Shantakumaran Sreesanth. When he took the 5-40 against the Saffas at Johannesburg, people cheered, bats were swung, minstrels performed for an extra 15 minutes, and transitional meditation prices soared above 18k a day. Dollars. cut to yesterday Sreesanth, or Freesanth took 5-75 on a spinner friendly wicket (who makes these proclamations?) and every person worth his words is finding it difficult to find words in praise. Also praising him are the transitional meditation gurus. The [...]

Mohammad Asif took three wickets on his comeback from dope. He celebrated his comeback by not smoking up. The times, they are a changing. We are talking about the first test between New Zealand and Pakistan at Dunedin, an ancient village full of sand dunes back in the day. No? Pakistan have bowled well, but it doesn’t seem to be enough as New Zealand are 402/8 as I type this. In related news, Daniel Vettori [...]

The second test between India and Sri Lanka kicks off today. As I type this, Sehwag has already hit three consecutive fours off Muralidharan. He is batting on 115 off 110, and Gambhir is on 89 off 120 odd. What more can I say. Apart from this. Do not go there. This is what I referring to: India 325 (Ganguly 87, Laxman 50) and 64 for 2 beat South Africa 265 (Smith 69, Amla 51) [...]

Never mind the image on your left, here is what I am talking about: ‘Australia are beatable’ – Jerome Taylor This is at the same level as some of these statements: red and blue are different colours wars tend to be violent in nature ice cream is not hot If you think you have a more obvious statement, do let me know.

I am not a big fan of players being over-proud of runs made under easy circumstances. So much so that I was disappointed when Sachin Tendulkar wanted to continue batting to get to his 43rd century even after the game had been saved. What I am a fan of, is a great cricket blog known as Straight Points. You should go take a look once you are done here. The guy over there describes himself [...]

Dinesh Karthik has been put on a plane to Kanpur from wherever he was earlier today. The reason – MS Dhoni seems to be injured. Just hold on till I Google what injury we are talking about here. Yeah, thanks for staying. Apparently, its  pinkie injury. I say that for lack of knowledge about which finger it was. Here is what the HT guys had to say: Dhoni hurt his finger during the first Test [...]

Howzat! That is what players screamed during the ancient (pre 1950) era of cricket – an era when cricket was at its purest. An era when bowling short caused major changes in the rules. An era when there was no Cricket Game available. An era when cricket wasn’t just a game. Q. What does that era and this brand new cricket game have in common? A. Both signify Purity, Cricket and Pure Cricket.   When [...]

HERO HONDA CUP 2009 India vs Australia 6th ODI Guwahati 9:00 AM IST Australia leads the 7 game ODI series by 3-2   Sometimes, the proverbial blogger gets proverbially bored of a proverbial ever-lasting series. Who invented such long series anyways. Teams take things for granted initially, then there is nothing left to take. There will be a lot of argument that India never did take things for granted and all the games were close [...]

Saurav Ganguly has developed a knack of defying all public opinion and make astonishing comebacks. This one cannot be categorised as a comeback though. After all, he was never quite out of reckoning. With the IPL-3 scheduled to be held in India, the Kolkatans would have surely smirked at a McCullum captaining their side with their prince riding the boundary. So the news is finally out. Saurav Chandidas Ganguly has been reappointed captain of the [...]

It is tough being Sachin Tendulkar. But we already know that. No one, after years of globalisation and media exposure, believed that India would come close to chasing down 350 odd runs. The 3 run defeat doesn’t hurt as much as a particular feeling does. A feeling of how Sachin would have felt after the loss. But this post is not about what he would have felt. It is about what he achieved yesterday. For [...]