11 Olympic golds won by Michael Phelps, the most ever

I 'm not unbeatable. Everyone is beatable." Trust Michael Phelps to say that. He is wrong. Because he is unbeatable. Everyone is beatable. On current form.

Phelps made the statement after he won his 10th and 11th gold medals, breaking the record for the highest number of gold medals won in Olympic history by an athlete.

The day belonged to him. The champion from Baltimore broke two records on Wednesday, including his own world record in the 200m butterfly.

This, despite water in his goggles, which meant he was swimming blind. He couldn't see the floor markers and after 150 metres, could not even see the wall.

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World exclusive - T20 in Olympics? Let’s aim for 2020

120,000 devoted fans at the ground and 3.9 billion worldwide television viewers nervously await the one remaining ball in the gold medal match between India and Pakistan. India has scored a respectable 218 in its 20-overs and Pakistan requires four to win and to become Olympic champion. Spin-wizard Piyush Chawla takes a deep breath and prepares to bowl the ball that stands between him and Olympic gold immortality.

Chawla sends down a perfectly flighted leg-break that whirs as it pitches just outside the line of leg stump. Nasir Jamshed, Pakistan’s champion middle-order batsman is deceived by the flight and plays around the ball while trying to work the delivery forcefully down to deepsquare. The spinning cherry spits the middle and the leg stumps, the bails fly and India is the Olympic champion.

This may seem like a pipe dream but it is a potential reality. It doesn’t matter where the 2020 Olympic Games are held but many of us who’ve experienced international Twenty20 cricket and the IPL are convinced that cricket should bid to become an Olympic sport in time for the 2020 Olympic Games, wherever they’re held.

Cricket was part of the 1900 Olympics, when Great Britain beat France.

But with Twenty20 cricket here to stay, now is the time for the 10 full member-nations of the ICC to plan for the development of the sport over the next 100 years. Over the next century, the challenge for all of us who love the game is to spread the word of cricket to parts of the globe that have never heard of it and currently don’t play our sport. We have a responsibility to grow our game in new territories and amongst the women of the world. I believe the Olympic Games is the vehicle the sport should use to aggressively sell the message of our sport to all 202 competing Olympic nations, so our sport is strong and robust in countries where it is currently played and exciting and ground-breaking in countries who haven’t yet caught the ‘cricket-bug’.

The IPL has been such a success and has changed cricket forever. I saw the revolution first-hand during my time in Hyderabad.

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