Author: Boria Majumdar

Rohit Sharma had just been appointed captain and we were speaking on his philosophy of leadership in December 2021. “The captain should be the last one in the team in terms of priority,” he told me. A slight pause, and he continued. “Not in terms of performance. In terms of performance, the captain has to lead from the front. But in everything else, he should be the last person in the team.” While not going overboard about the knock against Afghanistan on a belter of a batting track, one thing is for certain. Rohit the captain is determined to lead…

With World Mental Health Day, October 10, around the corner, it was pertinent to speak to an athlete who was one of India’s great success stories from the Asian Games, after having grappled with mental health challenges. And yet, that ordeal is hardly documented, and we haven’t ever asked this question – if he wasn’t successful, would we have spoken about Tejaswin Shankar, India’s best high jumper and decathlete? Tejaswin is an atypical sportsperson. He is extremely articulate, worked for Deloitte in the US, is happy to experiment and fail, and is living life on his terms. In this conversation,…

Cricket at LA Olympics 2028 proposal. Final announcement During Mumbai IOC session. After months of deliberations and speculation, it can be said that Cricket is likely to be included in the proposed Sports Programme for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. After discussions in the Executive Board, the final decision will be taken and announced at the International Olympic Committee’s session in Mumbai later this week. We can report that it is now a formality. WhileRevSportz have been reporting the story for months now, the final outcome seems to be in favour of cricket’s inclusion in the Olympics. Coming at…

Michael Clarke played in three World Cups, winning the tournament in 2007 and 2015. He was captain in 2015, and signed off from the format with a match-winning 74 in the final. Now a respected commentator and analyst, he told Boria Majumdar in this special World Cup episode of Backstage with Boria how he worried about Australian finding the right balance, the importance of Rohit Sharma at the top of the order, and the permanence of class in the context of Virat Kohli. Excerpts from the conversation: Boria: India are hosts again. In 2015, you won it, 2019 Eoin Morgan,…

Boria Majumdar Mahela Jayawardene captained Sri Lanka in two World Cup finals, scoring a dazzling century in a losing cause in 2011. He subsequently coached Mumbai Indians in the IPL with great success. One of the finest thinkers on the game, he spoke to Boria Majumdar in this special World Cup episode of Backstage with Boria, on topics as diverse as Sri Lanka punching above their weight, Rohit Sharma the captain and India-Pakistan in front of 100,000 in Ahmedabad. Excerpts from the conversation: Boria: First question … 2011, the last time the World Cup was played on our soil, your…

Sutirtha and Ayhika Mukherjee winning the table tennis medal will rank as one of India’s best ever table tennis performances of all time. For them to beat China in China in front of a partisan Chinese crowd, speaks volumes of their mental strength. Even yesterday against the North Korean pair they were in the contest till the very last game. For two athletes who haven’t had much support, this Asian Games has indeed turned the corner. Soon after Revsportz put out an interview with the Mukherjee’s done by Trisha Ghosal in the evening, we got a call from Parth Jindal,…

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, wasn’t just one of the greatest middle-distance runners of all time. He also raced in an era where he could see first-hand the full extent of Africa’s athletic potential. When, in his subsequent avatar as the sport’s chief administrator, he raised the thorny topic of immigration, those that might otherwise have turned a blind eye to it were forced to listen. “It’s not an easy thing for me to say but I was finding it quite hard to see a difference between what was emerging and human trafficking,” Coe said in an…

A RevSportz Exclusive By now, we’ve all seen the pictures and replays many times over. The false start, the chaos that ensued, a ten-minute delay, all the girls being allowed to race, and Jyothi Yarraji’s long, loping strides that allowed her to come back from a slow start to win a medal that was upgraded to silver once China’s Yanni Wu was rightly disqualified. On Monday morning, James Hillier, Athletics Director at the Reliance Foundation and Jyothi’s coach, spoke to Boria Majumdar, RevSportz Editor-in-chief, and tried to make sense of one of the most extraordinary races any of us has…

Unless the HOC Stadium in Hangzhou was suddenly the setting for smoke, mirrors and optical illusions of the David Copperfield variety, what happened at the start of the women’s 100m hurdles was really beyond dispute. Before the race, the attention was squarely on the middle lanes, with China’s Yanni Wu in lane 4 and Yuwei Lin in lane 6 sandwiching India’s Jyothi Yarraji in lane 5. The trio were expected to share the medals, though no one knew in what order they would finish. With Wu and Jyothi having season’s bests within 0.02s of each other, there really was nothing…

Hopes have soared and the country is now expecting a really good showing in Paris in July 2024 at the Olympics. And if the shooters are mentored and nurtured well, there is no reason why this hope will remain unfulfilled. 21 medals including 7 golds at the Asian Games and Indian shooting is on a steep upward climb after the lull of a few years. Hopes have soared and the country is now expecting a really good showing in Paris in July 2024 at the Olympics. And if the shooters are mentored and nurtured well, there is no reason why…