Author: Shamik Chakrabarty

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…

In one of the first judicial interventions in India, granting protection to the personality and publicity rights of a sportsperson, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday ordered Cricket Tak (one of the primary defendants) and Others to take down all infringing posts, videos, and allied content related to Sunil Gavaskar from their social media platforms and/or e-commerce websites within 72 hours. Certain platforms allegedly have been using the legendary former India captain’s name for their commercial benefits. Disparaging and lewd comments, too, allegedly have been posted on certain platforms involving Gavaskar and another sports broadcaster. The batting great had moved…

The Delhi-Andhra game in the Vijay Hazare Trophy to be played on Wednesday has been moved out of Chinnaswamy Stadium to the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bangalore. Although Chinnaswamy was originally scheduled to host the game, the venue didn’t receive permission from the Bengaluru City Police to play host to the match that would see Virat Kohli turning up for Delhi. According to sources, the City Police was iffy against the backdrop of the tragic Chinnaswamy Stadium stampede during Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL title celebrations on June 3 that claimed 11 lives and injured 56 others. The Karnataka…

“Virat Kohli is charged up, he is ready to rock,” said Sarandeep Singh, the Delhi coach, over the phone, a day before the start of this season’s Vijay Hazare Trophy. Delhi’s opening game is against Andhra and Sarandeep confirmed that Kohli would be playing. “He is playing tomorrow,” said the coach. Delhi, who will play their matches in Bengaluru, are supposed to play their matches at Chinnaswamy Stadium. But the game could be shifted to the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence (CoE). As of now, it stays at Chinnaswamy, to be played before empty stands. The final clearance from the police,…

Rohit Sharma addressed students at Masters’ Union, one of India’s leading business and technology schools, during their convocation ceremony in Gurugram on Sunday, where he was invited as chief guest. The former India captain was felicitated and a free-wheeling interaction with the students followed. Rohit was asked about pivoting a couple of times in his cricket career, from an off-spinner to a batter, and then a middle-order batter to an opener. The batting stalwart said: “The reason I started as an off-spinner was because I always loved batting. There was no doubt about it. But the off-spin came in because we had…

Make no mistake, Shubman Gill is not in India’s T20 World Cup squad because his form didn’t merit a place in the XV. Ajit Agarkar, the chief selector, and Suryakumar Yadav, the captain, spoke about how it was more down to team combination rather than form, as the selectors and the team management wanted a wicketkeeper-batsman at the top and a player of a similar profile as a back-up. The bottom line is that, if Gill were setting the stands alight with his batting after returning to the T20I fold as vice-captain, he would have been the second name on…