ChinmayC Blog

It has been the most horribly painful and depressing week of my life. There has been the spectre of death and unimaginable sufferings of fellow countrymen across India, from which you cannot turn away; reports are there in all news channels, something even the decidedly pro-government media cannot but report, reports and personal accounts across all social media platforms, the dread of the sudden telephone calls and so on. I am reminded of the horrors suffered by Italy and Spain last year, and shiver to imagine a full repetition in a vast and densely populated country like India; the saving grace so far being that the fatality rate here is fortunately still much lower than witnessed in Italy, Spain and other European countries; but even then, in terms of population the Indian numbers in infections and deaths are numbing, and the mutants are more lethal taking toll equally on the young and the old.         The heart wrenching scenes are everywhere to behold: pe...

It is always debatable to have a major cricket tournament in the midst of an unprecedented surge of the pandemic, even though it is to be played behind closed doors, the new normal cricket variety, and with the imposition of a strict bio-secure bubble. As it has been seen so far several cricketers and support staff have contracted the COVID-19 virus, and since the tournament is being held across six venues—Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata—it would entail constant air travel and change of hotels for the eight participating teams. Further, the venues are the capitals of the worst affected states, except perhaps for Kolkata in West Bengal where the rising trend of new cases has not yet caught up with the others. It is to be noted that the IPL-2020 had to be taken out of India to the UAE due to strict lockdowns across the nation, and this means that within six months another IPL is being held, now in India where the second surge has reached unprecedented levels, but...

  Sam Curran Of course, history does repeat itself from time to time; but the history of successfully chasing 337 runs in a one-day international (ODI) match does not repeat itself too often.  Thanks to some incredible display of power batting by Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes England chased 337 and defeated India by 6 wickets the other day in the second ODI of the ICC World Cup Super League series thus levelling the 3-match series. Although India posted a target, a little less than the other day, of 329 today England nearly repeated history again with bowling allrounder Sam Curran (95 not out) taking over charge. It rankled in the minds of Indian fans that the famed batting strength of the hosts wasted 8 balls of the Indian innings as there were no batsmen left, and that they could have set a target well over 350 runs. In the bargain were treated to a real nail-biter of a match that India, studded with dropped catches and misfields, finally managed to win by 7 runs thus winnin...

 Jonny Bairstow When a team chases a down a massive target of 337 runs with plenty of overs to spare you can only watch wonder-struck at the sensational batting display that has to be the cause of it and cannot really blame the rival team. England have done this tonight, overcoming the Indian target that looked quite formidable very easily at the end thanks to the spectacular batting performances of all the top three: Jason Roy notching up 55 off 52 balls falling to a terrible run-out; Jonny Bairstow registering a magnificent ton of 124 off just 112 balls; and most importantly, Ben Stokes scoring an incredible 99 in just 52 balls, getting out caught 1 run away from what could have been a memorable century. There were 24 fours and unbelievable 20 sixes (10 of those go to Stokes) in their victorious innings. At one stage of the game they were scoring almost 20 runs an over with Bairstow and Stokes firing all cylinders in their partnership of 175 runs. So then, England won the second ...

In the first one-day international (ODI) of the three-match Series played in Pune India have beaten England by 66 runs yesterday, taking a 1-0 lead in the series. Like the last few matches this game too was played to empty stadiums due to the second wave of COVID-19 virus in India. India’s captain Virat Kohli lost the toss yet again, for the third time in a row taking into account the last two T20 internationals, and it proved to be a good toss to lose, yet again. It was heartening to see India’s regular opening pair, Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan, coming in to open the innings. Perhaps this being the first match of the series India started very cautiously to avoid the oft-repeated first-match blues, and concentrated on doing the groundwork for a good total. However, they did not get into a shell which also proves to be India’s undoing on many occasions. In the power-play overs they managed to put up 64 runs when Rohit departed for 28 off 42 balls.        The fir...

From January of the year called 2020 onwards we had been constantly getting reports of the havoc created by the SARS-Cov-2 or the COVID-19 virus in various pockets of China. From February of the same year stray cases were being reported from some parts of India and from the month of March cases were on an unmistakable rise, particularly in the states of Kerala and Maharashtra. We were also hearing about the dangerous spread in several European countries, and we even saw on television how normal ebullient parts of countries like Italy and Spain were looking like ghost cities because of the lockdown. But somehow, at that point of time neither the Indian authorities nor the public took it seriously and perhaps was not aware of the incredibly fast human-to-human transmission that the virus was capable of. Not surprising at all, because even the World Health Organization did not know much at that time. Lockdown was also a novel concept for us and many thought that lockdown was not a realist...

Thanks to India’s non-stop experimentation we got to see a brand new opening partner, none other than India captain Virat Kohli, with Rohit Sharma, and the duo treated us to one of the most exhilarating batting displays in recent times. Rohit was the dominant partner hitting the ball all around the park in his cracker of an innings of 64 runs off 34 balls with 5 sixes and 4 fours while Kohli played the sheet anchor role perfectly, allowing Rohit go berserk. They piled up 94 runs in just the ninth over, and the momentum thus built never slowed down as Suryakumar Yadav, the sensation of the 4 th T20I match, came in at no.3 and made a quickfire 32 in 17 balls. And then, the run-feast was left open to Kohli and Hardik Pandya both of whom played some incredible hits over the fence to post India’s highest ever T20 total against England, 225 runs to win for the demoralized visitors.   The match was almost sealed in favour of India, although England did try putting up a brave front with...