SportScene

The Russians will be out for revenge in this one. The only blemish on the qualifying record of Guus Hiddink’s side is a 2-1 defeat to the Germans a year ago in Dortmund. That defeat would have smarted. In October 2008, Russian football was still on a high after the fantastic performance at the Euros. Players and fans alike could still clearly remember spanking the Netherlands in the quarter finals, and the incredible celebrations in the streets of Moscow. There was a real feeling that Russia could beat Germany on their own turf. This was heightened by the news that, while Russia were beating Wales, the Germans could only manage a draw in Finland. It wasn’t to be though - after going two down in the first half, Russia could only pull one back in the second through the mercurial Andrey Arshavin.

Arshavin will be called upon to play a big role in Saturday’s game. The pint-sized hit man was still playing in the Russian top flight last time around, and Hiddink will be hoping that the Arsenal man’s experience playing in the more competitive English Premier League will have added something to his game.

Germany will also be fired up for this match, which looks likely to be played in damp conditions on Luzhniki’s plastic pitch. They are unbeaten in qualifying; the only team to take any points off them has been Finland. In fact, had the Germans reached this amount of points in most of the other groups they would already be through. Russia are the last hurdle for Joachim Low’s side, and he will demand a performance from his players.

3-0 is how it ended at Luzhniki stadium. A typical workman-like performance from Gurban Berdiyew’s men, as they waited for their chances and struck with a ferocity that suggests they will be lifting the league title for a second successive year. Alejandro Dominguez was in particularly penetrating form for Rubin, stepping up to convert a penalty for the Kazan club’s second.

Whereas Rubin looked every bit champions, Spartak stand-in boss Valery Karpin must be a little disappointed with his side’s impotent performance. The Krasno-Bely tried to get themselves back into the match by streaming forward, but these frantic attacks looked more like acts of desperation rather than a real threat to the Rubin goal. Speaking of that Rubin goal, Sergey Ryzhikov was in imperious form between the posts. The stopper dealing with everything that Spartak threw at him, and doing it with a considered style.

It’s that kind of style that Rubin will need to show if they are to have any hope of being a surprise package in this year’s Champions League group stage. There are no easy games at this level, but in a group with Barcelona, Inter and Dinamo Kiev, Rubin are going to have to be at the top of their game if they are even to stand a chance of making it out of group F. In reality, Rubin should be looking at finishing 3rd and having a crack at the Europa League title this year.

Of course, Rubin aren’t the only Russian representatives in this year’s Champions League. CSKA have a decent draw in this year’s competition. Manchester United, Wolfsburg, and Besiktas will be making the trip to Moscow this season. Although the German and Turkish champions will be extremely robust opposition, I think Zicho might fancy his chances of second place behind United and sneaking into the knockout phase.

Just when you were thinking that I had made it through a blog without mentioning the cricket…

Congratulations to the England cricket team on winning The Ashes. Andrew Strauss’s men regained the historic urn thanks to a convincing win at The Oval. Congratulations as well to Andrew Flintoff, who signed off on an excellent test career at The Oval. Freddie needs extensive surgery on his knee, and the strains of the 5-day game have proved too much for the Herculean all-rounder. Here’s hoping that he comes back to the international fold in one-day cricket as soon as possible.

Rain in Manchester spared England what looked like a potential hammering from Australia in the first Twenty20 match at Old Trafford. After being put into bat, Michael Clarke’s Aussie side put on 145 from their overs. 55 from Cameron White the stand out score for Australia. Things took a turn for the worse for England and replacement captain Paul Collingwood, when Joe Denly’s first international Twenty20 innings was over first ball. Ravi Bopara’s woeful summer continued, as he was back in the pavilion after scoring just 1 off 3 balls. That’s when the weather intervened, rain forcing an end to play and the abandonment of the match. For Bopara though, this looks like another nail in the coffin of his England career. I say career in the loosest sense of it: Bopara was being tipped at the beginning of the summer as a new hope for England with the bat, a T20 expert who could bring some big scores to the test arena. This simply hasn’t been the case. I’m almost left hoping that Bopara doesn’t make England squads, not because I think he’s a bad player (his first class record is excellent), but because I don’t want to see him do any more - perhaps next time irreparable - damage to his reputation with the selectors. It’s certainly an inauspicious start to Test Cricket, but there are plenty of players who have come back from early disappointments to establish themselves as top cricketers.

In this modern world it is easy to get left behind by technology. Not me though, you can now get Twitter updates on all the latest sporting goings on from me at

http://twitter.com/Peter_G_Oliver

It may cause my girlfriend to look at me with a mixture of bemusement and pity; it may cause a lot of people in Russia to smile and nod when I start talking about it. It may even have caused the father of the bride to provide guests with a score update before delivering his speech at my friends Zoë and David’s wedding. Despite all that, cricket fans’ obsession with the final Ashes test at the Oval is entirely justified. Okay, maybe not entirely justified, but at least understandable.

This series certainly hasn’t been a repeat of the 2005 Ashes that was hyped in the papers on the Internet and by people like myself on TV. It was going to be a fairly big ask to expect the same level of constant excitement as that series four years ago. The weather hasn’t helped for one. Nor has the retirement of some of Australia’s legendary players of the past 10 years.

Langer, Hayden, McGrath, Gilchrist and above all Warne weren’t just top cricketers -- they also created an air of the unbeatable around them through their Terminator-esque ability to transcend normal human endeavor on a cricket field. No matter what an England team did against any other test nation, there was always someone who would pipe up with “Yeah, but could we do that against the Aussies?” The Ashes has always been the litmus test for English cricket. In 2005 it did good, in 2006/07 down under it was wholly woeful with Australia whitewashing England five nil. This series certainly never looked like it was going to be a whitewash or the type of titanic duel that we saw in 2005; however, it certainly has been entertaining in its own right.

That entertainment is summed up no better than the prelude to the final test. Never has one man’s knee drawn so many column inches as that of Andrew Flintoff -- Freddie, the quintessential North of England all rounder, the only true heir to that crown that once belonged to Sir Ian Botham, off-field antics included. His heroics in the win at Lord’s and subsequent absence through injury from the team that was squashed at Headingly has drawn some to say that England can’t win without him. If this test series is to be remembered it will be as Flintoff’s last. The Lancashire all rounder will retire from test cricket after the Oval, as his body says no more to the crushing demands of the five-day game.

With the series tied, it’s winner takes all in Freddie’s last hurrah as a test cricketer. I know I am supposed to provide a fair, balanced and contemporaneous report as a journalist, however this week SportScene is making no attempt to be balanced when it comes to the cricket. So I ask any of you readers with even the slightest of leanings toward the England Cricket team to join the “Technology Bites” blog and I in a prayer from the first book of Dollard:

Our Freddie who’s still a bit injured,
Come and save our game.
The Oval come,
We’ll need some runs,
You'll score a ton at seven.
Give us this day our Fiery Fred,
And forgive Bell his swishing misses
As we forgive Clarke his fifties against us.
Lead us not to Ashes defeat
And deliver us from Ponting.
For thine are the beers, the boundaries and wickets,
For ever and ever
Our Fred.