ChinmayC Blog

What happened in Pahalgam on 22nd April, 2025 is beyond words that can condemn the terrorist act enough. It rages through your blood stream, it tortures your mind and infuriates you with helpless wrath. India mirrored that rage through Operation Sindoor , striking the terrorists' hubs inside Pakistan. The Government of India mentioned time and again that the Operation was aimed at destroying terror, and that it was not a strike against the country or its people. And the Indian Army did exactly that.  The problem is that the terrorists there have always been proven to be actively in league with the Pak army and this unholy alliance controls and directs effectively the Government policy and political strategy. An elected government technically represents the people and therefore the people of Pakistan need not necessarily think about India any differently than their government, and this means that the Indian fury cannot get limited only against the terrorists. It encompasses the wh...

Announcing the confirmed complete schedule of the forthcoming ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup-2024, the International Cricket Council has expressed its happiness at the expansion of the tournament with never-before 20 cricket nations participating and the United States of America coming in as a co-host, the first time ever for a manor ICC event. Referring to America as the biggest sports market the ICC said that this would provide a huge stimulus to world cricket in the coming years. The 9 th version of T20 World Cup is set to kick off on June 1 st in New York and conclude with the Final to be played in Barbados on 29 th of the same month, the West Indies being the other co-host. The tournament, divided into four groups of five teams each, will have 55 matches in all out of which 16 league matches are to be played in the USA, and 8 out of 16 to be staged at the 34,000-capacity new modular cricket stadium coming up at the Nassau County, Long Island, New York, including the blockbuste...

The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup-2023 unfolding in India is not even halfway through as of today, and it’s impossible to say which of the contesting 10 teams are going to make it to the Top 4 in the knockout stage. And there’ve been huge upsets too in terms of the short-format World Champions England losing to Afghanistan and the ebullient South Africa, after they scored in excess of 400 runs against Sri Lanka, falling again to Netherlands. As we write this Pakistan and Australia fighting it out in a very important match for both of them: Pakistan, after making a rollicking start in the tournament, fell apart against India while Australia registered their first win against Afghanistan after three consecutive losses. Therefore, at the current juncture, we can hardly predict which teams are going to stage a fight-back or which teams are going to the top seamlessly, except perhaps for two teams: India and New Zealand. Both of them have won four out of four matches each so far—every win bei...

  The cricket matches in all three formats of the game between the arch-rivals India and Pakistan have become a rare variety in the recent years with the ardent discerning cricket lovers waiting for their matches at neutral venues. The matches between them in the one-day World Cup, the T-20 World Cup, and the Asia Cup have always been eagerly awaited. However, in the last two years the fan enthusiasm seems to be dwindling with a sense of listlessness seeping in as regards both Team India and their matches. And risking being rough or grossly unjust I have to point the finger at the Head Coach Rahul Dravid who was appointed in the job in November, 2021. No doubt, he had taken over with the ripe legacies of India—not able to break the jinx of not winning a single ICC title since 2011 ; India’s group-stage exit in the T20 World Cup played in 2021; Team India management blinded by too many choices of young cricketers (courtesy IPL ) thus ushering in the mindless and endless experimen...

After being crowned with the ODI World Champions title in 2019 England today has completed the global white-ball supremacy by defeating Pakistan by 5 wickets in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Final in Melbourne . Pakistan has almost done an India just managing to post a meagre target of 138 and consuming 15 overs to score 100 runs after being put into bat by England like in the semi-final against India; but the target came to be even less than India's 169 thanks to Hardik Pandya . However, their famous pace bowlers gave England a hard time and but for the resurgent Shaheen Afridi 's injury who was unable to fully bowl the last two overs of his quota the match could've gone down the wire at the death.  Like India, Pakistan openers failed once again to build the momentum and other Pak batsmen stumbled along, scoring a pitiful 18 runs in the last four death overs. But again, unlike India, they attacked England batsmen from the first over putting up two slips and not at a...

More than ninety thousand spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) watched spellbound as Virat Kohli scripted his most incredible innings ever to propel India to an incredible victory over archrivals Pakistan in their opening Group-2 match of the Super-12 stage of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup today. India-Pakistan matches are always exciting, nail-biting and full of ups and downs. However, in my lifetime experience of watching Indo-Pak cricket today’s match is perhaps the most incredible one, considering the unbelievable climax. When most of Indian fans, including this writer prominently, were almost giving up on Virat Kohli, he has chosen today’s match to prove what champion matter he’s made of. He has made the impossible possible, snatching the most improbable victory from the jaws of sure defeat. No doubt, he has thus bettered the memories of Sachin Tendulkar against Australia in Sharjah . Well, Virat’s innings of 82 in 53 balls with 6 fours and 4 sixes is not without pr...

