Author: Boria Majumdar

This game could well mark the end of the Manolo Marquez era. And may I say it isn’t a bad thing for Indian football. It has been the worst one year for the national team and someone who was negotiating and agreeing with FC Goa was clearly not interested in the India job. Or he had seen the writing on the wall. Either way, Manolo wasn’t on it 100 per cent and it will be better for the AIFF to look beyond him. Three years back India beat Hong Kong 4-0. Today, they lost 0-1 to the 153rd ranked side.…

Boria Majumdar As a player, Michael Clarke was part of one of the strongest Test sides in history, which won in India for the first time in 35 years in 2004. Now a commentator after an illustrious career as player and captain, Clarke spoke exclusively to Boria Majumdar, RevSportz editor-in-chief, about the World Test Championship final between Australia and South Africa. Boria: In your books, are Australia the favorites for the WTC final? Michael Clarke: I think the Australian team is playing beautiful cricket, the way we dominated India in Australia. And again, I think the conditions play a part…

A visibly relaxed Srinjoy Bose, who filed his nomination for General Secretary of Mohun Bagan Club, caught up with me around midnight India time. After a rather acrimonious election campaign where Bose and Debasis Datta traded barbs for almost two months, both called a truce and decided to come together to bury the hatchet. “Everything can be resolved through dialogue, and while it is true that we had drifted apart and did not see eye to eye for some time, I am glad we managed to resolve our differences and come together for a cause,” said Bose. When asked what…

It was a plan well made. Sourav Ganguly would be back from Lord’s by 12:30pm after his meeting, and we would catch up at his Waterloo apartment over lunch to set up the England-India series. Ganguly is always a delight to speak to, and more when it is in London and about Test cricket. What we hadn’t factored in was that the train journey from Oxford to London Paddington could be badly messed up. An incident at Reading meant the train wouldn’t go to Paddington, and one had to shift to the Waterloo option from Reading. Actually, it wasn’t a…

Boria Majumdar Kuldeep Yadav will be 31 in December. Yet, in a superb international career that has seen him take 306 wickets from 166 matches across all formats, it’s almost staggering to note that only 13 of those caps have come in Tests. Wretched luck with injuries hasn’t helped, and neither did the presence of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja – two of the all-time greats – in the Indian side. But with Ashwin now retired, Kuldeep has an incredible opportunity to nail down a place on the upcoming five-Test tour of England. In this exclusive interview with Boria Majumdar,…

Anyone who follows Kuldeep Yadav knows he is a football fan. In fact, an ardent fan who hardly misses a major football game. But that he was a fan of Mohun Bagan wasn’t known to me ahead of this interview. It was indeed a revelation as a Mohun Bagan fan myself. “Yes and I have gone and watched a number of Mohun Bagan games as well,” Kuldeep told me. “I did not tell anyone that I was coming, for then you get all the attention as a cricketer. I just wanted to go and enjoy as a football fan and…

Boria Majumdar I have so far stayed away from writing about this issue. But now, I think it’s time. Every passing day, this trend is becoming more and more prominent. People lifting interviews and passing them off as their own without giving credit. Ethics? Professionalism? Basic sense of professional integrity? We at RevSportz have time and again called some of these people out. While some have apologised, others have disappeared. Sometimes, we have let things pass because we are so used to it. Such acts weren’t right. We should have called such offenders out. And not let them be. It…

There has always been much talk about the renaming of the Pataudi Trophy. A number of former cricketers and public intellectuals have spoken against the idea and said it is a sign of disrespect to the Pataudi family. From what I have heard, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) certainly want the Pataudi name to be associated with the series, while also honouring James Anderson and Sachin Tendulkar by renaming the trophy after them. “It is not true at all that the Pataudi legacy is being disrespected,” said a…

Team India are gearing up for the upcoming five-match Test series in England. Under Shubman Gill’s leadership, a new era is set to begin. The last time they played a Test series in England, India were leading 2-1 in 2021 till a COVID-19 interruption. Along with head coach Ravi Shastri, Bharat Arun as the bowling coach was an integral part of the set-up. Ahead of this tour, he had a chat with RevSportz’s editor-in-chief, Boria Majumdar, to discuss what India’s bowlers did well on that tour, Shubman Gill as captain, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, and a lot more. Boria: Your…

Boria Majumdar We have now seen arrests in the Bengaluru stampede issue and among those arrested are the head of marketing for Diageo and senior people at DNA Networks. Apparently, a manhunt is on for RCB CEO Rajesh Menon as well. Add in the removal of multiple police officers and the political advisor to the Chief Minister as well. The search is also on for some KSCA officials. The new official line is that everything was done by RCB without proper permission. It just happened because some rogue cricket officials and marketing guys wanted it to happen, without law enforcement…