India Vs Australia Test Cricket: Gambhir Mind Games!

Former Australian captain Steve Waugh once made famous his strategy of the ‘mental disintegration’ of the opponents and since then this tactic of mind games have been regularly resorted to by Australian cricket teams, particularly with a challenging Test Series like the present one in India coming up.

True to the ‘spirit’ Australian captain Michael Clarke today expressed his ‘surprise’ over the omission of Gautam Gambhir from Team India and said it was indeed good news for his bowlers. He also said that India would definitely miss the services of a ‘wonderful’ player like Gambhir. Clarke was speaking to reporters in Chennai on the eve of their second warm-up match against India-A led by none other than Gambhir himself. While opener Gambhir had indeed been the backbone of the Indian batting for several years Michael Clarke is also worried about his relatively new team facing up to the challenge of Team India in India.

However, Clarke was quick to clear up his ‘mind’ by saying that it is not about what you say, but it is about what you do. Performances on the field matter more than what you play on the mind, he seemed to defer from his predecessor Steve. By the way ‘Gambhir’ in most Indian languages including Hindi prominently means ‘serious’. You see, this could be not just mind games, but serious ones!

The first Test between the two tough rivals starts from 22^nd February in Chennai. Mind games, real or imaginary, may just add up to the real game.

Comments

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!