ChinmayC Blog

India becomes the first Asian cricket team to win a Test at the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town, thus breaking its 7-attempt jinx and conquering a longstanding fear. However, the dream of conquering the Last Frontier in Test Cricket still remains unfulfilled for India with Rohit Sharma being only the second Indian captain to be able to draw a series. In the two-day wonder that unleased in Cape Town yesterday, the second test match between India and South Africa in the 2-match Test Series, India beat the hosts by 7 wickets today just one hour after lunch and had drawn the Series. It was the strongest possible reply to the first test where India was totally outplayed with South Africa registering an innings win. The 6-wicket burst from Jasprit Bumrah cut short South Africa’s fightback as they began the day at 62/3 and restricted them to 176 all out, giving India a target of only 79 runs to win. You must have wondered at the start of the Series what Yashasvi Jaiswal was doing in the ...

It’s always opined by knowledgeable folks that when a car is kept sitting in the garage for months its maintenance suffers—ranging from battery disorders to even rusting in the body—not to speak of the atrocities heaped upon the inactive object by the rats. This means that all humans of various professions and even lifeless objects need to do what they’re meant to do, on a regular basis. Else, maintenance issues emerge leading to breakdowns of various types and escalation in the expenses. Cricketers are much more prone to such inactivity disorders, because it follows naturally that the more they play the fitter they get. Thanks to the experiments-cum-rest syndrome adopted religiously by the cricket management of India these basic principles have not been followed. As one of the results, the crux of the Indian bowling attack, Jasprit Bumrah who had been on indefinite rest, is out of the ICC Cricket T20 World Cup-2022. Now, the entire Team India management is in a daze, unable to take th...

Although the ‘experiment’ scare is far from over Team India is now looking more like the one it had been in the national sense as regards the international tournaments. Doing justice to the expectations of a decider the third and last T20I match in Hyderabad last night went down the wire keeping the thrill on till the penultimate ball of the match. It was a high-scoring match in a pitch that helped both the batsmen and the bowlers. Australia put up an imposing target of 187 runs for India after Rohit Sharma won the toss for the second time. And India skillfully handled the early losses of both their openers with Virat Kohli (63) and Suryakumar Yadav (69) having a rollicking partnership of 104 runs thus nearing the target with enough wickets left. However, the ride was still not without thorns as the Aussie fast bowlers started delivering beauties and scoring boundaries was difficult. With the demolition-man Suryakumar gone Kohli and Pandya got into some kind of a spot—India needing 32 ...

No doubt, we cannot question the fundamental rights of people, particularly the ebullient young generation, of loving short and sweet but highly entertaining cricket games like movies. Add to it the digital revolution taking place all over the world as well as in India, even penetrating the rural areas thanks to the initiatives of the government. Now everyone, young or older, wants to enjoy whatever they love on their mobiles or tabs or laptops from wherever they happen to be. For what do you think the streaming platforms are becoming so popular? The digital experience is always unique, as it is very personal, independent and not location-dependent as we’ve already mentioned. In such a scenario what the Indian Premiere League (IPL) has achieved in its 3-day e-auction for TV and Digital broadcasting rights is mindboggling indeed, but not entirely unexpected. The four packages of media rights, A, B, C and D, fetched the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) a record-breaking figur...

South Africa beat India by just 4 runs in the third and final one-day international (ODI) at Newlands in Cape Town today that went down the wire thanks to at least one Indian batsman fighting for a win, clean sweeping the 3-match ODI Series 3-0, dishing out to India its fifth consecutive defeat in this South Africa tour including the two Tests and three ODIs. Led this time by wicketkeeper-batsman Quinton de Kock with a brilliant century (124) building a 144-run partnership with Dussen (52) South Africa put up an imposing total of 287 (exactly the total put up by India in the second ODI that SA chased easily) despite India’s change of strategy to bowl first after KL Rahul won the toss for the second time. For a change the Indian bowlers got the Proteas all out in the penultimate ball this time thanks mainly to Prasidh Krishna's 3 wickets; however, the hosts did overcome a mini collapse in the middle to put up a total that finally proved to be enough. In light of the fast-paced track...

The sudden stepping down, somewhat inevitable, of Virat Kohli from test captaincy has started a raging speculation in India about who would be or ought to be the new Test captain. Earlier in the year 2021 we had suggested a split-captaincy regime, particularly after the stand-in Test captain Ajinkya Rahane led India to an incredible Series victory over Australia in Australia overcoming the 36-all out syndrome and the departure of Virat for home. Rahane had been the test vice-captain for quite some time and therefore, there should’ve been no hassles to make him the regular captain, relieving Kohli the burden of captaining all three formats. In hindsight, we can say that had that decision been taken Kohli would’ve continued to be the white-ball captain thus the confrontations and ego-plays between BCCI and Kohli could’ve been avoided. However, that was not done, and during the last one year Rahane has been in very poor form and perhaps he had played the last innings of his test career th...

