ChinmayC Blog

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...

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...

The TATA Indian Premiere League (IPL)-2022 starts in the state of Maharashtra from tomorrow, the 26 th of March, across three stadiums in Mumbai and one in Pune. This 15 th edition of the IPL is set to welcome the fans cum cricket revelers back to the stadiums after the Pandemic cricket-new-normal in 2020 and 2021 editions—the former delayed and had to be held in UAE while the latter started in India, but had to be stopped halfway and later shifted to UAE. As per COVID-19 norms at least 25% of the stadium capacity will be allowed and in light of relaxed restrictions all over India the crowd limit is all set to be increased later on. There will be a total of 74 matches during 26 th March-29 th May out of which 70 league matches will be played in the stadiums mentioned above and the venues of the 4 play-off matches are yet to be decided. Ahmedabad was earlier earmarked for the final matches.   Only for the second time in the IPL history there are 10 teams or franchises in the IP...

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...

  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 got into a strong position on the first day of the 1 st Boxing Day Test against South Africa at the SuperSport Park in Centurion today, India at 272/3 at stumps off the full 90 overs. This is thanks to a technically sound unbeaten century crafted by opener and the stand-in vice-captain KL Rahul (122 not out in 248 balls) who first built up a 117-run opening partnership with Mayank Agarwal (60), then an 82-run one with captain Virat Kohli (35) and an unbeaten 4 th wicket partnership of 73 runs with Ajinkya Rahane (40 not out), batting out the full day on a pacy and bouncy pitch most suited for fast bowlers. Other than the luckless Cheteshwar Pujara who is literally playing for his place with players like Shreyas Iyer and Hanuma Vihari in reserve and who is without a ton in his last 43 innings got out for a first-ball duck, all batsmen so far have contributed well. For South Africa all the three wickets were captured by Lungi Ngidi. The host team must be sorely missing the service...