What are the English other than their excruciatingly worn class, kitted out with a code of manners revocable at an instant? A streak of traditional Englishness, as A. A. Gill wrote, stresses bullying. It made them great in the hope of making others small. A towering creature like Charles James Fox may well have added his worth to the abolition[Read More…]
Several years ago, the Australian great, Ian Chappell, warned that the presence of too many political figures in the BCCI impedes its professional functioning. Politicians don’t necessarily make good sports administrators. Cricket administrators must earn their place in the system by virtue of good cricketing experience and understanding of the intricacies of the game and not for status and power.[Read More…]
Duncan Stone’s new book Different Class: The Untold Story of English Cricket has important lessons for Indian cricket and sports. It does not merely challenge the orthodoxy of English cricket, it demonstrates how the values and belief systems at its heart were developed in order to divide, rather than unite, the English at every level of the game. It was[Read More…]
Knowing that no right minded Indian thinks the rate of inflation, the price of potatoes, cooking oil, petrol, diesel, rice, flour, eggs, indeed, any commodity you can name, the indices of joblessness, the monopolization of national wealth, the degradation of Institutions, the collapse of parliament, the weakening of democracy, the preponderance of hate crimes and vendetta vigilantism, the studied relegation[Read More…]
He is not from the troubled, picturesque, paradise Valley. He is from Jammu. And soon, sooner than India or the world can imagine, Umran Malik, 22, the newest fast-bowling sensation, will play for India in the world stage. According to another opening batting legend, who has faced the best of fast bowlers during his hey-days, on fast-tracks, in foreign lands,[Read More…]
‘Cheering for any team is not illegal’: Justice Deepak Gupta. But Sedition cases booked against three students in UP simply for hailing the winning team Virat Kohli and Mohammed Rizwan, Captains of Indian and Pakistan cricket teams share a hug at the end of the T20 World Cup game in Dubai on October 24, 2021, while Babar Azam exults at[Read More…]
Cricket writer and former cricket correspondent of ‘The Times’ John Woodcock left us a few days ago, just on the verge of turning 95 in August. It is hard to describe the magnitude of affection cricketers, writers and enthusiasts of the game expressed for him. The game truly lost an ornament. In his schooldays he revealed adept skill in games[Read More…]
Today the cricket world celebrates the 85th birthday of arguably the greatest cricketer ever, Sir Garfield Aubrun Sobers. His arrival on the cricket field was the equivalent of a prophet arriving, as though God had sent him to play cricket. None took all-round cricketing genius to such superlative heights. Sobers simply transcended or explored realms noone ever touched in the[Read More…]
Today the cricket world celebrates the 40th anniversary of arguably the best ever spell by a fast bowler in the 4th innings of a test match. Late Bob Willis took spirit of resilience or combative spirit, to regions rarely traversed in sport. In the 4th test at Leeds versus Australia. Willis’s spell of 8-43 in the 2nd innings at Leeds[Read More…]
Today we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the greatest test match ever in the history of Cricket, which had one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of sport. The 3rd test at Leeds from July 17-22 in 1981, between England and Australia was the equivalent of a Hollywood classic or epic novel. There could be rarely instances in the[Read More…]
Tragically former test cricketer Yashpal Sharma expired on Tuesday morning, suffering from a cardiac arrest. The cricket world mourns the death of this great servant to Indian cricket. He emboldened the spirit of the game at it’s utmost depth, with great reserves of courage and concentration. He may not have been the most talented, but was an epitome of determination,[Read More…]
Earlier this year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the entry of Greg Chappell into the arena of International cricket which was against England at Perth in February in 1971. Ironically he scored a century in his debut after coming in with his side in a precarious position of 107 for the loss of five wickets. From the very word[Read More…]
Without doubt Dilip Vengsarkar is one of the finest batsmen ever to have graced a cricket field. This week we commemorate the feat of Dilip Vengsarkar becoming the 1st overseas batsman ever to score three consecutive centuries in test matches at Lords. It is a landmark that would inscribe a permanent place in the museum of cricket. We also coincidentally[Read More…]
Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Imran stepping his first foot into the arena of test cricket, at Edgbaston cricket ground in Birmingham.It was reminiscent of Amitabh Bacchan flashing on the Hindi film screen for the first time, where he hardly even looked a shadow of his later self. It would have been very hard for anyone to gauge[Read More…]
In June 1971, exactly 50 years ago at Edgbaston cricket ground at Birmingham in England, the bespectacled Zaheer Abbas gave the first flash of his illustrious cricketing career .His monumental 274 was amongst cricket’s classics taking aestheticism to regions of the sublime. For nine hours, ten minutes spectators were virtually put into a trance witnessing the glorious strokes all around[Read More…]
