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When two Indian legends sparred in England

Sports is tough. Sports is competitive. And sometimes, you're not only competing with the opposition. While they did somewhat make up in the ensuing years, and never lost mutual respect for each other as cricketers, the relationship between Sunil Gavaskar and Bishan Singh Bedi remained, for the longest time, what can be best described as 'frosty'. There are theories abound for what led to two of India's greatest cricketers not seeing eye to eye for decades, especially from a point in the

"Let him have the toss. It's the only f***ing thing he will win in this Test."

That's how the 1979 Lord's Test began, with Mike Brearley letting Indian Captain Venkatraghavan have the toss. After the toss happened, both the captains claimed that they had won it. And while both wanted different things, (Venkat wanting to bat and Brearley wanting to field) they still remained adamant that the other hadn't won the toss. Brearley's confidence, of course, came from having defeated the visitors by an innings in the first Test in Birmingham. Moreover, when

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The cricketer from Nagaland who John Buchanan called a 'Champion'

Hokaito Zhimomi is not a name many would associate with the IPL. He never even played an IPL game. But it's fair to say that he made enough of an impression on a certain John Buchanan that he reserved a chapter for him - The boy from Nagaland - in his book.

Hailing from Nagaland, where cricket doesn't quite top popularity charts, Zhimomi learned playing the game on football turfs. With no academy or coach to teach him cricket, he developed his skills by playing in whatever

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Warne to Dravid - Just me and you here, Rahul. Let’s see what you’ve got.

In January 2000, India were whitewashed 3-0 by Australia. Rahul Dravid, who everyone had high hopes from based on his performance in England in the World Cup, endured a horrid series, averaging 15 14 months later, in March 2001, India defeated Australia 2-1 at home, where Dravid contributed 338 runs at an average of 56. Right in the middle of this timeline lies a forgotten First Class fixture, held neither in Australia or India, but in England. A Kent vs Hampshire match

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"I can’t help thinking that a team that is so quick to use such negativity when they are leading will eventually lose their way; you can’t survive for long in this world unless you truly believe in yourself."

Ricky Ponting on Dhoni's Indian Test side in 2009 Did Ricky Ponting predict MSD's future as a Test Captain after just one match?

There is little doubt that in white ball cricket, MS Dhoni stands head and shoulders above everyone else as a captain. The story in red ball cricket, though, was quite different.

When Ashwin first met the king of Carrom Ball

Since Ashwin brought out the carrom to dismiss GP today, I thought it'd be a good time to recount how he ended up learning how to bowl one and a chance meeting with a boy who'd go on to wreck India's batting.
In his book, Ashwin notes the influence of street cricket on his game and it was while playing one of the tennis ball tournaments that he came up against a bowler named SK. An off-spinner like him, SK caught his attention for being able to get the ball to turn in weird directions

It's a moment that no Indian cricket fan from the 2000s would ever forget. A lanky young pacer claiming Ponting's wicket after having him in all sorts of trouble to pave the way for a historic Indian win in Perth.

But what did this duel mean to Ponting? The answer is surprising. But understanding the context would help here. The previous Test in Sydney had turned out to be an ugly one. The Harbhajan-Symonds incident, the umpiring errors and some of Ponting's own actions had taken all the limelight away from the cricket that Test had produced.

When Sachin played Gabbar in Sholay! 🧵

It's funny and interesting how different coaches have different strategies to bring a group together. In 2006, Greg Chappell made a lot of headlines when he took the Indian team to Commando training ahead of the tri-series in Malaysia. What followed in the next few months is not going to be easily forgotten by Indian fans. Champions Trophy debacle was followed by embarrassing defeats in South Africa and then came the final nail in the coffin - the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean. The team was in tatters.

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Since a lot of people are having a chuckle at NY Times saying India won 119-113, here is a little story about 27th June 1991, when the result of two cricket matches read

Hertfordshire 2 - 1 Derbyshire
Surrey 3 - 2 Oxfordshire

Oh and it also involved a Pakistani legend! The NatWest trophy was the white ball domestic tournament in England and as it happens so often with England, in 1991, it got off to a rainy start. Derbyshire were scheduled to play a Minor Counties side Hertfordshire but both the teams were made to wait by the weather gods.

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What does success actually mean?

This was a question I was left wondering about after I read a small piece of conversation between Alastair Cook and Yuvraj Singh in Cook's book recently. Yeah, not two names that are found in the same sentence too often. But hear me out Cook and Yuvi played against each other a fair bit in the late 2000s and early 2010s and so there was a sense of familiarity when the two of them met in 2015 to play an MCC T20 tournament in Dubai. Cook had just gone past the 10,000 run milestone in his Test career. A major feat.

