ChinmayC Blog

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...

India have crushed England by an innings and 25 runs in the fourth and last cricket test match at the Motera, Ahmedabad today and won the Test Series 3-1, thus qualifying for the World Test Championship (WTC) Final to be played at Lord’s from 18 th June 2021. India needed to win the Series by at least 2-1 margin and had this match been won by the visitors the Series would have ended in a 2-2 draw in which case Australia would have qualified. There are three priceless innings from the Indians that contributed to this emphatic win at the Motera today. First and foremost, the man-of-the-match Rishabh Pant for his incredible century of 101 in just 118 balls coming in to bat at a time when India had lost 4 wickets for 80 still trailing by 125 runs to England’s first innings total of 205. There was tremendous pressure on him to stick on and at the same time pile up enough runs to help his team come back in the game. Rishabh played against his normal attacking style defending a lot with Rohi...

The world knows India as a cricket-craziest nation and its tremendous fan-following for the game; the world understands India’s potential as the ultimate market for cricket for all formats of the game; the world acknowledges the Indian cricket Board (BCCI) as the richest one with influence and hold running effortlessly through to the very top and the world sees the IPL as India’s answer to the football league and as one of the largest sports tournaments benefiting everyone’s coffers from cricket owners, officials and players. Besides, for the IPL there are huge players’ interests, particularly budding cricketers, and numerous stakeholders cutting across India. All these factors concerning the ‘spirit of the game of cricket’ finally seemed to have shaped the Supreme Court of India order as a somewhat ‘favorable’ one for the BCCI considering the circumstances preceding it. On the historic day of 25 th March, 2014 the Supreme Court asked BCCI Chief N Srinivasan to resign giving him 48 h...

That the normally greenish bouncing pitch in Nagpur behaved like an under-prepared one from the first day yesterday maybe thanks to MS Dhoni’s diktats, he lost the toss though this time. That India included four spinners and a lonely pace bowler called Ishant Sharma. That India managed to put England in a spot thanks not to the spinners galore, but to the lone pacer. That India allowed England to wriggle out of the spot easily and later on in different similar spots too, though India did manage to slow down run-scoring which rather helped England as they would win the Series with a draw. That on Dhoni’s pitch England got to a healthy total of 330 runs thanks to brave low order efforts by Prior and spinner Swann. That England’s two excellent spinners got more of the pitch than the four Indian ones. That England put India on the backfoot reducing them to 87 for 4 at stumps on the second day today with all the top four guns back in pavilion. All these cricketing facts hardly matter. What ...

It’s hardly surprising that eminent ex-cricketer commentators, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri , are in the payroll of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). There has been a nagging doubt in my mind about the integrity of the cricket commentators in what they say and utter. Hardly anyone you could find among them who speaks or spoke about the policy and wrongdoing of the BCCI. They all sang all the time in praise of the Indian Premier League (IPL), main money spinning spearhead of BCCI, and never even mentioned about it when discussing the phenomenon of ‘too much cricket-no rest’ for Team India. Why only two of them? Most of them are fed and enriched by the richest cricket board of the world. If our beloved legendary cricketer Gavaskar says IPL is healthy wealthy and wise, what can we lesser mortals do but to flock on to the three-hour shows! That’s the crux of business, you see! BCCI’s money-centric policy is further exposed with the selection of Rahul Dravid. In the ov...