Just Another Sports Blog

Boxing Day,  which occurs just a day after Christmas, i.e., on 26 th December,  is an occasion which is celebrated in most of the Commonwealth countries with great fervour and a big part of these celebrations is the concept of attending some kind of professional sporting games in those parts of the world. In Australia, the Boxing Day Test Match which is usually held at Melbourne is a heavily-attended fixture and over the years, it has produced some brilliant individual displays of batting as well as some fabulous bowling spells. In this article, I would be recollecting my memories of some of the best Boxing Day knocks I’ve seen from a visiting team batsman. The knocks aren’t ranked in any particular order and you’re free to agree/disagree with my views and your suggestions are certainly most welcome. 1.       Sachin Tendulkar- 116 vs. Australia in 1999-2000: - o    The 1990s was that time in Indian cricket where essentially, Sachin T...

So taking off from where we left off in Part-I of my attempt to analyse the business of the 8 IPL franchises at Tuesday’s auction and which players in my view were the smart picks for their franchises. Please do read it and bouquets and brickbats are always welcome. 1.        Mumbai Indians: - o    The 3-time champions didn’t enjoy the best of seasons and failed to make it to the playoffs after losing their last game. A major reason for that could be attributed to the relative level of inexperience of that line-up and also the inconsistent performances by their big stars such as Kieron Pollard, captain Rohit Sharma and also their big-money signing West Indian opener Evin Lewis. This year, they decided to correct this by making a very smart move in acquiring the hard-hitting South African keeper-opener Quinton de Kock from RCB in a pre-auction transfer and in the auctions, they went about in resigning their legendary Sri Lankan pacer Lasit...

Seeing Tuesday’s IPL Auction and the utterly mind-boggling sums of money that were doled out by the teams for some unfancied names and the “flavour-of-the-season” players has set my mind off to think a little bit and thus in this article, I try to evaluate the 8 teams on the basis of their performance on the auction table on Tuesday and see which teams can go back home happy and the ones that would probably be feeling a little queasy. This would be a two-part article and Part II is coming soon: - 1.        Chennai Super Kings: - o    The defending champions came into this auction having released the least number of players (just 3 players were released by them) and with the smallest auction purse, which gives an indication of how settled their squad is, and had to buy just 2 players to complete their playing squad. They were able to do that by making a big-money signing in their former pacer Mohit Sharma for 5 crores, which kicked off t...

The 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup in England & Wales has already generated criticism from many quarters for restricting the scope of the growth of the game to a wider world and for curtailing the participation of the Associate Member nations, at a time when other major team sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup are looking to expand the influence of the game and expand the tournament to include more countries. But for India, the 2019 World Cup would mark the end of many careers and also spark off a new period for this side. So, in this article, I would be attempting to discuss and analyse who are the players who should make the cut in the final squad and who would be missing out. Please do bear in mind that this is mere speculation and does not have any bearing on the final squad that would be chosen by the selectors and that it’s a novice but a passionate cricket fan who is behind this article and not an experienced analyst.  Please do read it and bouquets and brickbats ar...