In January earlier this year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the debut of the legendary Dennis Lillee in 1971, paying against England at home.. In my time no cricketer took determination or never say die spirit to such a crescendo as fast bowler Dennis Lillee.Nor was anyone as much an epitome of perfection in the art of fast bowling[Read More…]
Javed Miandad exuded none of the gentlemanly spirit so much part of the game on the cricket field or gave the game it’s due respect in terms of grace or sportsmanship .He stood amongst cricket’s most controversial and outspoken characters. However few batsmen or cricketers took combative spirit or defiance to such a magnitude, to ressurect a team from the[Read More…]
In my lifetime I saw no Indian middle order batsman who was as much an embodiment of determination, will power or who displayed more grit in the depths of despair and above all selflessness. His name was Mohinder Bharadwaj Amarnath or ‘Jimmy’ Amarnath..No batsman illustrated more about cricket being in the mind. It was not about elegance or statistical records[Read More…]
On May 1st we celebrate the 70th birthday of one of the greatest batsman of all time. It is also thirty years since this cricketing colossus retired from the game with a fitting finale. On his day Gordon Greenidge took batting domination to magnitude rarely surpassed and looked the ultimate epitome of perfection. Possibly no batsman in his day hit[Read More…]
No batsman who played for India took elegance or grace to such divine proportions as Mohammad Azharuddin.He was the perfect manifestation of poetry in motion in Cricket.Azhar was not as technically sound as Rahul Dravid or Sachin Tendulkar ,as calculating as Virat Kohli or as destructive as Virendra Sehwag but for sheer artistry he surpassed them all. Few artists took[Read More…]
Gooch was arguably the best ever opening batsman against express pace bowling I have rarely seen a batsman as engrossed out in the middle as Former English opening batsman Graham Gooch in full flow, who could pierce the impenetrable gaps. He may have lacked the touch of a David Gower or solidity of Boycott but for sheer conviction no English[Read More…]
No sport arguably took grace and artistry to depths of regions the game of cricket did. Bowling and batting or even fielding at its best was reminiscent of poetry or a musical composition. Fast bowling was not all about agression and speed but about poetic beauty. Batting was not all bout power and technical skill but about touch art and[Read More…]
25 years ago on March 17th Sri Lanka captured the coveted cricket world cup title for the first time .It exuded aura of invincibility as few teams ever did like a great emperor annexing territory after territory. A red letter day was written in cricket with an underdog triumphing for the 2nd time. We must salute them for binding or[Read More…]
Today on March 6th we commemorate a landmark day in the history of India being the 50th anniversary of legendary Sunil Gavaskar making his debut in test cricket. For the first time ever the immortal Sunil Gavaskar stepped on a cricket pitch to set sail for one of the most illustrious careers ever of any sportsman. What set him apart[Read More…]
Although Cricket has embraced modernity with open arms, the game still couldn’t evade its colonial history. Not many nations who hadn’t been former British colonies play this game. India, a dominant, over-resourced powerhouse of the game, has been a subject of the British Empire for over two centuries. As a result, cricket, just like police or bureaucracy or any other[Read More…]
Today on February 7thH we commemorate the 40th anniversary of Gundappa Vishwanath’s epic 114 at Melbourne in 1981. This knock virtually took India out of the doldrums or despair to effect one of cricket’s great turnarounds to win a test and draw a rubber on Australian soil for the first time. The memories of his strokes on this day are[Read More…]
It was never meant to be like this. After the Indian cricketing team met misery and disaster in the first test match at Adelaide, registering a paltry 36 in its second innings, little hope was had for the touring side. Australia threatened rout and massacre. The Border-Gavaskar trophy seemed within the home side’s grasp. And the home side had every[Read More…]
With the advent of the thirteenth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the country, whose love for the game of cricket knows no bounds, found its much-seeked, collective escape for more than a month and a half. The notion of sport providing a hiatus from the hassles of our everyday life is certainly true, and for many sports aficionados,[Read More…]
Hon’ble Supreme Court (Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Judge Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla) has accepted major recommendations of R M Lodha Panel’s report on BCCI, thus lays the major edifice of reformation and cleaning up of the richest cricket board BCCI. The truth is that in the modern Indian history no institution has functioned uncontrolled, above the basic democratic[Read More…]
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My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
