Author: Boria Majumdar

The Lagaan victory While the 1983 final transformed Indian and world cricket forever, the other match of immense significance was the victory over England in the semi-final. This was more because of the derisive reportage in the British press from the start of the tournament, a pattern of sneering that climaxed when it was known that England was pitted against India for a place in the final. English writers were sure of England winning and, as John Thickness declared in The Standard, a semi-final against India had given England a virtual passport to the final. Similarly, for Mathew Engel of…

The transition has begun. Finally. The World Test Championship (WTC) debacle had made it kind of inevitable and the selection committee led by Shib Sundar Das has finally taken some very important calls. My three main newspoints coming out of the meeting: it is the end of the road for Cheteshwar Pujara and, barring a miracle, we won’t see him play for India again. Two, Yashasvi Jaiswal, with a domestic average of 80 and an array of shots that dazzled one and all, has now been included and could well make his debut in the West Indies. Jaiswal is a…

At the time when India won the Prudential World Cup in 1983, Indian cricket was not in the best financial health. The BCCI’s coffers were nearly empty, and rewarding the players for the World Cup win was a difficult task. Rumours have it that Raj Singh Dungarpur, a key player in the BCCI at the time, had initially announced a financial reward of a few thousand rupees for each of the players, which did not go down well with some of the senior members of the team. In fact, it is also said that when the amount was first mentioned…

It was an inter-district match at Saurashtra’s Bhavnagar in 2006. Rajkot had lost the match. It ended by lunch on the last day and an 18-year-old Cheteshwar Pujara quickly called up his mother Reena after boarding a Rajkot-bound bus. It was sometime in the afternoon. “Mom, we have lost and by evening I will reach Rajkot. Tell daddy that he should pick me up from the stand,” he informed his mother. That was the last time Cheteshwar heard Reena Pujara’s voice. He reached Rajkot in the evening but his father was nowhere around to pick him up. “Those who went…

Cheteshwar Pujara is still only 35. With sports science, nutrition, and recovery methods so much more advanced than they were three or four decades ago, it’s no longer an age where the selectors’ axe necessarily means the end. But with KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer due back from injury, and Yashasvi Jaiswal or Ruturaj Gaikwad likely to make good use of their opportunity, the prospects of a return look pretty bleak. It doesn’t help Pujara that he has been a one-format player for years. Outside of Tests, he simply doesn’t play any high-profile games where he could catch the eye…

India’s last ICC title. It was 9.30pm in Edgbaston and the presentation had just ended after a thrilling Champions Trophy final. The Indians had completed their victory lap and were gradually making it back to the confines of the dressing room. Outside, however, the party was just about to begin. As I walked out of the media gate, E3, to walk to the car park and get going on the drive to Oxford, I was confronted by a sea of blue. It was simply an Indian takeover of Edgbaston. There was a human chain with close to a 1000 people…

For years on end, Indian athletes have come to the Olympic stadium early, and left within minutes after failing to make the final. Such has been the pattern, leaving behind questions of why a nation of over a billion can never win an athletics medal. Neeraj Chopra too came to the stadium early, and left before long on the day of his qualification. Only this time, he had a monstrous 86.54m throw to his name, topping the qualification charts. He was the first to make the final of the men’s Javelin. As Neeraj left the stadium, there was a swagger…

Brutally early training sessions are a leitmotif to athletics success stories, especially in the case of PV Sindhu, who would start her day at 4:30am in the lead-up to the Rio. Her father, a tall, broad-shouldered former national volleyball player, used to drive her 40 kilometres from their home in Secunderabad to Pullela Gopichand’s academy – which Sindhu joined when she was seven – every morning, and back home again, until she began to stay at the academy hostel. Thereafter, they had a house nearby, a result of her earnings in the post-Rio context. Hyderabad was a hotbed of competitive…

Olympic Day Special Sixteen months before the 2016 Rio Olympics, Abhinav and I were together at an event in Nagpur. We discussed how he had dealt with adversity in his decade-and-a-half-long career as an international sportsman. Just as the organisers were making the initial announcements asking people to settle down, I saw something very disturbing. Abhinav, who was sitting in the chair next to me, looked uncomfortable. All of a sudden, his hand was shaking involuntarily. It was clear he was trying his best to hide it. Each time we made eye contact, Abhinav tried to avoid my gaze. It…

When did India’s engagement with the Olympic movement start? And to what date can we trace back this engagement? How did things evolve? On the eve of Olympic Day, these are some of the questions we must ask ourselves. Existing writing on India’s Olympic history has traced the story back to 1920. It was in Antwerp, Belgium, that India first participated in the Olympic Games. This is what has been accepted for years now as the start of the Olympic movement in India. Interestingly, however, documents at the Public Records Office in Kew Gardens in London trace India’s Olympic story…