Author: Atreyo Mukhopadhyay

Niranjan Shah has been an integral part of cricket administration for decades. A former secretary of the BCCI, its vice-president and part of various committees, he knows Indian cricket administration inside out. Days before the stadium in Rajkot is named after him, Shah spoke to RevSportz on his long journey. Excerpts: Q: Congratulations Mr Shah for having a stadium named after you. How do you describe this feeling? A:I thank the members of Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) for supporting me in my endeavours for close to four decades. We were a small unit, and to have become a prominent one…

Winners of the Under-19 World Cup a record five times, India have never hosted the event. The men’s competition has been held four times and the women’s version thrice. The men’s and women’s T20 World Cups took place in 2016. The country not staging even one of the 15 editions of the junior event — from which many became stars in the senior team — looks like an anomaly. India is not the only aberration. Held first in Australia in 1988 and a biennial occurrence since 1998, the U-19 World Cup has not travelled to England or Pakistan either. But…

Are you earning your keep? This question will become louder each time KS Bharat fails with the bat in this India-England series, irrespective of how he fares with the big gloves. It may be unkind on the player, who is basically the victim of a template set years ago. A wicketkeeper in a Test team has to be an able batter. This was hammered into the heads of those who run teams by Adam Gilchrist. He averaged 47-odd in the longest format at a strike rate of 81-plus. This redefining the role of a keeper was taken forward in the…

There will be turn, possibly square, and from the first day. Tests will get over inside three days. England deciding to include three spinners in the XI accentuated the spin talk. Former cricketers, columnists and fans in general were preparing for another trial by turn. Last year’s Australia series and three three-day Tests were still fresh in the mind. After two exciting games in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam, filled with twists and turns (of another kind), it can be said that the discussions on spin were exaggerated. Nobody knew how the pitches would behave and jumped to the conclusion that excessive…

In the end, Indians and English fans were celebrating together in the stands in Visakhapatnam. One team won and another lost, but for these spectators, it was four days of exciting cricket, where the home team prevailed due to some exceptional individual efforts. RevSportz lists the key factors… Jaiswal’s precious double: Yashasvi Jaiswal’s double-century set India up. His 209 towered above the rest, with the next-highest being Shubman Gill’s 34. Almost all the batters got off to starts, no one else converted it into a big one. Had Jaiswal too got out for 30 or 40, India’s first-innings total would…

Irrespective of the outcome of the second Test against England in Visakhapatnam, the Indian team will head into the break before the third with concerns in the mind. There will be creased foreheads and some head scratching. Other than Bazball, a lot of it should concern their own batting. This is not something this team had to contend with in the recent past. Batting in their own backyard had seldom been a problem for the Indians this millennium. They were bothered by other thoughts, like how to contain a Steve Smith or Alastair Cook, who both made multiple centuries on…

The sun was blazing down. Shortly after lunch, it was warm, humid and a bit uncomfortable if you were in the uncovered parts of the stands at the ACA-VDCA Stadium in Visakhapatnam. There was one calming factor if you were a home-team fan. Someone was warming up in these hot conditions. Nobody knew what was coming but it was building, quietly. What unfolded over the next few hours over a few spells of furious fast bowling at its intelligent best should turn this India-England Test series on its head. Bowled out for what seemed to be a below-par 396 despite…

Whatever its length may be, a long rope is not endless. Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer are probably nearing the end of it. Both have been given a number of opportunities, considering their performances in the past and potential to do well in the future. After a series of low returns, including in the first innings of the second Test against England, it’s fair to say time is running out. In Visakhapatnam, Gill and Iyer looked slightly better than they had in the recent past. They middled more than they did not, saw through the initial period when batters might…

In any form of cricket, start is a key word, more so for a batter. This is a phase when he or she is uncertain of a lot of things. The feet may be hesitant. Conditions can be unfamiliar and feel of the pitch minimal. Contact with bat and ball can also be on and off. Sometimes, it is more off than on. And then, once that start has been achieved, it has to be capitalised on. For starters, that was the story of Day 1 in the India-England second Test in Visakhapatnam. It was a tale of two parts.…

Other than the port and its beaches, Visakhapatnam is also getting known for its medical infrastructure. Parts of the city are dotted with hospitals and diagnostic centres. They get patients from different places in Andhra Pradesh and also from Odisha and Chhattisgarh. The Indian team is not in need of medical attention yet. A couple of their players are out injured and they are 0-1 down in the five-Test series against England. But they have reason to believe that they can make a comeback, beginning with the second Test which gets underway on February 2. Here are five things that…