It is the ability to tell letters apart that seems to work differently in Arabic - because telling the characters apart involves looking at very small details such as the placement of dots.

Professor Zohar Eviatar, who led the research team, said: "The particular characteristics of Arabic make it hard for the right hemisphere to be involved. When you are starting something new, there is a lot of [right hemisphere] involvement."

The researchers looked at 40 university students. Some of the students only spoke Hebrew, while some also spoke and read Arabic well.

In order to work out which side of the brain reads letters, the researchers flashed letters for a 10th of a second to one side of a screen or the other.

When the eyes see something for just a short time, and it is at one side of a screen, only one brain hemisphere is quick enough to process the image.

The team measured how fast and how accurate the students were when they tried to tell letters apart, first in Hebrew and then in Arabic.

All the students could read Hebrew well, and they all used both left and right hemispheres to tell Hebrew letters apart.

The same thing has previously been found with English letters.

Characters in English and Hebrew are easier to tell apart because there are clearer differences between them than there are in Arabic.

When they looked at the students' reading of Arabic letters it gave the team a clue about why children find the language difficult to learn to read.

The Hebrew-only speakers behaved like children just starting to read most languages - they tried to tell Arabic letters apart, managed to do it slowly but made a lot of mistakes, and used both hemispheres of their brains.

The good Arabic readers, however, only used their left hemispheres to tell Arabic letters apart.

The researchers were intrigued by this and investigated further. They wanted to know why the right hemisphere was not working when reading Arabic letters, so they set a right hemisphere challenge.

They showed the students pairs of extremely similar Arabic letters - with just "local" differences - and letters that are more different - with "global" differences.

When the Arabic readers saw similar letters with their right hemispheres, they answered randomly - they could not tell them apart at all.

"The right hemisphere is more sensitive to the global aspects of what it's looking at, while the left hemisphere is more sensitive to the local features," says Professor Eviatar.

The team think this may give them some clues about what readers may be doing wrong when they begin to try to read Arabic.
Reading hope

Both young children and adults call on both hemispheres to help them learn a new task.

And using both hemispheres is the right thing to do when reading English or Hebrew - so children's learning strategies would be fine if they were reading another language.

But previous research has found that the right hemisphere is not that good at distinguishing small details, so readers starting to learn Arabic have to learn to focus on small details, which is not natural to them, but could help them shift to their left hemispheres.

Now the researchers want to compare new and highly expert Arabic readers in the hope of finding out what their brains are doing when they look at letters.

Ultimately, they would like to work out how to teach Arabic reading better to children, including helping them to tell letters apart and how to remember which sound goes with which letter.