Team India Crowned World Champions!

Finally in the Grand Finale Team India played truly to its potential and won the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 in great style! The Team scoffed at the idea of depending on one or two stalwarts and blazed away to an astounding victory celebrations for which do not seem to end and justifiably so. After 28 years, first team in world cup history to win it as hosts, first team to win chasing in excess of 250 runs and on! Captain Cool also known as the Great Gambler showed why he is indeed the best Indian Captain of all times. Mahendra Singh Dhoni made a masterstroke by promoting himself ahead of Yuvraj and finally delivered with the bat with such determination to win and such obsession that the World Cup had to come running for his country and of course for the living legend Sachin Tendulkar. Forget his decisions or gambling now, his disarming smile and humbleness make the win more memorable.

Superb fielding and terrific bowling by Zaheer Khan in particular never allowed Sri Lanka to run away for a 300 plus total. Thanks to a brilliant century by Mahela Jaywardene and 63 runs in the last five batting powerplay overs Sri Lanka reached 274 which seemed to worry a lot of Indian supporters and which was accepted by Sri Lanka as the invincible platform for their second title. The potential Indian batting strength was just conveniently forgotten.

To make matters more worrying India lost Sehwag in the second ball of the innings in similar fashion as in the Pak encounter. Sachin showed with a few blazing shots that he was there to stay. But he also went for 18 with a reeling total at 31 for 2. Gautam Gambhir though had different designs and a sound strategy against Murlidharan in particular who was never allowed to settle down to his intensity. With able support from Virat Kohli Gambhir laid the foundation for victory and then Kohli went at 114 for 3, still a fifty-fifty situation. In came the Captain and proceeded with ruthless precision, absolute power and spectacular brilliance. Gambhir threw his wicket with just three run short of what would have been a unforgettable century. He still deserved the Man of the Match award, but Dhoni’s determined and brilliant effort of 91 not out sealed it in his favor.

With Yuvraj Captain Cool clinically completed Mission World Cup 2011 and brought home at home the second glorious honors by dispatching the second ball of the penultimate over to a roaring six. And history was made at the Wankhede stadium, Mumbai.

A sweet revenge for the incredibly cruel defeat in the semi final of WC 1996 at Kolkata by the Sri Lankans. Sweeter, because Team India refused to fall prey to the suffocating bowling tactics of Sri Lanka as has been the trend over the years in sluggish conditions. Sri Lanka celebrated the fall of Tendulkar like in WC Football match and maybe took it as the final step towards victory. But Indian batting in full flow is capable of conquering all opposition of the world.

What a match! What a victory! Just continue celebrating!

The VIP Brat: A Study in Contrast!

Here we’re talking about only two compartments inside a particular AC 2-Tier coach in a particular daily train under the Indian Railways that departs a particular originating station at around noontime and reaches the destination city early morning the next day. The train is popular because it is superfast and always on time. That fateful noon too, the train was ready for boarding about one hour before departure. We cut to the inside of that particular coach having those two compartments for our contrasting study. Two elderly couples were in a state of considerable distress. One of them, both technically senior citizens, had been allotted two upper berths and the husband was at his wits end how to proceed, because his wife was being taken for check-up after surgeries in both of her knees—she could hardly walk and her climbing up the berth was a sheer impossibility. The husband was also on the wrong side of the sixties, but he thought he could manage the climbing once he managed a ...

Mitali: The Trauma of Losing a Sibling

Maybe I lied to her when I used to reassure her that she was going to be alright and was going to resume her life in some measure of normalcy in the future years; maybe all my gestures/expressions were false when I used to run my fingers across her forehead or embrace her on occasions when she was able to move around a bit; and maybe all my exhibitions of love care and responsibility were exposed as superficial when I failed to turn up in Delhi where she along with my mother were treated during September-October, 2022 (my mother Urmila Chakravarty was also diagnosed with dental cancer the same month the same year as she was) and when all the members of my parental family and the in-laws converged. Since that fateful day in August, 2022 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer to that disastrous day of March 6, 2025—the day my younger blood sister Mitali (Mainu) Chakravarty Sarma (November 2, 1963—March 6, 2025) passed away in the wee hours in a hospital in Guwahati after giving a bra...

Release of Book 'Randomized: A Dozen Short Stories'!

The fourth collection of stories titled 'Randomized: A Dozen Short Stories' by Chinmay Chakravarty has been released on Amazon KDP just now! This collection, short stories in a lighter vein plus with mild satire like the previous collections, has been published in both the E-book and Paperback formats. The links are given below: International: Click Here ! India: Click Here ! Other collections of short stories by the same author: The Cheerless Chauffeur and Other Tales(2021)--Notion Press. Funny and Fishy Tales(2022)--KDP. The Weirdos(2022)--Ukiyoto Publishing. All books of the author are available on Goodreads, apart from Amazon and other outlets! Have a look!