It was not entirely unexpected even though millions of his fans are just thunderstruck today by his sudden announcement to step down from Test captaincy, just the day after losing the Cape Town Test ; because what had been happening in the last few months over the split-captaincy controversy definitely left its mark on the mind of the most successful captain of Indian Test cricket , Virat Kohli , with 40 Test victories out of 68 tests, including both home and away ones, under his leadership during in the last seven years. However, a 1-2 series loss to South Africa is not such a huge tragedy that should make the captain take the responsibility and step down. There are other factors leading to his decision apart from the split-captaincy issue to which we’ll come a bit later: ·        Virat has not been amongst the runs in the last two years without being able to score a single century, and his batting abilities were being questioned repeatedly. ·  ...

  Photo: file (wikipedia.org) South Africa beat India by 7 wickets at the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town on the fourth day today of the third and last match winning the Test Series 2-1, thus keeping their unbeaten record against India in Tests at home. Excellent bowling  and true-to-potential spells by SA pacers Rabada, Jansen and Ngidi ensured South Africa chase a total less than 250 runs like they did in the second Test in Johannesburg. And like in the second test the Proteas chased the even lighter target of 212 runs professionally with consistent batsmanship losing only three wickets and romping home in the 64 th over. Ever consistent Keegan Petersen who scored 72 and 82 in this match was rightfully declared the Player of the Series. Captain Dean Elgar again led the team to a healthy start scoring 30 runs building the momentum with Petersen, and Dussen (41 not out) and Bavuma (32 not out) did the rest. This is one of the resounding Test Series victories for South Afr...

  South Africa captain Dean Elgar (96 not out) led from the front to clinch what finally turned out to be an easy victory over India in the second Test at the Wanderers in Johannesburg and level the 3-match Test Series 1-1. It is rather unfortunate that Dean could not complete what would have been a most memorable century, particularly in light of the fact that this win has ended India’s streak of 5 consecutive Test victories over the Proteas that started at the Wanderers in 2018 and later at Indian venues. The South Africa chase, interrupted by rains on the fourth day, is perhaps the best batting display in this series so far with every batsman contributing and partnerships blossoming throughout. Dean crafted an opening stand of 47 runs with Markram (31); 46-run partnership with Peterson (28); 82-run partnership with Rassie van der Dussen (40); and finally, an unbeaten 68-run partnership with Bavuma (23 not out). This is third biggest chase by any team at the Wanderers that proved...

  It came as shocker just before the start of the 2 nd Test between India and South Africa at the Wanderers in Johannesburg that India captain Viral Kohli was not playing due to back pain and that KL Rahul would lead India as the stand-in test captain for the first time. Rahul won the toss and confirmed the news about Virat and that Hanuma Vihari was the replacement. Only a day back head coach Rahul Dravid lauded Virat’s performances ‘despite the noise’ and that the team would keep up the intensity to win. Something was just not right simply due to the reason as to why should a leading team lose its intensity, considering the fact that India had never lost at this venue before and registered two of the three victories over the Proteas so far here. Whatever be the actual reasons for whatever is happening in the dressing rooms it is bad news for Indian cricket. Out-of-form Pujara gets another chance and Vihari gets a berth in place of the captain himself. India elected to bat and wh...

  On the very first assignment as the regular One-Day International (ODI) captain for the India’s South Africa Tour-2021-22 and in the aftermath of the Virat split-captaincy controversy Rohit Sharma was finally ruled out of the full tour. This comes as a huge setback for Team India who has been doing well to take a 1-0 lead in the Test Series with the 3-match ODI Series to start from 19 th January 2022. Rohit had been suffering from a hamstring injury and was earlier ruled out for the Test Series which led to a lot of speculation about test captain Virat not playing the ODIs under the leadership of Rohit. As we wrote about Virat Kohli deciding to play the ODIs in his pre-tour press conference where he dropped a bombshell involving the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly and it was not made clear till now who was probably lying with Ganguly saying the matter would to be sorted out as and when appropriate and the latter going down with COVID infecti...

  India beat South Africa by 113 runs just after lunch on the fifth and final day of the first Test in Centurion today, conquering the fortress called Centurion. This grand victory is the first ever to be registered by India at the SuperSport Park in Centurion and in fact, Virat Kohli becomes the first Asian captain to do so. The Proteas, set a target of 305 runs to win, started badly yesterday losing four early wickets for 94 runs; but thanks to captain Dean Elgar (77) they managed to reach 182/7 at lunch today with Temba Bavuma (35 not out) and Marco Jansen (13) at the crease, the last pair with some batsmanship abilities. However, immediately after lunch Mohammed Shami devoured Jansen, his third victim in this innings, thus taking his match tally to 8 wickets after his definitive fifer in the SA first innings which completed his 200 scalps in test cricket. The last two wickets of Rabada and Ngidi were taken by the lone India spinner R Ashwin, as the hosts were all out for 191 ru...