Bracing up for the big battle   Our semi-final clash against Haryana ended in xxx innings and two days—preposterous for a match of that stature. Well, the flip side to it was that we were left with a couple of choices to toy with—firstly, the option of taking the 6 hour ride back to Jaipur [...]

(This is Part 2 of the story of Rajasthan’s successful title defense | Read Part 1) Battle for Survival One look at the pitch made Jaydev Shah, Saurashtra’s captain, ask in jest if it was a cricket pitch or a billiard’s table. Yes, it was a bit too green and also a bit too moist for our liking [...]

Starting from Scratch As we sat in our dressing room on a cold November day of 2011, at the end of the match against Karnataka, the pressure of being the defending champions had already evaporated. We may have been the Ranji champions 365 days ago, had started as favorites this season too—but the opposition had [...]

Indian Test cricket is believed to have reached its lowest ebb. In little over a year, we’ve lost almost everything away from home and barely managed to win the home series’ too. We are no longer the team that was rated the best Test team on the planet. Ironically, the people who took the team [...]

In late 2010 when Australia visited India, Mitchel Johnson seemed to have got Rahul Dravid’s number. He would slant the ball across Dravid’s body forcing him to fall for it. Dravid would then nick it to the wicketkeeper or to the waiting slips cordon. This was, perhaps, the first time Dravid’s technique looked fallible. Never [...]

Virender Sehwag’s triumphs need no assertion, especially in Test match cricket—his two splendid triple centuries (I was at the other end during his first triple century against Pakistan in Multan) and quite a few double hundreds endorse his allegiance to cricket’s purist format. Amidst a plethora of such consummate innings, stand out two that define [...]

What could be the worst for a batsman—poor form, runs drying up, his potential being questioned and with that his place in the side too? Well, as frightening as that suggestion is to all of us—as cricketers, we realize its absolute inevitability. Of course, it gets awful when the team trails too in the series [...]

Images of India winning the toss on an overcast morning and electing to bat first on a dampish wicket summon. Batting was going to be hard work but the Indian team knew that it was their best way of winning the Test match and getting back into the series—batting was our strength and the bowlers [...]