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 [...]

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 [...]

MS Dhoni’s decision to field a four-pronged seam attack in the Perth Test earlier this year took many by surprise. It was the first time in two decades that India went into a Test with an all-pace attack. As much as Dhoni’s radical decision was about the seamer-friendly conditions in Perth, it was equally about [...]

When Chris Gayle hit Rahul Sharma for five consecutive sixes in an IPL match in April, I found myself wondering not about Gayle’s brute strength or his ability to hit sixes at will but the spinner’s response to the onslaught. Would he slow it down, bowl a googly or try a big spinner? Sharma changed his lines and lengths, [...]

  Picking a team is undeniably a tricky job, yet, it is relatively straightforward too. I say ‘tricky’—because of the ethical and intellectual obligation that is inevitable. And straightforward—because majority of the players select themselves. The task of selection, at most times, is never about more than a couple of players. When Varun Aaron got [...]