Cricket in General

It was a tale of a few hits and a lots of misses for the Indian team in the 1st Test at Headingley. If you had read my previous blog, most of my predictions and expectations have come true and unfortunately much of it wasn't favouring India. I expected Jaiswal, Rahul, Gill, Pant and Jadeja to do the bulk of the scoring but sadly they were literally the only ones scoring. In the 1st inning, only these 5 got into double digits. Out of the 835 runs scored by India in this match across innings, if you remove their scores, then the rest 6 have scored 59 runs. Just to stress, 6 batsman×2 innings=12 innings and just 59 runs. Which is less than 5 runs per batting instance. This is shameful to say the least. We saw two massive collapses and 4 players scoring centuries. Such lop sided batting performance can rarely give you a victory. And to aggravate the problems even further, India's fielding was shabby and sloppy. A total of eight catches were dropped along with all the misfields. Eig...

The past few months had been captured by IPL followed by a string of mishaps in India as well as across the globe. Even the IPL had to pause owing to a War like situation between India and Pakistan. But a pause is the most that a sport like Cricket can afford. It paused, but in a weeks time it was up and running. So much that 10 days ago there were close to 12-14 different teams in England simultaneously to play cricket all at once! We had an excellent contest between bat and ball a week ago in the World Test Championship Final where South Africa emerged victorious. It was a final but it also served as a warm-up to the Test Cricket season which lies ahead of us. And now it's almost time for the 1st Test between England and India to begin. Maybe this is a bit late for a preview but nonetheless I have some views about this series which I would like to share with you all. Indian Test team is going through a transition and two big names have hung up their boots from the longest format....

I had ended my last blog on the note that there are 2 pairs of legends whom I hadn’t touched and both these pairs deserved a separate blog. So here we are with 1 st of those blogs on the Batting legend pair. The past few months have been poor for Rohit Sharma as well as Virat Kohli in the longer format. Both had retired from T20Is after lifting the T20 World Cup in June 2024. With focus shifting to Tests and the World Test Championship, India should have had an easy entry into the final with 2 home series and one away series pending. But as fate would have it, in a dramatic turn of events, India was whitewashed at home by New Zealand. And with that India’s hopes of reaching the final were also quashed. From there on India needed something more than extra ordinary in Australia but with poor batting and bowling after the 1 st test, except Bumrah of-course, it was never going to happen. India’s batting failures as a group have been the primary cause for the losses at home and away as ...

  After the successive series losses against NZ at home and in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, I feel it is time to introspect into the constant failures of the Indian batting line up. It is not like one or two players have faltered but everyone has been guilty of complacency and an almost careless attitude. If we look at the ongoing WTC cycle, apart from the away series in WI in 2023 and the home series against England in 2024, the batting has been very poor. Series against SA and Bangladesh are not great to look at since they were low scoring encounters due to the pitch and the conditions. In the last 2 series though, out of the 15 completed innings, India has crossed the 200-run mark on only 6 occasions. Of which 300 was crossed thrice. The only exception has been Yashasvi Jaiswal. He was phenomenal in 2024 at home as well as away. Home performances might be slightly better than the away ones but those are equally important since everyone around him was finding it very difficult t...

With the auction done and dusted, I feel the teams are now finalized. Even though the transfer window is open, I see it highly unlikely that any transfer will take place. Let alone any major transfer. Because all the teams had the fair chance to fill in the gaps at the auction. So, it’s safe to say that the teams are locked. Now coming to the most talked about thing around cricket for the past month. In the span of a month’s time Hardik Pandya was traded to Mumbai Indians and also made Captain thereby ending Rohit Sharma’s 10-year stint at the helm of arguably one of the most successful sporting franchises with him being touted as one of the most successful captains. This claim is backed by numbers as well since 5 trophies in 10 years is no ordinary achievement. People were initially unhappy with the trade itself calling Pandya disloyal. And ever since the announcement of change in Captaincy, there has been a huge backlash coming from the fans. Especially fans of Rohit Sharma. Whil...

With less than 3 months remaining for the World Cup, you would assume that the teams would be getting their best players on the field to play whatever games remain before the 1 st match begins on 5 th Oct. But as we all witnessed, Indian team was busy trying and experimenting players and combinations. I haven’t seen a team waste a series as well as India did in the recently concluded ODI series against West Indies. It is beyond my understanding as to how and why the captain and the management are not sure about the 15 or let’s say 18 players that are more than likely to be playing the World Cup. I agree that injuries have plagued the plans of the national side with players like Bumrah, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul not being available for selection for a pretty long time now. Especially since these players are vital cogs in the whole combination. They have prepared that way since the conclusion of the previous World Cup 4 years ago. The talk around the No 4 problem has been around since...