The Spectator

1-0 up in the series. More than 60000 spectators on Boxing Day. Captain wins toss and decides to bat first. Opener’s first tour to Australia. India ends the day at 329 for 4; of which 195 (off 233) decorated with 25 fours and 5 sixes come from one batsman. Flamboyance defined Virender Sehwag’s batting career, but lack of baggage and no fear of failure leading to high impact knocks noticeably marked his early years. India went on to lose the test by 9 wickets, thanks to a career-best 257 from Ricky Ponting. India’s cricket over the 1990s & early-2000s on away tours seemed to follow this pattern of solid batting prowess and infrequent instances of out-bowling the opposition. The bowling looked thinner on days when the batting delivered under par, which resulted in more losses than draws or wins. Spin was India’s stronger suit, which made it more arduous task to restrict opposition in the 1 st innings, necessitating the batting to click in the first attempt. That Sehwag knock prope...

Come 19 th of this month, Indian players will be seen resuming competitive cricket after a long hiatus. The net sessions have begun, social media conversations are multiplying, and the broadcaster build-ups are ramping up. Unprecedented circumstances have resulted in matches being played in empty stadiums and would be remarkably interesting to see how crowd-puller teams/players react. This is in addition to the mental fatigue of isolation and pressures of competing within a bubble for over a month and half. Tough characters or marquee players in the teams would be required to drive the rest, in addition to executing skills on the field. No bigger character in Indian cricket at the moment than Virat Kohli to demonstrate how it can be done. He has been leading one of the more popular IPL teams – Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for a while now and would be keen to have a go at the trophy one more time. RCB is the third major team other than Delhi Capitals (DC) (previously Delhi Dared...

Quiet Saturday evening of a National Holiday. A two-line captioned video clip makes its way onto the social media, and within minutes stirs up a concoction of emotions across the country of over a billion people. Everything about the post – audio, video, caption, timing, has some logic. The full stop had arrived and delivered by the man himself, in his own revered manner. We did not hear Mahendra Singh Dhoni speak but like always the mind took centre stage over emotions on a public platform. The emotions never really came to the fore, did they? We did not see much expression when he was run out for nought in the debut match, or when India crashed out of the 2007 World Cup. There was no animated reaction when 0-8 along with a home series loss to England threatened to cut short Dhoni’s captaincy nor when his run out in the 2019 World Cup virtually marked the conclusion of India’s campaign. The emotions did show up on occasions, especially when he was not out in the middle – press confe...