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Indian cricketers have excelled in refusing to believe that their time is up. The Indian Premier League (IPL), which is at the core of all the ills that plague Indian cricket, lulls the stars past their prime into believing they are just a hit away from their return to form. After all, the T20 format gives players the freedom to fail. But then for how long? It is painful to see the likes of Rohit Sharma, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin, and even Ravindra Jadeja struggling to find form. That they don't acknowledge their time is up, is hurting their fans as well as their hard-earned reputations. The icing on the 'cake' was Chennai Super Kings' (CSK) decision to go back to Dhoni when regular captain Ruturaj Gaikwad got injured. The immediate result has been disastrous, if we go by the whacking they received from Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at their homeground - Chepauk, on 11th of April 2025. CSK seems to have swallowed the poison pill, hoping it to be an antidot...

After coming a cropper against spinners who normally struggle to find a regular place in the New Zealand Test squad, the media-hyped Indian batting line-up flopped against pace barring a few exceptions in Australia. The abrupt retirement and return home mid-tour by Ravichandran Ashwin and Rohit Sharma getting dropped (or whatever you may like to call it) from the playing XI in the last Test, rounds up the story. To sum it up in two lines - you cannot entrust to a failed politician the reins of India's cricket team, and the star system has to give way to actually deserving players if Test cricket in India has to survive, or shall we be kinder - go forward. Not only was not Rohit firing, but also others like Kohli and Gill were struggling, when Rohit chose to 'stand down', why no opportunity was given to Sarfaraz or Easwaran? The batting returns of Rohit and Kohli are diminishing, more so in the last few months. They cannot play spin at home or pace abroad. That should be eno...

T he men's Indian cricket team has been used to winning Test matches at home on rank-turners inside three days. They have just been handed-over a reality check by the New Zealand cricket team. Two successive defeats in three days each on different pitches and weather conditions, saw the Indian cricket team succumb to both pace and spin. The top two - skipper Rohit and Virat batted like novices in three of the four innings, trying to let their egos come in between them and the not so celebrated bowlers. New Zealand have not really been a force in Asian conditions. Their two losses to a resurgent Sri Lanka prior to the India series did not suggest what was coming. The star-crossed media had already declared a 3-0 victory margin for India in the series. This could at best be 2-1 or worse 3-0 for New Zealand now, as things stand after the Pune disaster and the Bangalore fiasco. I have been advocating in my previous posts the primacy of domestic cricket for red-ball cricket to survive, ...

For quite some time, I have been arguing in favour of India's top cricketers playing domestic cricket so that the level of competition helps young players coming through the system to mature (refer my previous blog posts). Thanks to IPL and relentless tours after tours throughout the year, India's top cricketers don't go back to domestic cricket, unless they are coming out of injury or have been dropped. IPL has become such a monolith that the BCCI had to face insult as players like Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer chose to ignore its directives and skipped the Ranji Trophy. Of late there has been a trend wherein once players have established themselves in the Indian team, they do not go back to their domestic teams. This trend is of recent vintage, particularly post the star syndrome brought about by IPL. Ishan Kishan is a classic case. He wasn't in the top league except for the absurdly astronomical auction amount that propelled into the limelight. Thus he was able to ge...

The much-awaited, much-delayed debut of Sarfaraz Khan for the Indian Test team finally happened on 15th February 2024 at Rajkot in the third Test against England. For years, cricket aficionados have believed that Sarfaraz is the future of Indian Test cricket team. But a series of events, the most significant one a statement from a BCCI official who declared in June 2023 that Sarfaraz will never play for India, for reasons that seem to no longer exist, kept delaying the inevitable. Sarfaraz Khan emerged as a player with great potential in 2013 when he was first picked for the India under-19 (U-19) team. He debuted for Mumbai in 2014 and played IPL in 2015. In an era when one has to get noticed more in the IPL than other 'domestic' tournaments, Sarfaraz failed to pass the litmus test as he never had a knock of significance or a regular run with the three different franchisees he turned out for. Even though he was one of the three players retained by RCB in IPL-2017, he reportedly...

Sunil Gavaskar, in a post-mortem of the short two-Test series played by India in South Africa, advised the Indian cricket team to play a few first-class practice games on an away tour. By refusing to do so on numerous tours in the last decade or so, the Indian cricket team has invariably lost the first Test and then has to play catch-up.  I am reminded of India's Test tour to Australia in 1977-78, the first series that I followed as a 12-year old. The tour itinerary below gives a glimpse into the number of first-class games that India played before and in between the Tests. India in Australia, 1977/78 South Australia v Indians at Adelaide, 4-6 Nov 1977 Victoria v Indians at Melbourne, 11-14 Nov 1977 New South Wales v Indians at Sydney, 18-21 Nov 1977 Queensland v Indians at Brisbane, 25-27 Nov 1977 1st Test: Australia v India at Brisbane, 2-6 Dec 1977 Western Australia v Indians at Perth, 9-12 Dec 1977 2nd Test: Australia v India at Perth, 16-21 Dec 1977 Tasmania v Indians at Launc...

