Just Another Sports Blog

2002 was a year of many changes in the cricketing world, especially for Indian cricket. India were now firmly in the John Wright-Sourav Ganguly era and were starting to take some strides forward with the occasional speed-breakers in their path. The highs of the 2001 Border-Gavaskar Trophy win was accompanied by the lows of test series defeats in South Africa, West Indies, as also countless defeats in pressure ODI games in various triangular series finals and bilateral ODI series finales. But there was also an influx of younger, hungrier players such as Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag et al, who were ready to take the Indian team into a new age, and the tour of England in 2002 was being looked upon by this team management to mark the emergence of the Indian team in the 21 st century. India had, on their tour of the West Indies just before this series, had taken a few drastic steps to shake up their ODI team, amongst them was th...

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...