ChinmayC Blog

Shamar Joseph, 7/68 We have been treated to two nail-biting test matches on the same day (yesterday being the fourth day of each), the 27 th of January 2024, which is, to say the least, is terrific news for the future of Test Cricket, coming right after the two-day humdinger between India and South Africa in Cape Town. In both the Tests the host nations, Australia and India respectively, lost to the visitors on the day as mentioned, largely thanks to the captivating bowling performances of two young bowlers—fast bowler Shamar Joseph for the West Indies and orthodox spinner Tom Hartley for England. While Joseph was playing only his second Test, Hartley made his Test debut; both of the age of around 24, being born in 1999. Both of them captured 7 wickets each on the fourth day as the host nations were chasing the targets set. The Australia-West Indies test match was the second and last of the two-match Series played in Brisbane with the Aussies leading 1-0 while the India-England match...

Rohit Shetty’s directorial abilities are at stake, as far as the supposed OTT version of his famed police franchise is concerned. The first and the best movie of the franchise continues to remain to be Singham (2011); even though the Singham sequels and other movies like Simmba (2018) and Suryavanshi (2021) are fairly gripping and absorbing. But Indian Police Force-Season 1 (IPF)  that release on Amazon Prime Video recently is not. Obviously, the ebullient director has not properly concentrated on developing the plot and the script. His favorite scenes of cars crashing and blasting in air, punchy fights and elaborate gun-fights and chases are all there; but he should’ve understood that such scenes, though very well shot, do not create the desired effect on the small screen as these do on the big screens of PVRs, INOXs, Cinepolis’s and so on. Even if we overlook this particular aspect, we’re in for further disappointment as the action drama unfolds. There’s just no suspense in the...

On the eve of Uruka , Magh Bihu , this Saturday morning delivers us a shattering blow—more devastating because of its suddenness and unexpectedness. The legendary Hindustani Classical Vocalist and the senior-most artiste of the Kirana Gharana , Padma Vibhushan Dr. Prabha Atre has passed away in the wee hours at his Pune residence at the age of 92. Ragini’s Guru cum friend-philosopher-guide cum an away mother for both of us for a span of nearly 35 years has ceased all of a sudden, leaving us helpless and perplexed. It is very sudden and unexpected as, defying even the nineties, she’s had always been lithe, lively, active and spirited; she’s had been commuting between Mumbai and Pune constantly—still climbing the three flights of stairs in her Matunga flat in Mumbai and doing her creative work and teaching in her Gurukul residence in Pune. Madam, as we called her since 1990, was to perform tomorrow in Mumbai at the Sureshbabu Hirabai music conference that she herself started in 1991 a...

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...

India becomes the first Asian cricket team to win a Test at the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town, thus breaking its 7-attempt jinx and conquering a longstanding fear. However, the dream of conquering the Last Frontier in Test Cricket still remains unfulfilled for India with Rohit Sharma being only the second Indian captain to be able to draw a series. In the two-day wonder that unleased in Cape Town yesterday, the second test match between India and South Africa in the 2-match Test Series, India beat the hosts by 7 wickets today just one hour after lunch and had drawn the Series. It was the strongest possible reply to the first test where India was totally outplayed with South Africa registering an innings win. The 6-wicket burst from Jasprit Bumrah cut short South Africa’s fightback as they began the day at 62/3 and restricted them to 176 all out, giving India a target of only 79 runs to win. You must have wondered at the start of the Series what Yashasvi Jaiswal was doing in the ...

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...

The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup-2023 unfolding in India is not even halfway through as of today, and it’s impossible to say which of the contesting 10 teams are going to make it to the Top 4 in the knockout stage. And there’ve been huge upsets too in terms of the short-format World Champions England losing to Afghanistan and the ebullient South Africa, after they scored in excess of 400 runs against Sri Lanka, falling again to Netherlands. As we write this Pakistan and Australia fighting it out in a very important match for both of them: Pakistan, after making a rollicking start in the tournament, fell apart against India while Australia registered their first win against Afghanistan after three consecutive losses. Therefore, at the current juncture, we can hardly predict which teams are going to stage a fight-back or which teams are going to the top seamlessly, except perhaps for two teams: India and New Zealand. Both of them have won four out of four matches each so far—every win bei...