Author: Shamik Chakrabarty

India’s final T20I in the home series against New Zealand is on January 31. Their opening game at the 2026 T20 World Cup is on February 7. The turnaround time is less than a week and as India approach their final home series of the season, against the Kiwis, the biggest issue would be the fitness and workload management of the players. The World Cup squad has been picked and in a country that revels in the embarrassment of cricketing riches, there are adequate replacements for almost every position if by chance someone picks up an injury. Just two players…

Only three days ago, Angkrish Raghuvanshi was lying flat on the field while attempting a catch during Mumbai’s Vijay Hazare Trophy (VHT) game against Uttarakhand. He suffered a concussion, was taken to the hospital for medical tests and was kept under observation even after returning to the team hotel. It was heartening to see the young Mumbai opener taking the field on Monday and scoring an unbeaten half-century in his team’s nine-wicket win over Chhattisgarh. Mumbai won the toss at Jaipuria Vidyalaya Ground in Jaipur and sent the opposition in. Shardul Thakur ripped through Chhattisgarh’s top order, claiming four…

The MCG pitch for the Boxing Day Test between Australia and England has received an “unsatisfactory” (below average) rating from the ICC match referee Jeff Crowe, Cricket Australia has confirmed. It means that the game’s second-most hallowed venue, after Lord’s, would be handed one demerit point. Six demerit points in a rolling five-year period earn a centre a 12-month ban from hosting international cricket. “The ICC Match Referee has rated the pitch for the fourth NRMA Insurance Ashes Test at the MCG as ‘unsatisfactory’,” CA said in a press release. It added: “Under the ICC’s four tier pitch rating system, “unsatisfactory” is the third ranking and characterises a…

Rishabh Pant appears to be on the ODI slippery slope, as a 15-member squad for the three-match series against New Zealand is likely to be announced on January 3 and 4. On December 25, RevSportz reported that Ishan Kishan has started knocking on the ODI door on the heels of his return to the T20I set-up. And yet, on the face of it, a decision to drop Pant would be without rhyme or reason. A story is doing the rounds that there have been issues between the wicketkeeper-batsman and head coach Gautam Gambhir. A source in the know rubbished the…

Ben Stokes has launched a scathing attack on the MCG pitch after the Boxing Day Ashes Test ended inside two days. A total of 36 wickets fell in less than six sessions, as England eventually secured a tense four-wicket win to reduce the margin to 3-1 in the five-Test series. Stokes, the England captain, was brutally honest despite his team’s victory and said that a pitch like the MCG would raise “hell” if it was produced in another part of the world. “If that was another condition somewhere else and that happened, you probably would get a pasting. I’m pretty…

Cricket Australia lost in the region of $3.3 million for the Perth Test that ended in two days. They are yet to count their losses for another two-day finish in Melbourne, as the Boxing Day Test between Australia and England ended in 141.2 overs. Irrespective of the hard numbers, it’s all but certain that the Australian cricket’s governing body will have to take another big pecuniary hit. CA is not quite in pink as regards its financial health and its CEO, Todd Greenberg, has voiced concerns. Greenberg spoke to SEN after 20 wickets fell on the first day of the…

Winter is when Jaipur springs to life. Flowers bloom at Nehru Garden and colours tempt eyes. Rohit Sharma’s participation in the Vijay Hazare Trophy has added colour to the Pink City. He is the Pied Piper who is ensuring bums on seats. Jaipur is not a cricketing backwater. It regularly hosts IPL matches. From time to time, it hosts international matches as well. And yet, nearly 20,000 spectators walked through the turnstiles for Mumbai’s first game in the Vijay Hazare Trophy against minnows Sikkim. Fans made a beeline to get an entry to Sawai Mansingh Stadium as Mumbai played their…

Amid the Ro-Ko madness, the most exciting game of the opening round of this season’s Vijay Hazare Trophy somewhat slipped under the radar. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were setting the stands alight in Jaipur and Bangalore respectively. Their matches weren’t televised or livestreamed. Later in the evening, the BCCI posted video clips of their innings on its social media platforms, and on X (formerly Twitter), they collectively garnered more than 900k views. Something special was happening in Ahmedabad though, where Jharkhand and Karnataka were locked in a fierce contest. Batting first, Jharkhand posted 412/9 in 50 overs, thanks to…

The last time when Virat Kohli played a List A game that was not an ODI was in 2013. Rohit Sharma’s last Vijay Hazare Trophy match was seven years ago. Now, on the wrong side of thirty and being reduced to one-format players, the Indian team management and the selection committee felt that Rohit and Kohli must play domestic cricket to retain their match sharpness. Forget that Rohit had returned from the ODI series in Australia bagging the Player of the Series award and Kohli secured it in the home ODI series against South Africa without any game time in…

The Pondicherry Native Cricket Player Association has written to the BCCI’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU), alleging that Satvik Deswal has forged his documents to play for the Pondicherry cricket team. In an email to the BCCI’s ACU, dated December 15 and accessed by RevSportz, the Pondicherry Native Cricket Player Association stated: “It has been over a month since we submitted a formal complaint to the BCCI Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) regarding the use of forged documents by Satvik Deswal to qualify and represent the Pondicherry team.” The email added: “Despite bringing this matter to your notice, we observe that many players allegedly…