Champions Trophy: India Going Strong, Pakistan Out!

While Indian Cricket made all the wrong headlines thanks to the IPL Spot Fixing scandal the Indian Cricket team in England and Wales for the on-going ICC Champions Trophy-2013 played the best of cricket so far. India became the first team of the tournament to sail into the semifinals outplaying West Indies in their second Group-B match on 11^th June. Earlier in the Championship opener on 6^th June India edged out South Africaby 26 runs in a toughly competitive and high-scoring encounter. In both matches Shikhar Dhawan, the sensational new-find for India, made brilliant back-to-back centuries contributing hugely for the team victories. In fact, this is Shikhar’s 3^rd consecutive hundred if we take into account his brilliant Test century against Australia in Mohali after which he got injured. With Rohit Sharma this opening duo seems to be doing extremely well at the moment and cricket fans would hope they make the pair Team India has been looking for after the failures of the Sehwag-Gambhir duo. India’s powerful batting display in English conditions has won special praise.

The other semifinalist from Group B is likely to be decided in the crucial encounter today between South Africa and West Indies—both teams with one win each. In a virtual quarter final the winner will go straight into the semis. There is a worry of rain over the match and in case the match is abandoned both teams would be locked at 3 points each making net run-rate coming into play.

The scenario in Group A is far more complex. Sri Lanka on the brink of elimination fought for dear life last night and convincingly beat a strong England by 7 wickets with 17 balls to spare. Chasing a big target of 294 runs Sri Lanka won in style thanks to a scintillating unbeaten century by Sangakkara. The England-New Zealand tie on 16^th June is set to be another quarter final where the winner would go straight into the semis. However if New Zealand is defeated they would still stick on for the last match of Group A between Australia and Sri Lanka on June 17. If Australia win Sri Lanka will be eliminated and New Zealand-Australia will be tied with 3 points each making net run-rate decide the second team to go into the semis.

Unfortunately for the sub-continental cricket fans Pakistan got eliminated very early due mainly to their uninspired performances. They lost both their matches against West Indies and South Africa. However, the much-awaited blockbuster encounter between Pakistan and India is yet to be played. Whatever the stakes for both teams and the lack of it an India-Pakistan match is always a mouth-watering prospect. Pakistan is eliminated no doubt, but they would love to exit with the satisfaction of beating India. And India would like to make its slate clean winning all group encounters and play the semifinal with tremendous confidence. The respective fans would not settle for anything less than a win. Stay tuned tomorrow for the big one!

The Teams As They Stand Today the 14^th of June:

Group A

Teams	Mat	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Pts	Net RR	For	Against
New Zealand	2	1	0	0	1	3	+1.048	139/36.3	138/50.0
England	2	1	1	0	0	2	+0.289	562/100.0	518/97.1
Sri Lanka	2	1	1	0	0	2	-0.517	435/97.1	432/86.3
Australia	2	0	1	0	1	1	-0.960	221/50.0	269/50.0

Group B

Teams	Mat	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Pts	Net RR	For	Against
India	2	2	0	0	0	4	+0.979	567/89.1	538/100.0
South Africa	2	1	1	0	0	2	+0.410	539/100.0	498/100.0
West Indies	2	1	1	0	0	2	-0.086	405/90.4	406/89.1
Pakistan	2	0	2	0	0	0	-1.108	337/100.0	406/90.4

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!