Just Another Sports Blog

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...