It’s hard to remain a mystery today, what with all the footage available for replays in slow-motion and every player painstakingly scrutinised. The action has shifted from the 22 yards to the editing table. Yet Sunil Narine continues to beat technology and stay ahead of most analyses. Even though he has been scanned time and again, he [...]

Following the incredible Chris Gayle spectacle in Bangalore earlier this week, cricketers around the world must be wondering exactly what this man did to produce such a performance – besides having pancakes, an omelette and hot chocolate for breakfast, which will now probably be declared the staple diet for T20 batsmen everywhere. Gayle made the Pune Warriors bowlers look schoolboyish, [...]

The decision by the Tamil Nadu state government to prohibit thirteen Sri Lankan players, playing in the IPL, from entering the state, isn’t just shocking but also inexplicable. While the atrocities on Tamils in Sri Lanka are well documented and the anger is justified too, it doesn’t take much to scratch the veneer and figure [...]

A batsman on his debut innings, displaying an unabashed audacity to play in a manner that challenges the very norms of Test cricket, that’s rare. Shikhar Dhawan has nicely set himself as a non-conformist, rewriting the rules in his very first Test outing. His approach in the very first International innings has left quite a few [...]

The drastic decision to suspend four crucial players—Shane Watson, James Pattinson, Mitchell Johnson, and Usman Khwaja from the Australian Test side has inevitably left the cricketing world at odds. Even as Cricket Australia firmly defends its disciplinary action, many OZ greats consider it to be both lacking correspondence and way too severe. Should failing to [...]

Perform or Perish, the message for Sehwag had been up front and unambiguous for a long time, more so before the start of the ongoing Test series. Unfortunately, the latter is what the fate has decided for him, at least for now. He must go, the selectors have unequivocally ordered, and justifiably so, for his [...]

In 2008 during the first edition of the IPL, Cheteshwar Pujara was sent back home in the middle of the season without even being given an opportunity. While his style of play was more suited for the longer format of the game (he was scoring tons of runs in Ranji even then), the fact that [...]

Much like Captain Cook’s marathon innings in the first Test at Motera, which outlined and steered the course of the entire Test series for England, Captain Dhoni’s scintillating double hundred against the Australians in the first Test at Chennai is also anticipated to have the same impact on this series. After 2 ½ days of [...]

When at 22, Graeme Smith was handed the charge to lead SA cricket, post the Cronje storm and Pollock’s matter-of-fact leadership, not many would’ve envisaged this unorthodox, up-front, untested debutant of a captain to bring back to their cricket, its lost loyalty and pilot the team to 50 Test wins. That is an epic stat, Smith being the first in the [...]

It’s not often that you get an opportunity to see two similar kinds of spinners operating in tandem, for rarely a team fields two leg-spinners or two off-spinners in the playing XI. India did that with Harbhajan and Ashwin in the first Test at Chennai, both bowling parallel on a turning pitch against a batting [...]