Author: RevSportz Comment

The most boring ODIs are usually the ones where the team batting first scores over 350. The remaining four hours are usually an utter waste of the spectators’ time, with the chasing side either skittled in quick time, or limping to a total that will minimize damage to their net run-rate, if it’s a multi-nation tournament. Such games almost always lack drama, which is the very essence of sport. This is not just an opinion either. The match in Dharamsala was the 4,684th ODI. Of those, 141 had been won by teams batting first and making 350 or more. Only…

In the end, there was no 49th ODI hundred. There didn’t need to be. But given how Virat Kohli has batted in the World Cup so far, it seems a matter of when, not if. And in any case, maybe we need to get over the century obsession. The late Peter Roebuck always used to say that Sachin Tendulkar’s greatest ODI innings wasn’t one of those 49 tons, but the 98 he scored under huge pressure in a World Cup run chase against Pakistan (Centurion, 2003). To understand the player Kohli is today, you perhaps have to go back to…

A Revsportz Comment “The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has lodged another formal protest with the ICC over delays in visas for Pakistani journalists and the absence of a visa policy for Pakistan fans for the ongoing World Cup 2023. The PCB has also filed a complaint regarding inappropriate conduct targeted at the Pakistan squad during the India vs Pakistan match held on 14 October 2023.” This was a statement put out by the PCB on Tuesday evening. The key phrase in it is ‘inappropriate conduct’. Visas, whether for journalists or fans, are beyond the ICC’s purview, and inextricably linked to…

RevSportz Comments At the delayed toss in Dharamsala, Scott Edwards was asked about the Netherlands’ two displays so far. Or rather, he was told that he was to be pretty pleased with his side having crossed 200 in both games. You could almost see the grimace on his face before he answered. For anyone listening, the subtext was clear. The Netherlands were in India only to make up the numbers, and cricket’s grandees — India, England, Australia and other established nations — were doing them a favour by letting them be part of the same stage. Edwards and the Netherlands,…

It should worry other teams that Australia know how to win a World Cup after a lousy start. Back in 1999, they arrived in the UK as though still in winter hibernation, and sleepwalked their way to defeats against New Zealand and Pakistan after making hard work of a modest chase against Scotland. We know what happened next. Comparisons across eras make no sense, and this team certainly doesn’t have the X-factor that Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist gave that side. What they do have is a core group that knows what it takes to win global trophies, and oodles…

Any fair-minded observer would tell you that this is a World Cup only in name. The day it was reduced to a ten-team round-robin event meant to maximise the number of India matches, it became a made-for-television event. The ‘World’ slipped quietly out. And while Afghanistan and the Netherlands are in India to represent cricket’s have-nots, the reality is that we hadn’t even come close to a genuine upset in more than 10 days. Those who say that New Zealand beating England was one ignore the fact that England have been good for just one World Cup, while New Zealand…

Before we judge the Afghanistan cricket team too harshly, there need to be the caveats. This is a side that has never played a home game. Not one of their 153 ODIs has been played on their own soil. Because of the political situation back home, they have become the game’s rootless vagabonds, and there is considerable sympathy for them as a result. But this World Cup, their third in succession, is an acid test in more ways than one. When they first played an ICC event against the top sides – the World T20 in the Caribbean in 2010…

There are some sports where an Olympic gold medal is the last word. If you’re a track-and-field athlete, for example, no number of Diamond League triumphs will ever compare to taking the top step of the podium at the Olympics. No one really cares who won in Oslo in 2014, or Oregon in 2022, but everyone will recall where they were when Usain Bolt set the Bird’s Nest in Beijing ablaze with his runs for the ages. India will never forget Neeraj Chopra’s javelin throw in Tokyo, in an Olympic Games postponed by a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.…

India begin their Asian Games football adventure with a tough assignment against China, the hosts, in Hangzhou on Tuesday evening. Igor Stimac, the coach, doesn’t even have the full 22-man squad at his disposal, and it will be interesting to see what sort of formation India line up in. So, how did things get to this point? Here, RevSportz looks at a few pertinent questions and issues that every Indian football fan would like an answer to. Between the AIFF, the ISL clubs and other stakeholders, they owe us some explanations. Why leave it to the last? Anurag Thakur, the…

KL Rahul has Test centuries in Australia, England, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean. He averages 47.67 in ODIs and has a strike-rate (87.37), comparable to that of Steve Smith and Joe Root. In T20Is, he has a better strike-rate and twice as many centuries (2) as Virat Kohli. Why, then, is he the butt of so many jokes and the target of such venom from so-called fans? If you followed the social-media narrative, you’d think Rahul was a plodder with the numbers of the erstwhile Maharajah of Vizianagram, whose six innings for India in 1936 fetched him 33…