Author: Shamik Chakrabarty

This is that time of the year when flowers bloom at Semmozhi Poonga (a botanical garden) in Chennai. Colours tempt your eyes, marigolds touch your senses, while roses live at your knee, oozing resplendence. This is also that time of the year when MS Dhoni dusts off his cricket kit and hits the Chepauk nets. It’s an everlasting love affair – Chennai Super Kings and their former captain. It has never been like an employer-employee relationship. To judge it from the fans’ perspective, you are allowed to paraphrase The Police song that topped the Billboard charts in 1983 – every…

Purple rain. The heavens opening up at the onset of summer should be good news. But Kolkata loves its cricket, Virat Kohli is in town and there’s the small matter of the 2025 IPL opener at Eden Gardens, with Kolkata Knight Riders starting as the defending champions. How do you describe the frenzy? Bonkers is probably the right word, although an apology is due for using cockney slang. Eden witnesses a full house almost for every IPL game. Craze goes through the roof when Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians pay a visit. No prizes for guessing,…

How much do the bowlers gain in a T20 game if they are allowed to salivate? Opinion appears to be divided on this, with Mohammed Shami strongly in favour of the usage of saliva on the ball and his India teammate Varun Chakravarthy not reading too much into it. When the IPL captains met at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai on Thursday, they were asked about their suggestions as regards lifting the saliva ban, a Covid era imposition in cricket, made permanent by the International Cricket Council in 2022. The skippers unanimously agreed and accordingly, the IPL decided to lift…

They were going full vocal in the aisles at Eden Gardens… Ah, how we miss Tony Greig, and his ability to sugarcoat hyperbole with flair. To describe Virat Kohli on a cricket field, you need a Greig behind the mic and not a Richie Benaud. No disrespect to ‘his master’s voice’, arguably the greatest commentator the game has seen. But raw emotions and melodramatic baritone serve a nice cocktail. Kohli is no longer the angry young man of cricket. He is now a senior citizen, doubling up as team mentor, be it the Indian side or Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Even…

The ban on applying saliva on the ball, a Covid-era imposition in cricket, is set to be lifted in the IPL. This follows the IPL captain’s meeting at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai on Thursday. It is learnt that all 10 captains have agreed to it and an official communication in this regard would be sent to the franchises in due course. The IPL starts with a game between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Eden Gardens on March 22. In another development, two balls would be used from each end from the 11th over onwards in this…

As Varun Chakravarthy approached the rostrum, he was serenaded by “Varun, Varun” chants from the fans. They turned up in numbers at Biswa Bangla Mela Prangan, where Kolkata Knight Riders held Knights Unplugged 2.0 — a fan-engagement event — on Wednesday. The supporters gave the spinner a hero’s welcome. What a difference a year can make! Over the past 12-odd months, Varun has won the IPL for KKR, earned an India recall, became the team’s “X-factor” and lifted the Champions Trophy. Pairing up with Sunil Narine, KKR’s self-effacing hero, the 33-year-old is once again ready to give batters sleepless nights…

Watching Kolkata Knight Riders’ practice sessions can sometimes be boring. Beyond the fun football that serves as the prelude, it’s about sticking to the process. Andre Russell wows with his close control when they play football. At the nets, he sends the ball into the stands for fun. KKR’s nets sessions give a feel that the team is running on autopilot. This is despite the fact that they have lost their title-winning captain, Shreyas Iyer, and larger-than-life mentor, Gautam Gambhir. Credit goes to the KKR management for retaining the winning core although, in a mega-auction year, it was impossible…

The IPL 2024 ended on May 26. Since then, Sunil Narine has spent his time plying his trade in different T20 leagues, probably collecting his thoughts, and a Rs 12-crore retention fee, about how to catch the opponents in a spin web, yet again, in this year’s Indian Premier League. The small matter of a T20 World Cup that was played in the United States and the Caribbean last year didn’t woo him enough to come out with his international retirement. Narine is 36. But Kolkata Knight Riders were always going to retain him irrespective of his age. His presence…

Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah at the SCG Nets (PC: Debasis Sen) Amid the pyro of colours as the country celebrated Holi on Friday, an update on Jasprit Bumrah was a bit concerning. The fast bowler is said to be still recovering from the back injury that saw him miss the Champions Trophy. And he is set to be ruled out of the first few matches of the 2025 IPL as well. Bumrah is expected to join the Mumbai Indians squad by early April. Bumrah is Indian cricket’s most valuable player by a distance and there’s no question of rushing…

Ajinkya Rahane took a corner seat, leaving the centre for Kolkata Knight Riders head coach Chandrakant Pandit and the newly-appointed team mentor Dwayne Bravo. Vice-captain Venkatesh Iyer was at the other end. Usually, captains are expected to be at the centre, especially when a franchise is holding its first press conference of the season. But that’s how Rahane has been, never craving for centrestage. He chose to take a back seat after guiding India to arguably their greatest-ever Test series win, in Australia in 2020-21. He refused to hog the limelight after captaining Mumbai to the Ranji Trophy triumph in…