India-Australia Test Cricket Series: So Kind of You Sir Clarke!

India did just everything humanely possible to help Australia rout them 4-0 in the current Test cricket series played in Australia. In the fourth and last Test in Adelaide too the India top order failed consistently and as usual. The top names in world cricket could not progress to even half centuries.

Only young Virat Kohli was allowed to achieve the first ever ton in this current series for India. Maybe as a return favor, for all the tons, double tons and triple tons blessed on Australia by India. This point has tremendous relevance for the title of this article. Through Kohli’s efforts India advanced from a traditional (in this series) 111 for 5 to 225 for 5 and at that stage they had a great opportunity to try mastering some respectability. But the new ball did it once again and India lost all five wickets for just 47 runs.

Australia made 604/7 in the first innings and India replied with 272 conceding a lead of 332 runs. The scene was perfect for another follow-on, because anything above 200 runs lead the follow-on becomes due. But, Aussie skipper Michael Clarke did not enforce it and decided to bat again. Why?

Maybe he was sick and tired of the monotony of having innings victories, again and again. Maybe he wanted to have some batting practice as Australia hardly had the luxury of playing its second innings in the earlier matches. Maybe he wanted to test his team for setting an exciting target for India, because to get back to the No.1 position the team had to be expert in every kind of situation. Or maybe and most plausibly he wanted to make a return gesture for all the generosity showered on them by India. Anyway, we thank him with all our hearts for saving India from another ignominious innings defeat.

Batting second Australia lost three wickets for 50 runs enjoying an overall lead of 382 runs at the end of the third day’s play. Ponting and Clarke are again there after their double tons in the first innings. In the case of India if a top batman hits a century in the first innings he is just spared from doing anything commendable in the second. This has been the unwritten rule of Indian cricket. But when opposition is batting this rule gets easily and effortlessly broken. Let us see how the Clarke-Ponting pair builds on the lead tomorrow.

Meanwhile India is celebrating the 63^rd Republic Day all over today and in tune with the patriotic fervor demonstrated on such days many expected a patriotic gesture form Sachin Tendulkar in achieving his hundredth ton. Time is running out for Tendulkar and in this perspective his decision to play in the ensuing triangular one-day cricket series seems to be just right where he has only 48 tons against 51 in tests. No Test match is scheduled for India till July this year and it seems extremely uncertain for Indian ageing superstars to retain their places in the Test squad. More significantly by that time the IPL extravaganza will be over and the cricket Board can be in a position to dictate terms.

Happy Republic Day to one and all of you, and to Michael Clarke in particular.

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!