Just Another Sports Blog

Birthdays are an occasion which is always meant to be celebrated. In the field of cricket, cricketers have often made use of their birthdays to deliver a performance for the ages. This piece is dedicated to a modern-day great who played one of the most underrated knocks in the history of the ICC Cricket World Cup, against an opponent which has hurt his team on quite a few occasions in the past in this tournament, while punishing them for giving him a birthday present twice in the space of three deliveries and giving them an explosive return gift later onward in the innings. Ross Taylor, while coming into the 2011 World Cup, had become one of New Zealand’s batting mainstays since his debut in 2006, but he hadn’t yet played that one innings that could bring him into the front-and-centre of the attention of the global cricket community, which had been hoping for big things from the man from Lower Hutt, Wellington. On his  27 th  birthday on March 8, 2011, New Zealand took ...

It was correct once said that cricket is a great leveller and about test cricket, it’s not inaccurate to say that the format is almost akin to life. In life, there are battles that are to be fought, like in test cricket, but very often, we are able to emerge victorious from those. Also, like test cricket, life too at times gives us the opportunity to come back from adversity and become a champion. The Third Test of 2008 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia at Perth was just such an example of this. The Perth Test itself and the series as a whole, was hanging under a dark cloud, after the ugly scenes witnessed in the New Year’s Test at Sydney, which became infamous for the “Monkeygate” saga, where Harbhajan Singh was accused of having racially abused Andrew Symonds and in a hearing before match referee Mike Proctor, he had received a 3-test match ban, which had infuriated the Indian team, which was already incensed at the atrocious umpiring they had been subjected to in that test match...

The advent of the new millennium had marked a massive shift in the world of cricket. West Indies were now a dying force in international cricket, with Australia emerging as the new dominant pole, the match-fixing scandal had torn world cricket, especially Indian cricket apart and then the team had emerged from the ashes like a phoenix with that historic 2-1 win in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2001. 2003 was a major year for the cricketing world as the new millennium’s first-ever Cricket World Cup was to take place and this time, the World Cup was to chart a path into the unknown as South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya were selected to host the World Cup, thus making it the first time that the tournament had travelled to the continent of Africa. The Indian team’s ODI form had changed drastically from the times in the 90s, with players like Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif having added a lot of batting smarts to the line-up and the emergence of Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra...

The 90s was a time where the game of cricket was starting to evolve and move into the modern age. This period saw the innovation of tactics, such as former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe using the off-spinner Dipak Patel with the new ball in the 1992 World Cup and having Mark Greatbatch open the batting as a pinch-hitting option, or Sri Lanka captain Arjuna Ranatunga pushing Sanath Jayasuriya and ‘keeper Romesh Kaluwitharana as openers and basically asking them to go hell-for-leather in the first 15 overs, something which got them to win the 1996 World Cup as the absolute underdogs. Even in Indian cricket, a churn was happening during this time, where ageing stars like Kris Srikkanth, Ravi Shastri, Kapil Dev started to retire, a new crop of players emerged led by Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Ajay Jadeja, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and the likes. But one player who started his international career as a baby-faced 16-year-old in 1989 at Pakistan, of all places, was t...

The name of Sachin Tendulkar is not just another name. It’s a name that evokes different feelings for different people. For an opposition fielding and bowling line-ups, his entry evoked fear, circumspection and on occasions, a sudden call to attention for the bowlers. For his own team and the batsman at the other end, it gave them the best seat in the house to watch a master craftsman create a new work of art. For the fans in the stadium and the hundreds of millions other who watched him on a television set or were listening in on their radio sets, his entry would make them switch off their lives, so said BBC Sports about him. On 5 th November 2009, just days before he completed 20 years of his international career, he added another legendary knock in his overflowing collection of legendary knocks against an opposition he loved to face, while trying to execute another major heist. For those who probably have lost the context of what was happening on 5 th November 2009, Australi...

So taking off from where we left off in Part-I of my attempt to analyse the business of the 8 IPL franchises at the auction on 19th December and which players in my view were the smart picks for their franchises. Please do read it and bouquets and brickbats are always welcome. Mumbai Indians: - The defending champions Mumbai Indians were very active during the trading window and filled a few gaps in their squad by acquiring the New Zealand left-arm pacer Trent Boult and West Indies all-rounder Sherfane Rutherford , both from the Delhi Capitals and also getting back local boy, the right-arm pacer Dhawal Kulkarni from the Rajasthan Royals, while letting go of Mayank Markande to the Delhi Capitals and also the batsman Siddhesh Lad to the Kolkata Knight Riders. Before the auctions, they did make some big-ticket releases such as that of recently-retired batsman Yuvraj Singh , West Indies opener Evin Lewis and Australian all-rounder Ben Cutting amongst the major names. With ...