Author: S Kannan

Madan Lal, India’s lion-hearted all-rounder from the 1983 triumph, felt that there was little point in talking about the pressure on India as they go into the ICC World final against Australia on Sunday, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. “Players ko koi farak naheen padta, ek lakh log chilayyen [It doesn’t matter to the players if a hundred thousand people are screaming],” he told RevSportz in an exclusive interview. “Unko pataa hai, focused rehna hai [They know they have to stay focussed].” India have won each of their 10 matches in the tournament, but that will count for…

Shreyas Iyer has been subjected to the most stringent scrutiny in his cricket career. Maybe, he needed to prove a few points to the critics as well as to boost his own ego, something so important for a batter. On Wednesday, Shreyas was in high-octane mode as he slammed his second century of this World Cup. Cricket has always been massively stats-driven, and data analysts have also come into play in a big way in recent years. For a batter like Shreyas, playing his maiden World Cup, the baptism has been a hard one. At the start of this campaign,…

Some dates stay etched in the memory. Forever. November 16, 2013, when Sachin Tendulkar retired from international cricket at the Wankhede Stadium, emotions overflowed. How could someone that millions of cricket devotees had referred to as God retire? Perhaps they had forgotten that God works in mysterious ways even without appearing before you daily. On Wednesday, the same Wankhede Stadium witnessed that deity giving a darshan. Instead of being on the 22-yard strip that he had once called his temple, Tendulkar was in a special enclosure. He was there to watch over an ardent devotee, Virat Kohli. Kohli bowed once…

Like the proverbial phoenix rising, Sumit Nagal, India’s top-ranked men’s tennis player, has made a massive leap to be ranked 141 on the ATP computer. On Sunday, Nagal lost a three-setter to Corentin Moutet, the world No. 51, in a Challenger event in Helsinki, Finland. Playing on a hard court indoors, the way Nagal fought was praiseworthy. “It is really sad not to get over the line today,” he told RevSportz in an exclusive interview on Monday, after the 3-6, 6-3, 2-6 defeat. “Yet, it has been a special week for me.” At 26, Nagal has seen the highs and…

Breaching the pain barrier is not just a metaphor in the case of KL Rahul. Pain, not just in the physical form, but from being subjected to all kinds of innuendo, slurs, and mental pressure – the man from Bengaluru has seen it all. On Diwali evening, one saw a new Rahul. Like the firecracker called the atom bomb, which creates a loud noise, Rahul was in turbo-charged mode, revved up and batting with a ferocity seldom seen before. The way he blasted 102 runs suggested a new avatar. Was he not the same man who was referred to as…

If cricket be a carnival and Diwali festival, the two have meshed often to produce brilliant moments for the fans. As India take on Netherlands in their last league match of the ICC World Cup at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Sunday, be sure that sparks will fly. Before you jump to any conclusion, yes, there is a cracker ban enforced by the Supreme Court of India. But then, nobody can stop the pyrotechnics when the batters get going in this last league match for India. Rahul Dravid, the coach, has already wished everybody a happy Diwali. He has…

The spirit of 1983 lingers. Forty years after Kapil Dev and his boys won the World Cup at Lord’s, people still wish to celebrate it. In New Delhi this week, the Hyatt Regency hotel invited the “Class Of 1983” for a dinner, and the senior staff got a chance to interact with them. “This was not a PR exercise,” said Sunil Valson to RevSportz in an exclusive interview. “When we won the World cup and came to New Delhi, the same hotel had hosted us. This was a chance to take a trip down memory lane and relive the moments.”…

Mirabai Chanu, who injured her thigh during the weightlifting competition at the Asian Games in Hangzhou in October, is still weeks away from training again. Speaking to RevSportz on Friday, Sahdev Yadav, President of the Indian Weightlifting Federation, said: “Mirabhai underwent an MRI scan in Mumbai on return from China. She has a tendon injury in her thigh, which is not serious.” When Mirabai collapsed in pain at the Asian Games, the images were enough for spectators inside the arena and TV viewers alike to fear the worst. “Kuch ghabrane ke liye naheen hai, Paris Olympic medal to pucca aayega…

A RevSportz Exclusive If one man defined the gold standard in Indian sport before Neeraj Chopra came along, it was Abhinav Bindra. Having competed in three Olympics from Sydney 2000 onwards, the air-rifle ace finally sealed gold in Beijing in 2008. Bindra represented India in five successive Olympics, each time gunning for a medal, and was the most hardworking of athletes. His famous reference to the Olympics being a daily process of training and slogging, and not something to wake up to once in four years, still resonates. Even when Bindra had put his heart and soul into a last…

One man who prefers to stay away from the limelight and do his job quietly for Team India is Rahul Dravid, the coach. As the team celebrated their success, and eight wins in a row in the ICC World Cup, TV images of a composed Dravid caught the eye. As a former captain and a thinking cricketer, Dravid has always been steeped in the game’s techniques and traditions. He has been a student of the game and a teacher, which is why his work away from the glare of the arc lights is so special. Coaching at the highest level…