T20 Cricket: Rohit Again as India Win A Super-Over Thriller, Seal T20I Series Against New Zealand!

You hardly come across tied T20I matches any part in the cricketing world; but today the third Twenty20 International match between India and New Zealand in Hamilton became one, and incredibly so. Indian opener Rohit Sharma starred in the Indian innings after being put into bat with 65 off 40 balls in a team total of 179/5, and yet again in the super over overhauling the New Zealand challenge of 18 runs with two sixes in the final two balls. A terrific 95 off just 48 balls by Kiwi captain Kane Williamson was in vain as he fell to Shami with just 2 runs needed off 4 balls of the final over. New Zealand needing 9 runs to win, Shami started the 20^th over conceding a six to Taylor, then 1 run to Taylor that brings Williamson into strike, third ball gets him out caught in the gully, next ball dot to Seifert, fifth ball yields a bye, and the sixth ball bowls Taylor ending the match in a tie allowing a super-over finish. Mohammed Shami was justifiably the Game-changer of the match while Rohit bagged the Player of the Match honor.

On a somewhat slow pitch India began with an explosive partnership of 89 runs with Rohit racing to his half century in just 23 balls—the second fastest in T20 cricket. However, the Kiwi bowlers adjusted to the pitch superbly by bowling slower ones with spinner Sodhi doing extremely well giving away only 23 runs in 4 overs. India seemed to lose the plot of a 200+ target, and the changes in batting order didn’t help at all: when the stage was set perfectly for Virat Kohli after the fall of Rahul and with Rohit going great guns, in came not Kohli nor Shreyas nor even Pandey, but Shivam Dubey! Well, experiment and the IPL youngsters, no doubt! But for Jadeja and Pandey hitting some lusty blows in the final couple of overs the target could have been much easier than 179. Even then, the target of 180 was not a tall order and the Kiwis almost proved it. The pace bowlers of both teams toiled hard on the field—Southee for NZ and Jasprit Bumrah for India proving very expensive and wicketless.

The match reminds one of the ICC Cricket World Cup-2019 Final when New Zealand failed to win in similar situations against England, and even a super-over could not yield a winner, leading to a result that still disturbs many. For India too, the name ‘New Zealand’ rankles thanks to the semi-final of the World Cup when India failed to cope with the Kiwi pacers the run-out of Dhoni being the turning point. That India have sealed the five-match T20I Series in New Zealand against New Zealand at 3-0 winning the first two matches in Auckland with relative ease would make a lot of Indian fans happy, not to mention the ecstasy of today’s incredibly exciting thriller going the Indian way at the very end.

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!