Author: Atreyo Mukhopadhyay

No doosra. No carrom ball. No other turns. And the tally is 501 wickets in 123 Tests. Nathan Lyon is a wonder of an off-spinner in the exact sense of the term. In a Test career which began about 12 years ago, he has been an apostle of contrast compared to some of his contemporaries in this trade. He only plays Test cricket — 29 ODIs and two T20Is in all these years are an aberration of sorts — and specialises in taking wickets without those variations. It’s a marvel of sorts, considering what some of his illustrious peers did.…

About six months before the ninth T20 World Cup, to be played in the West Indies and the United States, there are different signs. The national selectors, coaches and others involved in running the various formats have homed in on something and they are persisting with it. The outcome is a new approach. To borrow from football, they are playing a ‘pressing game’. India lost two or three wickets inside six overs in both T20Is against South Africa. Led by Suryakumar Yadav and others like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh and Tilak Varma, they did not stop throwing the kitchen sink…

The concept of pacing an innings is not immediately associated with T20s. This gets noticed only after it has been done. Rinku Singh’s effort in the second T20I against South Africa was an example. It did not win India the rain-truncated match. But, it changed perceptions about Rinku the batter, and provided the selectors fresh food for thought. T20 specialists emerging from the Indian Premier League (IPL) often get branded. They become situation-specific players. Rinku got labelled as a finisher. His skills came into play during the closing stages. In the IPL and in 10 T20I appearances before this one,…

There is an unwritten rule in sports. Never write anybody off. A player may be down for a bit, and out of public view for a while. But if he or she maintains intensity in training and practice, executes plans while playing, and retains the hunger to succeed, it becomes difficult to overlook them. A case in point is Yuzvendra Chahal. An indispensable member of India’s white-ball teams until about six months ago, he has been dispensed with since. There was no place for him in the World Cup squad. And despite being India’s leading wicket-taker in T20Is, the leg-spinner…

Continuity is a rare phenomenon in the chaos that is international cricket. It’s a smaller world compared to other sports, but a busy one. Three days after a World Cup climax in the 50-over format, the two finalists were engaged in a T20I series. Some other teams started playing Test cricket. It becomes difficult to keep track of what is happening where, when and why! That is why India’s team selection for the T20 series in South Africa seems systematic in an ambience of disorder. This is the most unpredictable and random form of the game. Nobody knows, until now,…

Talent is an important word in sports. It’s used to describe how naturally gifted a player is. The Oxford Primary School Dictionary says that talent is ‘a natural ability to do something well’. This is a trait that top-level sportspersons in every discipline have. Without a certain amount of it, they will not reach the level where their activities get noticed. Those who represent India are supremely talented. From this vast a population, those who make that cut have to have a fair amount of natural ability. Else, they would be eliminated early in the test for the survival of…

It would be unfair on the other players to say that he has single-handedly driven the rise of Indian chess in the post-Viswanathan Anand era. Like most major happenings in sports, this has also been a process. It involved various players at different times. It took a lot of effort on the part of several entities to make the transition. But, overlooking the performance of R Praggnanandhaa in this unprecedented surge would still be impossible. He has been right at the forefront of this neo-Indian chess movement. From not being in the world reckoning after Anand, to pushing a few…

It was a very long wait. For all the progress made in Indian chess, the story of growth was not as good in the women’s realm. R Vaishali changed that significantly by becoming the third Indian woman to earn the Grandmaster title. Koneru Humpy was the first, in 2002, and Dronavalli Harika had become the second, in 2011. The elder sister of teen sensation R Praggnanandhaa, Vaishali has also been coached by RB Ramesh. In a conversation with RevSportz from Norway, where he is on a coaching assignment, Ramesh said that Vaishali’s achievement will inspire more girls to play chess.…

Ruturaj Gaekwad has played four ODIs and 16 T20Is; Tilak Varma one and 12; Rinku Singh zero and seven; Ravi Bishnoi one and 18; Arshdeep Singh three ODIs and 38 T20Is. Many of them were summoned when the regulars were absent. That way, they were not your first-choice players. Hang on! Are they not your T20 specialists? The kind that India will lean on, looking ahead to next year’s T20 World Cup and beyond? Like it or not, the answer will have to be in the affirmative. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and a few others will most probably…

It is important to keepthe football flame alive at the grassroots. The second edition of the Football Carnival organised by RevSportz will continue to do that. There will be 24 teams each in the men’s and women’s sectionsof this month-long tournament aimed also at ensuring that sports is about gender equality. The prize money and the individual awards are the samefor both categories. This initiative has received the whole-hearted support of some well-known faces in Indian football. At a packed house at the Press Club in Kolkata on Thursday, former players of different generations,like Jamshid Nassiri, Mehtab Hossain, Kuntala Ghosh…