Author: Boria Majumdar

It’s been 16 seasons without a title. And the 17th was also starting to look bad before things changed, and how. Four wins on the trot, and RCB, all of a sudden, have a lifeline. Yes, they will have to depend on the results of some other games, but at least they have opened the door. With some luck, things could go the RCB way, and that’s a huge positive after what was a horrific start to the tournament. All of a sudden, the play-offs seem possible, and Thursday night’s victory was yet more reinforcement. All they need to do…

I am in Bengaluru for a series of shoots, and Simon and Schuster, my publishers, had asked if I was agreeable to visiting a number of book stores and doing book signings. It is always good to meet readers and interact with them, so my answer was an overwhelming yes! And, may I say, it was a very good experience to hop into book stores in the middle of the showers that cooled the temperature quite a bit. It was at one of the book stores that a young couple came forward and asked me a straightforward question. They had…

Sanju Samson or Rishabh Pant is a debate that has been raging in IPL 2024. And yes, we have our own colleagues differ on the issue. Within our team, we have always encouraged difference of opinion and I am perfectly fine with it. My own position on the issue is clear, Samson has done enough to push his case and the consistency is a sign of maturity that can’t be ignored. As leader, it adds to his case. And may I say, he deserves an opportunity. Sanju Samson in full flow is all class. The Rajasthan Royals captain has a…

Brajaranjan Ray, the pioneer of sports writing in Bengali, once recounted his experience of having met the proprietors of the leading vernacular daily of the time, and convincing them of the necessity for sports journalism. In this unpublished essay that I had the good fortune to read, Ray had something interesting to say about Rabindranath Tagore. Apparently, he was at a loss for Bengali equivalents of English terms in describing and reporting cricket matches. And who else to turn to, but Tagore? Tagore, of course, was as encouraging as ever. He asked him to go ahead without fear, and invent…

Team RevSportz is in Bengaluru today and tomorrow for a series of shoots. And one of the athletes training in Bengaluru is PV Sindhu. Sindhu, as we all know, is training with Prakash Padukone and had skipped the Uber Cup to focus on her Olympic preparations. And from the interview we had done with Prakash Sir, he was extremely confident that she would be ready to mount a strong challenge for Paris 2024. With us in Bengaluru, it is perhaps fitting that I share a Sindhu story, which had made a huge difference to me and to RevSportz during the…

July 2012. The Oxford summer morning kept its word: rain playing hide and seek, the English summer at 14 degrees Celsius. But that did not stop a good thousand or so people from gathering at the famous Iffley Road track at 5.45am in the morning. All invited guests were asked to be there by 6am for the Olympic Torch Relay. The Oxford leg, we were all told, would start exactly at 7am. And it did. And then, Sir Roger Bannister stepped out. Sir Roger, who challenged human limits one such morning under similar climes in 1954 by running a mile…

As I have said in an earlier piece, one of the most difficult events to deal with during the course of the sanction was the 2023 World Cup on home soil. Without me, my team was handicapped and we needed to do something to set the tone of the coverage. That’s when the idea came. How about launching a World Cup special Backstage with Boria series with a focus on India-Pakistan? And from the Pakistan standpoint, my first choice was Shoaib Akhtar. Shoaib is a maverick. One of the best fast bowlers of all time, he is all headlines in…

The legendary Sunil Gavaskar raised a question, with more than 16 years of service for India and 10,000 Test runs behind him. Clearly, a question is justified. Now, it could well be that the question has a rebuttal. For a modern-day great like Virat Kohli, a rebuttal is fair. It is a debate between two legends, and perfectly fine up to this point. But then, there is social media. All of a sudden, there are millions of trolls who jump in. Who the hell is Gavaskar to question Kohli? How can Gavaskar do this? This is where things go off-track.…

There were 62,007 people in the stands braving the summer heat. Another 60,000 or more outside wanting tickets. The stage was set for a grand spectacle. Almost everyone was supporting Mohun Bagan Super Giant, and may be that was their undoing. The pressure of the big final was too much to bear and despite taking a 1-0 lead at half time, Mohun Bagan were a timid team on the night. Not once could they take control of the game and Antonio Lopez Habas, the coach, had his worst game of the season. In all fairness, Mumbai were deserving winners in…

“I am nervous,” said Snehasish Ganguly, President of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB). In what was a big moment for Bengal cricket, the CAB president was understandably a little anxious. He was making the formal announcement to inaugurate the Bengal Pro T20 league for men and women. As a first in the country, the CAB is hosting the league for both men and women at the same time, and an equal number of franchises are part of both. “It was forever an ambition,” said Snehasish. “At CAB, we have always taken women’s cricket with equal passion, and the moment…