ChinmayC Blog

The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2026 got underway on the 7 th of February, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka with the first of the day’s three matches played in Colombo , the second in Kolkata and the last in Mumbai which was preceded by a brief inauguration ceremony at the Wankhede Stadium . The twenty participating teams of the 55-match tournament are divided into four groups of five teams each with Bangladesh replaced by Scotland and Pakistan deciding to boycott India in protest against the treatment meted out to Bangladesh by the ICC .  However, Pakistan’s obviously political decision didn’t quite clarify as to what Pakistan cricket team would do if they met India either in the semifinal or the final. Per the latest reports Pakistan is still engaged in parleys with the ICC about their cricket team’s boycott of the Indian cricket team. The big money involved in the match or matches of the archrivals is too big to let it go, with the channels/Boards already losing money as the f...

New Zealand , among other teams visiting India , made the Indian spinners look useless once again on their own home turf . The coach keeps on wearing that ominously ' gambhir ' countenance, but is hardly 'gambhir' about such core issues. Such is his obsession with all-rounders ! Anyway, congratulations to the young NZ team for registering their first ever ODI Series win in India, after the previous consecutive 7 Series losses, and following it up with their first ever Test Series win on Indian soil about a year back! The way Daryl Mitchell played is inspirational for all cricketers; he kept consistently on building partnerships with Will Young one time and with Glenn Philips  the next. Bravo!  Alas! Gone are the good old days when Virat Kohli hit a ton Team India used to win the match hands down! Alas! Team India superstar flamboyant batsmen or most of them continue, however, to fail in crunch matches when a win means a Series point!  High time Head Coach Gauta...

How we enjoyed playing cricket and also watching it in bright sunshine on a chilly winter day from the early seventies till Commerce took over the game, converting it to an all-season affair and making no difference between day and night! Well, there’s nothing we can complain about! It’s the need of the times and the people going through with less and less time for the olden charms of life, sports or nature! We’re here talking about the 4 th T20I match between India and South Africa, and it’s that form of cricket which is, in fact, the result of commerce. Actually we, the kids, in the early seventies also played limited-overs matches having no inkling of the transformation coming in the later decades. Nowadays we get to play or watch only the long-format Tests and domestic matches in pristine conditions of wintry sunshine, with all one-day and T20 matches almost entirely converted to day-n-night affairs. Ruthless experiments are also going on to convert the classical Test Cricket t...

Rohit Sharma is among the most aggressive yet elegant, correct and stylish, not to be called pinch hitters, openers of Indian Cricket , starting with Farokh Engineer (mostly in Test Cricket those days except for the World Cup-1975), on to Krishnamachari Srikkanth ,  Sachin Tendulkar , Sourav Ganguly , Ajay Jadeja , Virender Sehwag , Gautam Gambhir and concluding with Yashasvi Jaiswal . They’ve always been a delight to watch and the early fall of their wickets cast a doom for cricket fans invariably, often for the team too. Rohit Sharma has excelled in the limited overs format (making his debut in T20I and in ODI in 2007) with quite a few world records for most runs in T20I, most sixes in international cricket, most double hundreds (3) in ODIs ( One Day Internationals ), most centuries (7) in Cricket World Cups , most centuries (5) in a single World Cup for which he won the ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2019 and the individual record of the highest 264 runs in ODI cri...

We're talking about cricket here, from the point of view of Indian cricket; but mixing it with politics isn't something that was never heard of! We published here kind of a rant post during the disastrous down under India tour which was so, not primarily because of the run-less performances of the stalwarts, but also because of the politics of selection and clout. The heavyweights naturally cannot be disposed of easily which is why they figure in the Team for Champions Trophy-2025 too.  Leaders and politicians spend a helluva lot of time announcing the CM or PM faces as the case may be. Similarly, the cricket mandarins and selectors have managed to announce the squad only after more than ten days of serial huddles. This is typically political! Isn't this?  Now, Congress--the oldest national political party of the country--is in the throes of deadly atrophy! So much so that quite a few parties of the Alliance which was formed recently, have threatened to abandon Congress whi...

In whole of my ‘aware-of-cricket’ life I’ve never seen my home team in such a pitiable state—in absolute doldrums, no directions pointing anywhere, no will of any sort, a complete absence of a ‘management’ and no team building efforts—since the 0-3 drubbing by New Zealand on home turf till the present moment down under, except, of course, the lone wonder in Perth. Therefore, I’m rather drawn fatally to an arguably merciless mindset of comparing Team India to a national museum. The reasons thereof are very easy to detect: all the preciously historic set pieces are still on a grand display irrespective of if people of a cricket loving nature do grace those with generous footfalls or not; the timings and the duty hours are fixed irrespective of the ‘weather’ conditions as the controllers continue to feel that they must ‘learn’ from mistakes; and that some of the old pieces are only being adjusted here and there without giving any thought to bringing in new and newer pieces of interest or ...

Wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant has rewritten the history of another Indian cricket great Yuvraj Singh . No doubt about that, and cricketers and fans now call him the miracle player. While Yuvraj fought and conquered a rare form of cancer and made a brave comeback to cricket, Rishabh fought and conquered a near-fatal car accident in 2022 and made an astounding comeback to cricket in 2024. Not only did he come back but has been playing tremendous cricket in the IPL-2024 and then now in the first Test against Bangladesh with a superlative attacking century, apart from keeping wickets. Amid the well-deserved international acclaim came the comparison with MS Dhoni --some cricketers saying he has broken Dhoni's record in terms of the number of Test centuries in less than half of the matches Dhoni took to score. Veteran wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik has righteously pointed out that comparison with the legend is unwarranted at this stage. We fully endorse his view and request all to...

During this England Tour of India-2023-24 things have really happened in the five-match Test Series. All the matches have produced results within four days each and there was no one-way traffic as both the teams fought tooth and nail to win. The first Test in Hyderabad that England won by 28 runs and the 4 th Test in Ranchi that India won by 5 wickets proved to be nail-biting suspense dramas. In between the Indian debutants shone bright in the Third Test in Rajkot that India won by a record margin. One of the debutants, Dhruv Jurel, went on to shine the brightest in this 4 th Test, his only second. On the second day at stumps of the 4 th test match this writer had left you stating that if India conceded more than 100 runs to England it would most likely prove fatal for the hosts. Dhruv Jurel changed that story in its entirety and scripted a brand-new chapter (in fact, this writer did hint on a coincidental partnership like that of England): with his team reeling at 219/7, still tra...

England spinners, Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley, have made India struggle, once again after Hyderabad, and put the home team in a precarious position on the second day of the 4 th Test between India and England in Ranchi today. Bashir who replaced Rehan Ahmed is the chief damager, capturing four very important scalps that are Yashasvi Jaiswal (73), Shubman Gill (38), Rajat Patidar (17) and Ravindra Jadeja (12). This was followed up with gusto by the match-winner of the First Test, Tom Hartley who consumed one of the two debutant match-winners of the Third Test, Sarfaraz Khan and then dismissed R Ashwin whom the team dearly depended upon to hang on for the day and thus anchoring a partnership with Jurel, the second successful debutant of the Third Test. The two English spinners took absolute control of the proceedings after James Anderson removed captain Rohit Sharma cheaply and in just the third over of the India reply. Like in the previous outing a partnership was blooming between Ja...

Although it wouldn’t be wholly correct to say that the visiting England team has lost the last two Tests thanks to their solid adherence to Bazball cricket, they apparently, trailing 1-2 in the five-match Series, did or had to change their tactics on the first day of the 4 th Test match that began in Ranchi today. To add to their ‘positive approach to Test Cricket’ they won the toss today choosing to bat first, and therefore, they decided to surge ahead with that aggressive cricket, the openers—Crawley (42) and Duckett (11)—keeping the run-rate nearly at five-an-over. One more debutant for the inexperienced Team India, pacer Akash Deep, replacing a roaring Bumrah for whatever reasons of ‘rest’ the selectors may have decided, however, got both of them out quickly including the danger man Ollie Pope for a duck in between them, and thus captured three scalps reducing England to 57/3, an ominous start batting first.  Nonetheless, Jonny Bairstow carried on with Bazball scoring 38 in 35...

Arguably the most inexperienced playing eleven India had ever fielded in the international Test playing arena, has blasted away the much-talked-about Bazball approach to cricket that England adopted under their aggressive coach Brendon McCullum and an equally aggressive captain Ben Stokes in 2022, beating the visitors by the biggest-ever margin in terms of runs (434) in the last session of the fourth day of the Third Test between India and England in Rajko t today with India leading the five-match Series 2-1 now. The Indian selectors had reportedly included two debutants in the top seven of the playing eleven as far back as in 1999, and in 2024 for the third test match they had to do so by including debutant Sarfaraz Khan as a batsman and Dhruv Jurel as wicket keeper-batsman and a rookie batsman Rajat Patidar, apart from the other youngsters of great promise like Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal. This crucial decision had to be taken with the continuing absence of the two stalwarts V...

When we were school students the Television was not there in our regions, and so, nothing about ‘watching’ cricket. Those days we caught up with the radio whenever India were playing, I remember lying awake the whole night till daylight, particularly when the matches were going on in the West Indies; and those were only the five-day Test matches as the shorter formats were also unknown except for our gully or home cricket being always limited-overs encounters. And we were free of any superstitious beliefs because listening didn’t necessarily involve them. It’s only when we started getting blessed with the live telecasts (early eighties in India) and began watching our favorite players in action that such superstitions began to emerge. Perhaps watching it live made the exchange of vibes or thoughts between us and the players possible with what you call the body language behaviors of both sides affecting the prospects, somewhat. And in came the superstitions, beliefs or say superstitious...