(Image Credit: Getty Images) A dismissal that had the noses of some of the members of the Marylebone Cricket Club (“MCC”) out of joint, yet another that set off an urgent deliberation on the need to revamp the antediluvian laws of the game, an extraordinary 504 short ball barrage, and two contrasting hundreds, each inured … Continue reading Upending Shibboleths at Lord’s – When conventions flew out the window

(Image Credit: http://www.mykhel.com) At 11.00 P.M on a pleasant Chinese New Year night, the skyline of Kuala Lumpur erupted into a dazzling kaleidoscope of colours. Fireworks egregiously streaked up towards the heavens before exploding into million points of blinding light and reflecting against my windows. At the exact moment, 2,406 miles away, at the Narendra … Continue reading The Shubman Show

It’s not often that a single individual succeeds in donning both the mantle of an icon and the garb of an iconoclast, especially in the world of sport where sportsmen are forced by a contrivance of compulsion and inevitability to weave their magic within sequestered parameters. But Shane Keith Warne was beyond capture. Rules for … Continue reading Shane Keith Warne – Cricket’s Last Icon & Iconoclast

(Image Credit: Times Of India) When Jasprit Bumrah walked out to join Mohammed Shami on the last morning of the second Test Match between India and England at Lords, the visitors were undoubtedly on the mat. Joe Root’s men had one leg firmly planted on the neck of their opponents. It was just a question … Continue reading Lords – A Plot Gone Awry

(Picture Credit: espncricinfo) Jimmy Anderson is the ‘cockroach’ of swing and seam bowling. Emblematic of an indefatigable spirit, the man just refuses to be cowed down or dominated. On the unforgiving tracks of Sri Lanka and India, Anderson’s figures in his last four Tests read 88.5-41-148-13. And the man is all of 39 years old. … Continue reading The Irreverence of Rishabh Pant

(Image Credit: CricTracker.com) Cricketing tracks that play truant in terms of reneging on their responsibility to last the routine duration of a game are commonly referred to as minefields, dustbowls etc. When England spinner Jack Leach, landed a hard new ball that was just 9.1 overs old (or young), on a good length at the … Continue reading Death by Aesthetics: The Rohit Sharma Way

(Image Credit: BCCI TV) Inglorious epitaphs were penned when India folded up in spectacular fashion for a paltry 36 in Adelaide. Exactly a month following this debacle, epigrammatic paeans are being scripted, some  by the same scathing pens, as India has incredibly managed to not just come back from the dead, but also inflict upon … Continue reading The Philosophy of Interludes

Former England captain, the late Trevor Bailey, once predicted that the ninth Nawab of Pataudi would turn out to be as prodigious and incandescent as Sir Garfield Sobers. As a school boy at Winchester, this talented son of an illustrious father (Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi, along with Ranjitsinhji and Duleepsinhji were the only cricketers to … Continue reading Pataudi: nawab of cricket – edited by Suresh Menon

From a playing eleven that had already lost so much in terms of talent even before taking the field, could there be anything substantial left to be extracted? It was with this quandary that a depleted Indian squad - more a motley crew than a well lubricated fighting machine - gamely lined up alongside their … Continue reading Sydney 2021