Gymnastics Gold for Gunthorpe's Jake at the Commonwealth Games and great starts in the wheelchair basketball and bowls by local men

The 20 year-old helped England claim an unprecedented third straight Gold in the artistic team event. It was a dominant display by the team who finished top in all six disciplines, the floor, pommel, rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bars.

Scoring 254.500, the team of Joe Fraser, James Hall, Giarnni Regini-Moran, Jake Jarman and Courtney Tulloch were way ahead of second placed Canada on 241.200 and Cyprus with bronze on 239.650.

Attention now switches to the individual apparatus competitions with Jarman thought to hold good chances of a medal in the vault and floor. He won the British title in both disciplines earlier this year.

Elsewhere Peterborough-man Lee Manning and his England 3-player wheelchair basketball team opened their campaign with a 17-2 rout of South Africa.

The teams made history as the first to take part in the sport at a Commonwealth Games.

Manning said: “Lovely to get a win under our belt! The crowd is special here. I haven’t had the opportunity to play in front of a home crowd like this before – it really is overwhelming. Like I said out on court, thank you to everyone that has come to support.”

England play New Zealand on Saturday (5.10pm).

Yaxley man Nick Brett’s bowls campaign started well with two wins in the men’s triples. Brett hailed his team’s ability to produce when the going gets tough as he made a perfect start on his Commonwealth Games debut.

Alongside Devon duo Louis Ridout and Jamie Chestney, Brett is in pole position to qualify from the group stage thanks to a 13-12 win over Malaysia and a 22-14 win over South Africa.

And the 48-year-old was full of praise for how his counterparts pulled out the big shots when it mattered most.

“We already knew before the tournament started, we were going to have to grind some games out,” said Brett. “Not all of them were going to be won by loads of shots. We’re fully prepared to dig in, and we had to.”

The trio started the morning with a tightly fought contest against Malaysia, with neither side able to pull clear of the other as the sun beat down in Leamington Spa. England clinched victory by just a point in the end, and Brett was relieved to have come through a difficult opening encounter.

The trio then backed up their win with a comeback victory against South Africa.

The South Africans had raced into a 12-7 lead with just seven ends to go before a brilliant twelfth end saw England wipe out the deficit and go on to seal a comfortable victory.