Author: Bharath Ramaraj

With his unstinting belief, Mohammed Siraj was the beacon of light for the Indian team in the just concluded India-England Test series. He carried the bowling unit on his shoulders, ending up with 187 overs under his belt. All the blood, sweat, toil and tears finally came to fruition at The Oval as he uprooted the stumps to send Gus Atkinson back to the hut and take five wickets in the second innings. Not just that, the resultant outcome of that scalp was India registering a memorable series-levelling victory. Beneath Siraj’s stellar performance in the series, there were sparks of…

‘Prasidh is a gully-level bowler, Prasidh isn’t fit to play Test cricket, he isn’t good enough to play even the Ranji Trophy, there are better bowlers than him.’ You can add to it many more expletives on social media related to Prasidh Krishna’s bowling which aren’t worth mentioning. In some ways, fans’ frustrations surrounding Prasidh were understandable. Despite having the potential to bowl wicket-taking deliveries, he lacked consistency to hit the right areas over a spell. Maybe there were inconsistencies in his bowling action, a point noted by Steve Harmison on Talk Sport. In fact, Prasidh did have a…

Ian Chappell, former Australian captain, had once quipped, “taking wickets should be a captain’s top priority”. Basically, one of Australia’s finest leaders was sharing his thoughts on picking a side with the required weaponry to take 20 wickets in Test cricket. For a moment base it on Chappell’s hypothesis, and you will start to wonder whether the current Indian think-tank has floundered a few times while selecting the bowling combination in the longest format. For starters, let’s consider the Test debutant in the Old Trafford game, Anshul Kamboj. The pacer from Haryana was largely bowling at speeds in the range…

Where to start? What to make of India’s nightmarish performance with the ball in the ongoing Old Trafford Test? Where did it go wrong for the visiting side? Many such questions kept echoing in the mind as England mercilessly piled on the runs on Day 2 and Day 3. The reasons for India’s listless show can be broadly divided into different parts – Relating to skills required for the prevailing conditions, lack of bowling smarts and not being able to maintain intensity levels for long periods. Just delve deeper into the tactical part, and you would start to wonder why…

The National Sports Governance Bill was tabled by the honourable Sports Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, in Parliament, on Wednesday. The resultant outcome is that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will now come under its jurisdiction. The BCCI will also come under the ambit of Right to Information Act, with it being acknowledged as a National Sports Federation. In the context of BCCI’s operations, the main point to consider is about the upper-age limit of the administrators. And that brings into question Roger Binny’s position. The incumbent BCCI president turned 70 on July 19 this year. According to…

With 57 Tests to his name, Zak Crawley has now played more games than the likes of Les Ames, Dennis Amiss, Patsy Hendren, Jim Laker, Jonathan Trott, John Snow, Herbert Sutcliffe, Maurice Leyland, and others. Interestingly, he is just four short of equalling the legendary Jack Hobbs’ 61 caps for England. Yes, England now play more than 10 Tests a year. But for a player who averages a shade under 31, that is a lot of Test matches. Despite Crawley’s underwhelming numbers, the England think-tank seem to have full faith in the Kent cricketer. In that context, what could be…

There was something significant about Washington Sundar’s delivery to Ben Stokes, in the second innings of the Edgbaston Test. It drifted into the left-hander a whopping 5.3 degrees. In an imaginary sense, it almost felt as if the ball came in with a sound of electric whizz. Washington followed that up by finding more than twice the amount of drift as any other spinner, in the third Test at Lord’s. These are impressive numbers for a spinner who is still relatively inexperienced at the Test level. For a minute or two, let’s leave aside his much-talked about delivery to Stokes,…

The venue was Potchefstroom, with India U-19 taking on Bangladesh U-19 in the 2020 U-19 World Cup final. Shoriful Islam and Tanzim Hasan, the two Bangladeshi seamers, were in excellent rhythm. Shoriful, in particular, beat the bat of Yashasvi Jaiswal on enough occasions. Despite those close shaves, and despite scoring just five off his first 28 deliveries, Jaiswal seemed to have unremitting belief that he would wade through the tricky phase. Soon, he essayed a pull off Tanzim and then a flick off Avishek Das. Jaiswal didn’t stop there as he top-scored for India with a valiant innings of 88. …

Bharath Ramaraj Many moons ago, in the 2014-15 Ranji Trophy final against Tamil Nadu, Karun Nair walked out to bat with his side in a spot of bother at 16-3. Tamil Nadu had been skittled out for a paltry total in their first innings. However, at that juncture, Karnataka needed someone to shepherd the innings. Karun didn’t just do the needful, but he went on to amass a gargantuan knock of 328, and, in the company of KL Rahul, powered Karnataka to a mind-blowing score of 762. The door was slammed shut on Tamil Nadu and they eventually hurtled to…

Just scroll through any text commentary for the final spell from Ben Stokes on the last day of the Lord’s Test and you may notice the following lines – ‘Nasty short delivery’, ‘the batter gets into a tangle against this short delivery’, ‘short ball into the body’, ‘hit on the glove’, ‘hit on the thigh’… and so on. All those short deliveries were a part of a marathon 10-over spell from Stokes, where he broke the stubborn stand between Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja. Just before the lunch break, Stokes had also bowled a nine-over spell of serious heat, which…