There’s a peculiar irony to Australia’s Ashes campaign this summer: the man who hasn’t bowled a competitive ball in nearly five months feels fresher than the one who hasn’t stopped bowling for two. Pat Cummins is poised to reclaim the captain’s blazer in Adelaide, while Josh Hazlewood, forever Australia’s reliability index, has been ruled out […]
There’s a peculiar irony to Australia’s Ashes campaign this summer: the man who hasn’t bowled a competitive ball in nearly five months feels fresher than the one who hasn’t stopped bowling for two. Pat Cummins is poised to reclaim the captain’s blazer in Adelaide, while Josh Hazlewood, forever Australia’s reliability index, has been ruled out […]
There is a beauty to the chaos that is found in an India–South Africa white ball series. The team will dominate in the test format; they will flip the script in the ODIs; and now we have the T20I format as a neutral ground, where just about anything could happen. This comes after South Africa […]
Every IPL auction has its dramas, the bidding wars, the surprise millionaires, the bargain legends. From an initial 1390 registrations to a trimmed pool of 350 names, the IPL 2026 Auction has become a razor-edged test of a player’s T20 “value index,” not just their reputation. And in that brutal filtration, five names, each with […]
For a format allegedly “fading,” 2025 ODI cricket had no interest in reading its own obituary. India capped the year with a nine-wicket wall-demolition of South Africa in Visakhapatnam, sealing the series 2–1 and finishing with a sparkling 11–3 record. Fittingly poetic, this match wasn’t just a finale; it was the curtain call of the […]
All stadiums have their own identity. Some will dominate on a flat track; others can create mischief by playing both fast and slow, while others, such as Cuttack’s Barabati Stadium, like to be somewhat enigmatic about how they play. However, this week, Barabati will attempt to do something it has never done before, that being […]
It is rather amusing in some ways to see how long it took Steve Smith to spend nearly five years trying to be as far away as possible from the ‘circus’ of the IPL, then on the third day of the Ashes test at the Gabba hits a 23 from nine balls as though auditioning […]
There’s a certain comedy in cricket when a team claims they’ve “planned for four years” and then unravels in six days. England walked into this Ashes tour talking about blueprints, intent, modernity, bravery, and redefining Test cricket. But the only thing they’ve successfully redefined so far is how quickly an Ashes campaign can melt into […]
Cricket loves a good mystery, especially when it involves a veteran who has seen too much, done too much, and still manages to surprise everyone. So when Shakib Al Hasan casually admitted that he had bowled with an illegal action “a little bit intentionally” during his county stint with Surrey, the cricket world blinked twice. […]
The Indian Cricket Team creates its own theatrical environment/ambiance that is specific to itself. That includes: The pre-storm anticipation of the approaching storm, the storm, and the hush/silence that follows the storm. In this particular ODI series, Rohit Sharma was the storm, and Virat Kohli was the post-storm silence. In the same week that […]
South African cricket has a funny way of producing left-handed batters who flirt with greatness at franchise level, then run into a brick wall of international expectations. Ryan Rickelton might be the latest case study. A year ago, he was the poster child of the SA20 revolution, the league’s leading run-scorer in 2024, the guy […]
There’s a strange irony in elite sport: sometimes the harder you try, the worse it gets. England walked into Brisbane believing five intense training days would sharpen their edge. Instead, they emerged looking like a team whose batteries had been left charging for too long, overheated, overloaded, and ultimately blown out. An eight-wicket defeat, five […]