Author: Boria Majumdar

This is not a rant. Rather, it is a lament. India were poor last night. Absolutely awful. And because of that, they have now pushed themselves to the brink of being eliminated in the group stage of the T20 World Cup. Everything that could go wrong did. The truth is India did not deserve to win. Not when you make such basic mistakes, and play such pathetic cricket. Let’s start from the top. The fielding from the very beginning was shambolic. From Richa Ghosh making a mess of a reasonably easy chance, to Renuka Thakur conceding a boundary, India were…

“Pehle jab bazaar jata tha ya kahin aur, log haste the. Aap jante hain kyun. Abhi sammaan dete hain. Kehte hai yeh wohi hai jo gold medal jita hai. Ma Kasam wala [Earlier, when I went to the bazaar, people used to laugh. Now, they give respect. They said this is the one who won the gold medal, the swear-on-your-mother guy],” said Navdeep Singh as we settled down for a conversation on how the Paralympic gold has changed his life. In the last few days, Navdeep has finished a Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) shoot with Amitabh Bachchan, attended the Reliance…

The Women’s T20 World Cup is upon us. India will start their campaign against New Zealand tomorrow and go into the competition as one of the favourites. They have won both their warm-up games and the Harmanpreet Kaur-led team are on the cusp of history. When Rohit Sharma led the Indian men’s team to the USA and the Caribbean in June, the number of media who accompanied them was huge. We all remember how many media people came back on the special charter flight from Barbados thanks to Jay Shah and the BCCI. The question is, how many of our…

Mahatma Gandhi and cricket sounds a bit odd to begin with. The Mahatma, never really of any keen athletic disposition, trying his hand at what was a colonial import to keep the empire together wasn’t the most logical thing. Yet, he did have his run-ins with the gentleman’s game from time to time, eventually playing a serious hand in the discontinuance of the Bombay Pentangular tournament, colonial India’s version of the commercially lucrative IPL. Kausik Bandyopadhyay in his work, Mahatma on the Pitch, says it nicely, “It is interesting to explore the illusions of a sporting Gandhi, who played little…

Almost every day during the last week, we have seen a press release issued by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). Either, it is issued by PT Usha, its president, or by some member of the Executive body opposed to her at the moment. I am not going into the merits of who is right or who is wrong. The fact is, it doesn’t really matter because the end result is India cutting a very sorry figure in front of the world. That there is no love lost between the president and her team is known. That there is disunity is…

Indian chess is at an all-time high, and there is much interest in the sport across the country at the moment. With the Global Chess League (GCL) round the corner and Gukesh Dommaraju involved in a World Championship title clash in exactly a month and a half, interest is all set to be sustained and even peak over the next few weeks. Speaking to RevSportz, R Praggnanandhaa, a key member of the gold-medal-winning team at the Chess Olympiad, made a huge statement, which should come as music to the ears of every Indian chess fan. He not only backed Gukesh…

In the latest no-holds-barred episode of Backstage with Boria, RevSportz’s editor-in-chief talks to Lalit Modi, the architect of the Indian Premier League (IPL) on the recent developments with The Hundred in England. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have spoken of tremendous interest from Indian investors, but Modi, who says he backed out of negotiations earlier, opens about with typical candour about how the numbers just don’t add up. Excerpts: You said the ECB’s sale of The Hundred is much like a Ponzi scheme. Why did you use such harsh words? Look at the last scheme they put out…

There is a liar masquerading as a super fan, and his name is Tiger Robi. He lied the day before yesterday, saying he was assaulted in Kanpur. When his falsehoods were exposed by the police and hospital authorities who conducted all tests on him, he conveniently changed the narrative to him “feeling unwell and dehydrated”. I have since read a number of his Facebook posts. He has a follower base of 1.3 million, which makes him an influencer of some sort. And let me state this – he is a peddler of hate. He provokes fans and says a lot…

The best teams adapt to different situations, and that’s what makes them great. May I say that’s what this Indian team is all about. For the longest time, it was a given that India would go in with three spinners on home soil. The fast bowlers would bowl a few overs, and then the likes of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja would take over. Add Kuldeep Yadav to the mix, and it is a lethal threesome. At home, this was the template. So much so that even the likes of Jasprit Bumrah could be rested. What is also important to…

Shakib Al Hasan is Bangladesh’s greatest ever cricketer. But as he calls it a day, the question is how he will be remembered, Will his politics come in the way, and will he have to live elsewhere with what is going on back home in Bangladesh? Or will the current political dispensation be kind and reasonable enough to give him the farewell he deserves? Shakib isn’t the most endearing personality. He isn’t Mashtafe Mortaza, for example. He is elite, and a star who was always a cut above the rest. Be it in his 7500 runs in 50-over cricket or…