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On how the IPL bridged distances

In the 2011 World Cup, Faf Du Plessis had made quite a late entry to South Africa's squad. He had made his ODI debut about a month before the tournament began and a half-century on debut saw him earning a place in the World Cup squad. The World Cup in India proved to be a different challenge altogether for the 26-year-old. He didn't get any big scores barring a half-century against Bangladesh but hung on to his place in the side which was to play the Quarter Final clash against New Zealand. At the presser

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So, how did Sachin Tendulkar deal with criticism? We get a peep into it from a rather unlikely source. Justin Langer.

The year was 2003 and while Sachin was at his imperious best in ODIs that year, he had endured the worst year in Tests, averaging only 17. He was going through an extremely lean patch where he had only 2 fifties to show from 13 innings and those fifties were scores of just 51 and 55. When the team reached Down Under for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in late 2003, Sachin's fortunes only got worse thanks to multiple

The Walsh-Lara Captaincy Saga

The MI-GT match clearly showed what many predicted, that the Rohit-Hardik captaincy issue is a big one for the fans and they will let their feelings known. Now, let me take you back to almost three decades ago when something similar happened in West Indies cricket.

For the uninitiated, West Indies doesn't exist as a country but is a collection of islands who come together to form the West Indies team. And these islands have a history of rivalry, which often translates into sporting rivalry as well.

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The wild story of England's 2013 Ashes Boot Camp

Ben Stokes and his team got a lot of flak in the build up to the ongoing India-England series for deciding to go to UAE instead of playing practice matches in India. A lot of people linked it to the team's liking for golf, a sport many in the team enjoy playing to relax. With the series still at 1-1, it's only fair to reserve judgment on Stokes and team's methods at this point, but what strikes me is how contrasting it is to what the team was put through more than a decade ago ahead of

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Border, Langer, Clarke and an advice for life

Quite early in his cricketing career, Justin Langer went up to Allan Border and asked him how can he get a shoe sponsorship, so that he could get his hands on his favorites shoes without having to pay for them. The guy Langer was talking to was the highest run scorer in Test cricket at that time. Goes without saying, he knew a thing or two about the game and its many attractions. 'Grumpy', as Border was called, looked straight into Langer's eyes and said to him with a serious face,

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So, on the eve of #IndvEng, it's only fair I write about an incident that tells you how competitive this rivalry has been, especially in this century. This incidnet happened in the first Test of England's tour to India in 2001. A bit of context before I tell the story. The tour was England's first to India in eight years and second in 17 years. They had been embarrassed on the 1993 tour with a 3-0 whitewash. But their chances of staging a comeback in 2001 were thwarted by something that had happened off the cricket field and in a place far away

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It's been some time since I told the story of a picture and this one seems perfect for telling a story as there seems to be a lot to unpack here. One batter seems to be celebrating as if the match has been won while the other's body language suggests nothing of that sort. Then there are fielders who seem bewildered and are appealing for something that can possibly change the outcome of the match. But what if I tell you that the batting team hasn't won the match? And this result, in fact, would result in them losing the series? And the batter

This is Dean Waugh, the third Waugh brother to play First Class cricket. Not sure how many of you have watched any footage of him batting before. So, here it is.

Meanwhile, the tournament being played here is
the Super 8s, a short format innovation tried out in Australia in the mid 90s. Rules were quite unique. Only 8 players per side. Matches were of 14 overs. Every member of the team apart from the wicketkeeper had to bowl. Instead of sixes, there were 8s. That's what the signal is for in the above video. Batters were to retire after reaching 50 but could come

There was something comforting about seeing Umpire David Shepherd go about his business on the cricket field if you were watching the game in the 90s and early 2000s. With his benevolent father-like aura, he not only seemed to be always in control of the proceedings, but his gentle smile seemed to have enough to defuse any tension simmering on the cricket field. And, of course, there was the famous little hop when the score reached 111 that made everyone at the ground smile.

But not too many were smiling on 4th June 2001. Definitely not Shepherd.

The Waugh-Dravid friendship

Rahul Dravid was just a 12-year old boy when Steve Waugh was walking out to bat in his first ever Test for Australia against India. In the mid 90s when Dravid was amassing huge scores for Karnataka and trying to break into the Indian side, Waugh was scripting a story of his own.

After starting as a flashy batter with an array of strokes, which saw him achieve great success in his early years, Waugh had suddenly hit a trough in his career. In 1989, he had averaged 86 in Test cricket. In the next 11 tests played over 3 years

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You know where the photo is from and maybe you also know what this post is about. But it's a little more than that, trust me.

This is a photo of Brad Haddin from the 2015 World Cup Final against New Zealand. Although Australia won the match comprehensively, a lot of Haddin's actions on the day left a bitter taste in the mouth. Throughout New Zealand's innings, he was in the ears of the Kiwi batters, particularly Grant Elliot, who had played the knock of his life in the previous match and won people over with a gesture of a lifetime