The Eden Gardens, one of India's most iconic cricket stadiums was always an aspirational venue. Ever since I have come to Kolkata last year, there were opportunities to visit the venue during the IPL or domestic first-class matches. IPL was a strict no-no, given the hot and humid weather in April-May, that too in a perennially humid Kolkata. How players survive in this weather is no mystery though given the big bucks involved. The ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2023 provided an excellent opportunity to watch at least one match at the venue. But some fraud deprived me of any ticket when the so-called official (ICC aka BCCI) portal opened in early September. None of the matches at the Eden Gardens weren't showing SOLD OUT within ten minutes of the opening of the ticket portal. What followed was a hue and cry, which became evident as the opening match of the World Cup was played in a virtually empty stadium. So the powers that they were forced to open the portal for tickets again...

Indian star batsmen hardly play domestic cricket. The last first-class domestic matches played by Virat Kohli (Ranji Trophy, 2-5 November 2012, Delhi vs UP; Irani Trophy, 1-5 October 2010, Rest of India vs Mumbai; Duleep Trophy, 26-29 January 2010) and Rohit Sharma (Duleep Trophy, 10-14 September 2016, India Blue vs India Red; Irani Trophy, 6-10 February 2013, Mumbai vs Rest of India; Ranji Trophy, 15-18 December 2012, Mumbai vs Saurashtra) explains the trouble the Indian Test team is in. They have floundered against debutants like Todd Murphy and Kuhnemann, who may not get to play again for Australia once they return home. Once the star players like Kohli and Rohit establish themselves in the India team they do not go back to domestic cricket. They only play IPL for their franchises, and unless someone like a Ravindra Jadeja wants to test his fitness after injury does he play domestic cricket, as he did in January 2023. The BCCI has a star system which ensures that the top stars do no...

 If there was a more inspiring as well as depressing story, it would belong to Sarfaraz Khan. He was the only player to represent India in two successive U-19 World Cups, scoring 7 half centuries. The India U-19 coach of that time Rahul Dravid mandating that one could play just one WC at U-19 level. After his Ranji debut for Mumbai he must have felt something that forced him to move to UP. He returned back after an unsuccessful season and had to sit out the cooling period of 1 year to be eligible for Mumbai again. Since then he has scored 900 plus runs in three successive domestic seasons. His team mates from the 2016 U-19 WC team have at various times have had the selectors' nod - Prithvi, Shubhman, Pant, Washington, to name a few. And after assuring him that his time would come when he was not picked for the Bangladesh tour, the selectors have picked a T20 specialist SKY and ignored Sarfaraz again. #Justice_for_Sarfaraz

Continuing from my previous blogpost Mindless Scheduling Hurting Indian Cricket, it would be appropriate to offer a way out of the deep crisis that Indian cricket is passing through, in spite of all the moolah and star power. The 3-0 win over New Zealand in the T20I series soon after the debacle India suffered in the ICC T20 World Cup should not be taken to pat ones back, because by now the mindless scheduling has taken a little toll on New Zealand for instance. Within a day of losing a keenly contested ICC T20 World Cup Finals on 14th November 2021, the Kiwis landed in Jaipur, and lost to India, without Kohli, Bumrah and Shami, in all the three T20 Internationals (T20Is). Players like Rohit, Rahul and Pant were forced to go through the grind irrespective of the fact that they shall be part of the Indian Test team that will swiftly switch gears from the shortest format (T20) to the longest (Tests). Both New Zealand and India will switch to a five-day Test series of two Test matches wi...

Only Jasprit Bumrah can afford to speak out his mind and escape unscathed when he explained during the ongoing ICC (International Cricket Council) T20 World Cup that India's poor performance was on account of fatigue. Outgoing head coach Ravi Shastri too admitted that the Indian cricketers didn't switch on in pressure situations, having been in a bio-secure bubble for six months. By getting knocked out of the marquee event, the Indian players might have earned at least a week's rest ahead of a nerve-wracking schedule that shall continue when they return home. What we shall see in the coming months is a lot of talk of resting or rotating players, but if past experience is to go by none of the top players will step aside. No sponsor would like to see the stars rested either in franchise cricket or international cricket. If India had played the ICC T20 World Cup Finals on 14th November 2021, they would have had a two-day break before the first of the three T20s against New Zea...

Everyone who has been to a movie, has often thought a different ending to the story, particularly if it has been a sad or tragic one. Or people have made up stories in their mind, taking off from where the movie story-line ends. Going back to movies that touched my heart, I remember Mili , the story of a cancer-stricken girl flying off to Switzerland in the last scene, with her newly-wed husband. I remember people talking about a sequel to the film in which she returns completely cured, though sequels weren't the in-thing in the 1970s in Bollywood. But then cancer was considered incurable and film-makers had spun many a stories around cancer that had tragic ends - Anand and Safar to name a few.  Anand too had an impact on me and I too was waiting for Babu Moshai (Amitabh Bachchan) to return in the last scene with the miraculous homeopathic medicine that would have cured Anand (Rajesh Khanna).  Another Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bachchan starrer, and it is a pity they acted in on...

