ChinmayC Blog

  At the beginning of this piece or rather any piece on the Indian Premier League-2026 that I’ve been intending to write for a long time and shelved again and again thanks to various reasons, I must address a concern of mine. It’s about the pitch at the iconic Wankhede stadium in Mumbai. My concern might be absolutely untrue or even preposterous, but address this I must. Have the curators tweaked the Wankhede pitch in some way like that in the suspected case of the Ahmedabad pitch in the ICC Men’s World Cup-2023 that eventually, as it is alleged, deprived an unbeaten India of the Cup? The pitch or the pitches on this ground have always been known to be sporting, giving opportunities to both the batsmen or the bowlers to excel and yielding exciting results with fighting totals. So, I was shocked when in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup semi-final earlier this year at the Wankhede when India set a mammoth target of 254 runs in 20 overs and England nearly chased it down. Since then, in ...

As anticipated, the political masters of Pakistan have finally directed its national cricket team to lift the boycott and play India on 15 February, 2026, as scheduled in Colombo . The Masters must've thought the money at stake is too lucrative to continue indulging in such kind of grumpy politics. Of course, they had imposed some pre-conditions that included making the 'handshake' a mandatory protocol, but the ICC looked the other way. So, the PCB takes it as protecting the 'spirit of cricket'.  The Indian cricket board , the sponsors, the TV channels and millions of fans who do not necessarily mix patriotism with sports, if it's cricket in particular, must be deliriously ecstatic that all the revenues and hype and excitement shall be there for harvest thr oughout the ICC Men's T20 World Cup-2026 , co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka . Most of the Indians fans must also be ecstatic to have their heroes go on vanquishing the enemy neighbor and humiliating t...

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...

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...

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 World Cup-2023 Final still remains a nightmare, a bad dream that refuses to go, in the minds of most of Indian cricket lovers: their home team on home grounds crashing to a humiliating and a listless defeat in the grand finale after winning all the ten games leading to it. Well, for most of the sober cricket lovers win or defeat is always a part of any game and it’s never an issue to be distressingly sour or angry about; but the problem was that their home team couldn’t offer a creditable fight against Australia that they defeated in the very first game of the event and also in the previous matches in a bilateral series and had gone down like a pack of schoolboys as if trying to understand or find what’s the game of cricket all about. And that rankled, and still does. Expectedly, the fans or the organizers started crying hoarse about the pitch being doctored unnecessarily or mistakenly even though it belonged to their own country and to the supposedly biggest stadium of the country...

With just four league matches to go the three Playoff slots in the IPL-2023 are still open for grabs, only Gujarat (GT) having already secured the top slot. Thanks to their abandoned match due to rain Chennai (CSK) and Lucknow (LSG) are in some advantage, with 15 points each after sharing a point each. We think this gives bit of an edge to the two teams, because even if they lose their last matches they could still go through depending on what Bengaluru (RCB) and Mumbai (MI) do. But the dangers are also equally palpable. With 14 points each, if RCB and MI win their last matches they will straightaway enter into the Playoffs leaving only one slot to others and in that scenario either LSG or CSK will get thrown out, based on the net run-rate (NRR). And if CSK gets eliminated that’d be shattering for the MS Dhoni fans who’ve been celebrating the former India captain with the speculation rife that this could be his last IPL—the scenes were really evocative in Chennai when CSK marched aroun...

First, of course, let’s talk about the cricket star born last night in the match between Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata, the 56 th match of IPL-2023. His name is Yashasvi Jaiswal who raced to the quickest ever fifty in IPL history taking just 13 balls and then going on to remain unbeaten at 98 off 47 balls to help his team RR win in style. Aged only 22, the southpaw opening batsman Jaiswal has humble origins—from a poor family in Uttar Pradesh—coming to Mumbai to train in cricket at the age of just ten and then struggling there for years, with no place of stay and doing gigs in dairies and paani puri shops. To make this cricketing dream come true he then started living in a tent with the cricket grounds men till he was noticed by a Mumbai training academy for his talent. He has several feats in first class cricket as the youngest player ever, playing for Mumbai in domestic cricket and he started his IPL stint from the year ...

The ‘home’ perception and the celebrations thereof owe their origins to the naming of the competing franchises since 2008. Most of the franchises are named after major cities of the country like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru etc. and one or two after the source state like Rajasthan Royals. Obviously, it’s always been expected that the cricket lovers of those cities or states would ideally be the supporters of the ‘home’ team and show full loyalties as respective fans (However, it’s not clear as to whether locals of the concerned city only or the full state should become ravenous supporters or not, because in case of Maharashtra there was another franchise named Pune Warriors once, and so it was ambiguous as to who the state of Maharashtra fans should support). And that’s what’s been happening ever since, although the whole ‘celebration’ syndrome defies all logic: because, first, the players for each franchise are selected through the path-breaking auctions with ...

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...

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 ...