The Dugout: Deep Dives, Player Analysis, and The Latest Cricket Stories

Three consecutive seasons without a playoff berth. For any franchise that would be concerning, for the most consistently successful team in IPL history, it’s a structural alarm. Eric Simons called it a learning curve at the post-elimination press conference. Three seasons of data suggest something harder to fix than that. CSK’s problems aren’t random injury […]

Gaikwad entered 2026 with a career average above 40, 24 fifty-plus scores in 85 matches, and a reputation Brian Lara once placed alongside KL Rahul’s. He left it with 337 runs, a third consecutive playoff miss, and the sharpest public criticism of his captaincy career. The season wasn’t a full collapse; his mid-season recovery was […]

New Zealand’s rivals don’t fear the White Ferns as defending champions , they fear one batter who hasn’t been dismissed for under 30 in ten consecutive T20I innings. Kerr’s public comments before the tournament centred on squad depth and collective belief. Her numbers tell a different story. Across her last 11 T20I innings she scored […]

KKR’s best batter this season is done. Angkrish Raghuvanshi fractured a finger on his left hand and sustained a concussion in a fielding collision against the Mumbai Indians on May 20, ending his campaign on the spot. He’d scored 422 runs at 42.20 across 13 matches, the most by any KKR batter in IPL 2026, […]

Punjab Kings started IPL 2026 unbeaten through seven games with an NRR above +1.3. Six straight defeats later, they need to beat an already-eliminated side today and then wait for two results they cannot influence on Sunday. A win over LSG gets them to 15 points. That’s necessary. It doesn’t guarantee anything. Their playoff fate […]

Sooryavanshi already holds three all-time IPL records at 15. The youngest debutant, the youngest centurion, the highest strike rate by any batter scoring 300-plus runs in a single season. Those are settled. The more interesting question is what comes next. He’s six sixes away from Chris Gayle‘s single-season record and 169 runs away from becoming […]

India has won six of eight T20 World Cup meetings against Pakistan. They also lost their entire 2024 campaign in the first game, not to Pakistan, but because an opening defeat to New Zealand shredded their NRR beyond recovery. Those two facts together explain exactly why June 14 at Edgbaston matters more than any other […]

Lancashire topped the North Group in 2025 with nine wins from 14 games and reached Finals Day every year. The 2026 format tightens the schedule to 12 matches across a group of six, which suits a squad with its depth far more than it suits anyone chasing them. Jos Buttler, Phil Salt, and Liam Livingstone […]

Dhoni hasn’t played a single game this season. Thirteen matches, zero appearances, and the injury timeline that was supposed to explain it stopped making sense weeks ago. A calf strain became a warm-up aggravation, became a thumb problem, and became a quiet return to Ranchi while CSK fought for their playoff lives without him. At […]