 When the sporting world was looking to return as close to the normal as possible in mid-2020, England, West Indies and Pakistan resorted to playing Test cricket in England. The Indian cricket authorities were going back to the drawing board again and again to re-schedule the T20 tamasha that is central to their scheme of things. After two months of T20 cricket they landed in Australia for first limited-overs and then Test cricket. But when your top players face each other in T20 cricket alone, how can you expect the Test team to do well? As if the Indian Premier League (IPL) was not enough, the 2020-21 domestic season has only one contest - the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament. There is no word on Ranji Trophy. So when England arrive in India for a four-Test series in February 2021, India's Test specialists would have only played T20 cricket at home because auction of more players for new teams in IPL 2021 is the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI)'s sole goal.  ...

There is universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings irrespective of their social status...It is such good men and women who are the hope of the world.   These are words of Nelson Mandela in 'Conversations with Myself'.  The moot point is - does being humble and simple work in the real-world?  When we look around us, our leaders, be it in the corporate or political or even the social world are all self-advertising braggers. If they don't go over the top, we refuse to see them. That is largely because of the huge congestion in the social media space. Every one is out on some digital platform telling the world what they had for brunch or what they have created. Visibility is so easily available.  But are these leaders being humble and simple? Let us for once assume they are simple, but definitely not humble. Or is it the new normal? In the corporate world, leaders who are aut...

“One of us drops anchor/ While the other gets off to a flyer./ It’s not because one is more impetuous/ Or cautious than the other./ The assault, like the defence, is calculated./ We play the same percentages/ to different rhythms, following/ our own sequence/ of stressed and unstressed beats,/ each of us fashioning/ our own departure from the norm.After the crescendo, the rest,/ after the rest, the crescendo./ One of us foil for the other, as it should be./ Personality will out./ We perform in our styles/ Because that is our function./ We never get in each other’s way./ We perform who we are/ Because that is what the situation demands –/ But at a pinch we can swap roles,/ One coming out of the shadow of the other.” Ref: Street Music, collection of poems

When Yajuvendra Singh took seven catches in the Bangalore Test against the English in 1976-77, my friend Sajeev showed me still black and white pictures of the match and that drew me to cricket, which I have been romancing since then. After losing the first three Tests to 'magical' bowling by John Lever, India had fought back and won the fourth at Bangalore. By then the vaseline headband used by Lever to keep the bowl shining had been exposed by Indian captain Bishan Singh Bedi. The first series that I really followed, first day by day, and virtually ball by ball was India's tour Down Under in 1977-78. The Indian team began the tour by playing four-day as well as one-day matches against state teams over a period of four weeks before the First Test at Brisbane. The Kerry Packer World Series had, by then robbed top teams like England, West Indies, and Australia of its superstars. Australia fielded a near rookie team, except for Jeff Thomson and out of retirement 42-year-ol...

Everyone today, barring a few who might have seen wars or famines or riots in their lives, or even suffered on account of having been affected by these catastrophic experiences, is seeing a lot of things for the first time in their lives. Most of us have not been affected by the Emergency or the anti-Sikh or Gujarat riots directly or for that matter the economic crisis of 2008-09. The 1971 Bangladesh War to a six-year-old was a time when lights would be switched off in the evening with police loudspeakers ensuring total blackout. And in less than a month, our lives have changed. We are no longer doing what we would be on a normal working day or even on a Sunday. We are, at the same time, doing what we have never done for many years - clean the car and the house, pick up a book, watched movies on TV or series on Netflix or Amazon Prime, and so much more. Our conversations with friends and family are more intense and lengthy. Forwarding WhatsApp messages is a new service we have taken...

Mumbai has been the subject of so much malice. Ever since we can recall, a majority of the Hindi movies have been made in Mumbai, and on Mumbai. The underworld, the brothels, the dirty slums, all have been portrayed with romanticism, again and again, bringing more and more infamy to the maximum city. But going by the New India narrative, when Kota feels maligned by the makers of Mardaani 2 , which is a sequel to the same drama that led to  Padmavati being   renamed Padmavat, Mumbai should have felt so maligned by now, it could as well drown itself into the Arabian Sea. So then I am reminded of so may cities across India who would be crying wolf at being labeled negatively - Wasseypur, Mirzapur, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Gurgaon, the badlands of Bihar, UP and MP and of course Ramgarh. If we look at the non-Indian moviedom, there would be many candidates vying for the Hall of Shame - New York, Las Vegas, Sicily, to name a few. To those who have reasons to complain, however invali...

When Greta Thunberg accused the world leaders of having stolen her childhood, many people thought she was pointing fingers in Trumpesque style at Trump himself - "How dare you?" When I was younger than what is Greta's age today, in the 1970s and in school, the term global warming had started getting attention. We were told how the world would be hell in 50 years' time with glaciers melting and sea-levels rising. But there were comforting voices as well who brushed under the carpet the seriousness of the issue by putting up interesting convincing arguments. And so two generations - mine and the one before that - continued to plunder the world. Forests were uprooted. But weren't we planting 10 trees in place of one that we had cut? We were doing so by overlooking the reality that a tree that took thousands of years to stands on its feet was being replaced by saplings which may or may not survive a few years. After all we have been planting saplings every year a...