ChinmayC Blog

The most eagerly awaited match between New Zealand and Afghanistan in Abu Dhabi today came as an anti-climax for millions of Indian fans as the Kiwis made mincemeat of the Afghans   winning by 8 wickets, thus eliminating India from the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2021. This super Sunday in terms of viewership turned out to be a spoilsport the same as the previous two ‘super’ Sundays for the hugely disappointed fans. Realistically speaking, it was quite unreasonable to expect a team that was demolished by India just three days back to bounce back and defeat a team that has been very dominant in international cricket for the last few years. Afghanistan won the toss and reverted to their original tactic of batting first. When asked about the reversal of decision captain Nabi said that that evening in the match against India the dew was a factor which actually was not ultimately, but today’s  being a day match with a good batting surface and three Afghan spinners the decision was...

Australia beat the West Indies by 8 wickets and ensuring a better net run-rate ousted South Africa even as the latter beat England, ending their unbeaten streak. In the crucial last match in Group-1 for Australia in Abu Dhabi today, the defending Champions West Indies, for whom the match was of no consequence after being eliminated owing to their loss against the already-ousted Sri Lanka, came out with the right intentions of playing for respect put into bat; but after a few lusty shots by Gayle the same old story unfolded as three wickets fell in quick succession. Chris Gayle, the oldest playing international cricketer at 42 years of age, made only 15 in probably his last appearance in international cricket. A partnership promised to grow between Evin Lewis and Hetmyer, but Lewis getting out for 29 at the team score of 70 ended that. A partnership again seemed to bloom between Pollard and Bravo, but it happened to be only a brief one. Captain Pollard (44), this time, stuck on and help...

England and Pakistan, the unbeaten teams so far in Group-1 and Group-2 respectively, have earned 8 points each with one match each remaining and have sealed their places in the semi-finals. England is probably the best team of the tournament defeating all tough rivals easily and busting the myth that teams winning the toss and bowling first go on to win the matches which, in fact, have been a trend in the sluggish pitches and the dew factor later in the night at Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Dubai. However, England in particular and also Pakistan have proved that any good team can always win under any circumstances. It had been really tough for England to bat first against Sri Lanka, particularly handling the Lankan good spinners; but their in-form batsmen took up the   challenge and Buttler went on to hit the first century of the tournament remaining unbeaten thus helping the team to put up a healthy total of 163 runs. And then, their bowlers and fieldsmen delivered as in all previo...

For the second time in a row India captain Virat Kohli lost the toss, this time to New Zealand captain Kane Williamson and the latter unhesitatingly decided bowl first. In Dubai, the venue of this crucial encounter, in all the six matches played so far the chasing teams have won all the time. If that was not enough Kohli took Ishan Kishan in place of a supposedly injured Suryakumar Yadav and allowed him to open which was somewhat justified as left-right combination. But the biggest shocker came when Rohit Sharma, one of the most successful openers for India in all the formats of cricket, did not come in to open. As I mentioned in an earlier post the dropping of a sound opener Shikhar Dhawan who performed very well in the IPL-2021 was a huge mistake and his absence is now felt at every moment apart from disturbing the right-left combination. Then, the non-bowling, the supposedly non-fit Hardik Pandya still remained in the team. The team lost its balance completely and that effectively e...

The latest Hindi movie to premier on Amazon Prime Video , on 29 th October 2021 to be exact, is titled Dybbuk directed by Jay K who also directed the original Malayalam movie Ezra (2017) and started shooting this Hindi remake in 2019 and due to the pandemic could not plan a theatrical release, selling the rights to Amazon and premiered as an Amazon Original Movie . It is a horror movie with some elements of suspense and an interesting plot. Perhaps for photographic reasons the shooting was done in Mauritius apart from a little scene in Mumbai. The leads are Emraan Hashmi and Nikita Dutta . The film has all the elements of a horror flick like an overly loud background score, jump-cut scares, moving figures behind your back, an ugly face in the mirror or in the almirah and quite a few scary scenes that turn to be humorous inadvertently. However, the movie a bit better fare than the traditional Ramsay Brothers type or the Vikram Bhatt kind of horror thanks to its interesting plot i...

Pakistan have almost sealed their berth in the semi-finals as probably the top team in Group-2 winning three out of three matches and notching up 6 points so far. What is more significant is the fact that Pakistan have crossed the main hurdles by defeating the toughest opponents in the group, namely India, New Zealand and Afghanistan. Now they have only two teams to overcome, considered to be weaker rivals. Of course, Namibia, creating another historic chapter by winning their first ever Super-stage match against Scotland, and Scotland are not pushovers. However, considering the roaring form Pakistan are in now winning against those two teams is not likely to be very tough, and in that scenario they will have 10 points—the maximum any team can manage in the group. The Pakistan team has arguably the best bowling attack of the tournament—combining pace and spin—and a very balanced team with someone up or down the line to finish the game. Captain Babar and wicket-keeper batsman Rizwan hav...

It is very unfortunate that the enlivening ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2021 should get affected by a largely unnecessary controversy. Did any team ever in international tournaments object to singing their national anthem or any team object to their rivals singing their national anthems? Definitely not, it’s being a celebrated customs in almost all such tournaments across various fields of sports. Therefore, the ‘personal choice’ syndrome never comes up here. Then, why this syndrome has to come up in ‘taking the knee’ for a most noble cause? In our school days our teachers ordered us to kneel down on innumerable occasions, obviously to correct our faults, which is why we are better human beings today. Did we even think of exercising our democratic choice on those occasions? The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, started in 2013 ‘as a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people’ the worl...