Author: Boria Majumdar

There is a certain charm to a Boxing Day Test. It is almost like a ritual. Red-ball intensity setting up the post-Christmas holiday season and transitioning into the new year. And for Indian cricket, it is even more special this time round with Rohit Sharma’s team gearing up for the final frontier. The last time India played a Boxing Day Test in South Africa, it was a KL Rahul masterclass that set up the match. And in the middle order, it was Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane who were the two constants alongside Virat Kohli. While Kohli is still there…

India’s women have just clinched a famous Test win against Australia. The sport has new-found momentum after back-to-back Test wins against England and Australia. Just when there were celebrations all round, toxicity seems to have cast a shadow on the win. An ESPN Cricinfo report credited Mithali Raj with having started the transformation. Yes, the headline could have been tweaked but it was clear to everyone what it was trying to portray. Mithali is a pioneer of the sport and some of the players like Sneh Rana, who won the player of the match award against Australia, were brought back…

India is one of the countries that aspires to host the Olympics in 2036. We successfully hosted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in October 2023 and, in the presence of the Prime Minister, it was announced that a strong bid would be put together for the 2030 Youth Olympic Games as well. And yet, it has now been a year that Indian wrestling is a mess. More importantly, no end is in sight. Without going into the rights and wrongs, it sends the worst signal to everyone watching. We couldn’t hold elections for months and when we did, it…

Australia, the best team in the world by a country mile. A team that is well and truly comparable to Clive Lloyd’s West Indies and Ricky Ponting’s men’s side that dominated cricket for a decade. Having won World Cups with ease, this Australian women’s team will go down in history as the very best. And that’s what magnifies India’s achievement. Helps us put things in context. Allows us to speak about this Test win, and say that it is the best thing to happen to the sport in years. A year which started with the Women’s Premier League becoming a…

A RevSportz Exclusive In five tours spread across nearly two decades, Sachin Tendulkar scored five Test hundreds in South Africa, more than any other visiting batsman. To put that into perspective, Virat Kohli is the only other Indian with more than one century in South Africa – he has two. So, as India embark on another Test series in the highveld – in the only country where they have yet to win a Test series – Tendulkar’s thoughts on the unique challenges that the batsmen will face are priceless. In an earlier interaction in the Backstage with Boria series, he…

Of Sachin Tendulkar’s 51 Test centuries, five came on South African soil, at venues as diverse as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Centurion. In fact, no visiting player can match that tally of five hundreds, spread across more than 18 years and five tours. He had to see off the likes of Allan Donald and Brett Schultz in the early years, before the Proteas’ bowling baton was passed on to Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini, and then Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel. Who better then to talk of how India’s bowlers need to perform if they’re to rewrite history and…

By Boria Majumdar The Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) elections are finally over and there is a new elected president at the helm of the sport. After 12 months of protest and turmoil, the sport was expected to come back to normal. But is the election really the end of the story? Is normalcy restored? Can it ever be? Sakshi Malik, Olympic medallist and one of India’s most decorated wrestlers, has decided to quit the sport in protest. Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat are equally disappointed. Their major grievance – how could someone who is a close aide of Brij…

As the dust settles on the IPL mini-auction, it is perhaps time for a deep dive. Is there a method to the madness, or is the auction a world in itself which is governed by its own laws and rules, where every plan and strategy is shunned after a while? What explains KKR paying 24.75 crores for Mitch Starc and RCB spending 11.75 crores for Alzarri Joseph, who hadn’t done much in the previous IPL? What explains a team spending 20.50 crores for Pat Cummins, who is a far better red-ball bowler and whose T20 record is modest at best?…

The auction was indeed about the Rs 24.75 crores spent for Mitchell Starc. And about Rs 20.50 crores spent for Pat Cummins. Also about Rs 14 crores spent for Daryl Mitchell. But it was as much about Yash Dayal. Five crores spent by RCB may not seem a big amount when you see some of the other buys but then the story goes far beyond the money spent. It is about all that is good about the IPL and why it is about the fulfilment of dreams. We hear it far too often that the IPL is ruthless business. Franchises…

Representation photo of what the IPL auction table will look like today in Dubai. (Source: X) Let’s start with a very basic question. Why is the IPL auction being held in Dubai, and not in India? It could easily have been held in Mumbai or Delhi or Kolkata, and not at the Coca Cola Arena in Dubai. And yet the BCCI decided to take it to Dubai, which is the gateway to Asia and South Asia. The only reason behind this move is the global ambition of the IPL as a brand. It is a key element in India’s use…