That India had been kicked out of the Asia Cup-2022 should hardly come as a surprise or some kind of a setback for the Indian cricket board, the Selectors, the India captain and the India coach, because this tournament too has been another clog in the machinery of experimentation for determining a ‘national’ squad for the ICC T20 World Cup-2022 that starts in October in Australia this year. While the ICC had been trying laudably hard to provide valuable practice in the shortest format for all the contesting national sides Team India or the franchises thereof or the team management had been basically trying to justify the IPL and to vindicate the selections therefrom. During this time most of the cricketing superstars of India had been rested or allowed to recuperate from supposed injuries, and as a crucial part of the experiments the superstars, all IPL-captain stuff, were brought in for this international tournament which totally neutralizes the earlier experiments with the IPL stars ...

Well, as far as the three batting stalwarts of Indian Cricket—Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul—are concerned they’re needed all the time irrespective of the relentless experimentation process with promising youngsters and whatever frame of mind or form they’ve been in recently. They can come anytime anywhere and for all key white-ball world tournaments they are a must, and they’re always justified in displacing batsmen like Deepak Hooda, Shubman Gill, Ishan Kishan and even seasoned campaigners like Shreyas Iyer and Shikhar Dhawan. However, it stops just at that point. After they do or don’t do their bit in their batting the all-rounders take over. No doubt, all-rounders like Ravindra Jadeja and Hardik Pandya have been doing great in recent times. But putting in them all the responsibility to bowl, to bat and to win the matches cannot be a long-term strategy. Besides, as has been witnessed in recent months, the in-form and specialized batsmen like Suryakumar Yadav and Dinesh Karth...

Imran Khan became the first ever Prime Minister of Pakistan to be voted out of power through a no-confidence motion after a daylong high-voltage drama yesterday that finally culminated in a midnight climax in Islamabad . Perhaps this is the reason as to why the Pakistan parliamentary system had never been used to such political games behind a confidence move unlike in India where such games are very common and often the transfers of power are more or less smooth; Pakistan being more used to army coups and abrupt, often violent, changes. However, the delaying tactics indulged in by Imran and team were not at all constitutional. The irony gets more emphatic as Imran Khan was a democratically elected Prime Minster in 2018 general elections . The monthlong political theatrics had seemingly ended on 7 th April when the Supreme Court of the country ordered the confidence motion to take place on 9 th April thus reconstituting the dissolved National Assembly. But Imran had other ideas s...

The high-voltage political drama in Pakistan has seemingly ended today with the Supreme Court of the country dismissing Prime Minister Imran Khan’s decisions to dissolve the National Assembly and holding general elections within 90 days that he announced moments before the no-confidence motion on 3 rd April 2022. The Court held the decision of the Deputy Speaker of Pakistan National Assembly to reject the motion quoting the constitution as illegal. The Court has now fixed the date for the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan on Saturday, the 9 th of April by reconstituting the National Assembly. The no-confidence motion was brought by the opposition alliance on 8 th March and the date for the motion was postponed to Sunday, the 3 rd of April. It has been apparent since the beginning that Imran Khan’s government was reduced to a minority with many of the members of his own party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) defecting to the opposition.   In an emotional address to the nat...

photo: espncricinfo.com History is repeated at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai today, the second day of the second and last Test match between India Vs New Zealand, when the New Zealand left-arm orthodox spinner Ajaz Yunus Patel captured all the 10 wickets in the India first innings total of 325, to become only the third bowler to take 10 wickets (10/119) in a Test innings after Jim Laker in the 4 th Test between England and Australia at the Old Trafford in England in 1956, and Anil Kumble did in the second Test between India and Pakistan in 1998-99 at the Firoz Shah Kotla ground, Delhi. However, both Laker and Kumble achieved the incredible feats in the second innings of the opponent’s batting respectively while Ajaz becomes the first bowler to do so in the first innings of a Test in world test cricket history. The 33-year-old spinner made his Test debut in 2018 against Pakistan and has also been playing in the T20Is since that year. So far, Ajaz has played only 10 Tests for New Zeala...