Author: Boria Majumdar

Exactly a month from now, the Indian national football team will play the Asian Cup in Doha. Pitted against teams like Australia, Uzbekistan and Syria, it will be one of their toughest assignments in a while. In fact, India hasn’t played a slew of higher-ranked teams like these in years, and this will be a big test for Sunil Chhetri and his teammates. And soon after the Asian Cup, focus will shift to the next set of World Cup qualifiers in March 2024. India have never made the third round of World Cup qualifiers and it would be a historic…

I wanted to write a very different piece. In fact, I had almost finished my copy before I decided to press the delete button out of frustration. While I still feel delighted about the WPL auction and what happened with Kashvee Gautam and Vrinda Dinesh, I am equally gutted by the toothless performance of the women’s team against England. No WPL auction can help take the game ahead if the national team continues to play spineless cricket. The truth is the India women’s team has won very few tournaments of significance. Some individual efforts stand out, but there are no…

For far too long, the women’s game had to draw its identity from the men’s version. Shafali Verma was the Virender Sehwag of the women’s game and so on. It finally stopped earlier this year in India, when the Women’s Premier League (WPL) was organised with serious success. With 951 crores paid for broadcast rights and 4669 crores for the five franchises, the women’s game finally had an identity of its own. With a further 1.5 crores added to the auction purse for each team, it is now a brand in its own right and a beginning has been made.…

6 years back this week in December was an experience of a lifetime. Looking back the thrill and amazement has stayed the same. He had just about settled down in his chair for the interview when I decided to try and see if I could unleash a bit of a tackle. ‘Cristiano Ronaldo claims he is the greatest’, I said. ‘How do you react to it?’, I asked El Diego. As his interpreter translated the question for him, I thought I sensed a degree of unease. Clearly I was wrong. All of a sudden he burst out into a fit…

It was a fateful Durga Puja afternoon in Kolkata in October 2017 that changed it all. India were playing Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens at the time and the Indian team management had been invited to a Durga Puja organised by Biswarup Dey, former Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) secretary. Not having seen a puja in years, both Ravi Shastri and Bharat Arun, head coach and bowling coach at the time, were excited to undertake the journey from the hotel to Bowbazar in the heart of North Kolkata. It was at the pandal that someone raked up the topic…

“They have a complete game and are surely going to be the team to watch out for in the next few months,” said Pullela Gopichand when I asked him about Satwik and Chirag, and how he saw them shaping up in the next two years. “If you check, there are few like them around the world. They have the physical strength to hit the big smashes, they have the defence and age is on their side. They will only get better. And having played in Tokyo and knowing what it is all about, they will surely be one of our…

To be published by Simon and Schuster in January 2024. Authored by Boria Majumdar and Vineel Krishna Foreword by Shri Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister, Odisha. Odisha has forever been a favourite destination for many of us growing up in Bengal. My first memory of Odisha is my father telling me that a puja vacation was incomplete without going to Puri and Bhubaneshwar. In fact, it was a ritual. Every Puja, we would go to the neighbouring state for a good two weeks. It was affordable and quick and, may I say, thoroughly enjoyable. I loved visiting the Jagannath Temple, and…

The aura of the Boxing Day Test. The moment you mention it in the South African context, fast and bouncy wickets come to mind. Fast bowlers running in and hitting the deck, getting the ball to jump from awkward lengths, batsmen finding it difficult to adjust to the bounce and some even getting hit, much to the excitement of a hostile, jingoistic crowd. Over the years, South African fast bowlers, now led by Kagiso Rabada, have ruled in home conditions against most visiting teams. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill and company will know that reality well. They will know…

RevSportz is two years of age today. And I would not be exaggerating if I said that the last 12 months have been a dream. We organised our first sports conclave, Trailblazers, in March 2023 and managed to cover almost every sporting event from the ground. We had our colleagues in China for the Asian Games and the Asian Para Games, in Budapest for the World Athletics Championships, in Sri Lanka for the Asia Cup, in South Africa for the Women’s T20 World Cup, in London for the WTC final, in Birmingham for badminton’s All England, and much more. We…

There was one defining line in the BCCI press release issued on Thursday night – that Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli had asked to be rested from the white-ball leg of the South Africa tour. On the face of it, it stated a very simple fact. But deep down, it said much about what these two stalwarts have decided to prioritise. For a long time, we have heard that people prefer white-ball cricket over the red ball. There is a lot more money in white-ball cricket and many more eyeballs. But what defines you as a cricketer is what you…