Author: Atreyo Mukhopadhyay

Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Mumbai Can they do it? Or will the pressure of chasing a target in the fourth innings on a pitch assisting spinners become too overwhelming? On Sunday at Wankhede Stadium, the Indian team will be put to a test to answer these questions. Most importantly, Day 3 of this final Test against New Zealand will determine if this bunch avoids the ignominy of suffering the first-ever clean sweep, involving three or more Tests, on home soil. The visitors have pricked Indian pride by winning the first two Tests and the series. In about 90 years of history,…

Cricket is a cruel judge of players. Success can get undermined and failures might get blown out of proportion. In the process, the sense of balance goes missing sometimes. What remains in public memory are the black marks, instead of the bright patches, even if the latter outnumber the former. Shubman Gill’s Test career has witnessed something like that. People say all sorts of things about him, mostly negative, and overlook the good work he is capable of. Nobody mentions that he has made above 800 Test runs in 2024 at an average of 50.31. There are three centuries and…

Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Mumbai Being the former bowling coach of the Indian team, Paras Mhambrey has seen the current crop of fast bowlers from close. Before India embark on a potentially gruelling five-Test tour of Australia after the disappointment of the home series against New Zealand, Mhambrey spoke to RevSportz about the prospects of this bunch and more. The following are excerpts: Q: Let’s start with a question on the Australia series. There are five fast bowlers in the squad, plus three travelling reserves. Is that too many, considering that India have rarely travelled with eight fast bowlers? A: When…

Digging your own grave is bad enough. It becomes worse when one starts trying different methods of doing that. India’s approach to the third Test against New Zealand was something like that. Not only did they invite trouble once but kept doing that. As a result, the visiting side finds itself in a strong position at stumps on Day 1, after India seemed to have taken a grip over proceedings. Let’s come to the most glaring of this suicidal tendency first. With the total reading 78/1, and about three overs remaining to be bowled, it appeared to be India’s day.…

To break news in advance is one of the major tasks of a news organisation. Before something has happened, they say that this is going to happen. It’s not like making predictions about the future. It’s more of deducing, based on the knowledge of the past and present, which helps form an idea of what’s coming. It requires hard work and a continuous process of staying in touch with reality. RevSportz reporting on retention of players for the 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League has been a shining example of that. Almost 100 per cent of the names mentioned…

Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Mumbai Pedology. It’s a word not remotely connected with cricket. Yet, it resonates every now and then, when Test cricket visits the Indian shores. It gets intricately related with the game, especially when it comes to the prelude to a game and refuses to leave, until the national team moves to other countries. It’s a so close yet so distant relative of India’s cricketing fortunes. Pedology means the science of soils. It studies the chemistry of the contents of its composition and decodes the unknown facts, like the chemical components, formation and evolution. In cricketing terms, it…

Players are remembered for different reasons. Some for their deeds and some for failures. Virat Kohli’s case is a queer one. Unquestionably one of the greatest of batters of his generation, he has been spoken about of late for his inability to cope with spin bowling. His records are still quite overwhelming. However, there is a reason to think that he will be remembered for both reasons. This is the tale of a strange contradiction. Kohli is on the same pedestal with Joe Root, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson. They are the contemporaries he is compared with. There is no…

If there is something that draws attention immediately to the Indian squad for the tour of Australia, it’s the number of fast bowlers. For the five-Test series, there are five in the side of 18 — Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna and Harshit Rana. Plus, Mukesh Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed and Navdeep Saini have been added as travelling reserves. From the outside, eight pace options is an unusually high number. Rarely, possibly never, have India travelled with so many of them. Obviously, only five are the first-choice options, but effectively, the team can choose from eight if need…

The captain is the most important individual in a cricket side. In no other team sport does the leader of the troop occupy such a pivotal position. That’s what Australian cricketers are so clear about. They make it a point to target the opponent’s captain with the choicest of verbals ahead of any marquee series. They deliberately try to put that person under psychological pressure. Rohit Sharma will face that and more when he embarks on his most important overseas Test assignment a few weeks from now. He will travel to Australia with few runs under his belt. His returns…

If India’s defeat in the second Test against New Zealand has to be summarised in a few a words, here it is – they dug their own grave. By laying out a pitch that assisted spin, the hosts effectively reduced the gap between them and the visiting side. This was almost like a lottery, where luck played a bigger role than ability. Undoubtedly, it hurt India and led to first home series loss after 12 years. We were discussing this before the Pune Test started. That’s because this is the venue where India rolled out a spinner-friendly pitch against Australia…