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Breakfast show — Morning glory with Rohit Sharma

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Rohit Sharma (PC: Shamik Chakrabarty/RevSportz) The morning mist melted into the midday sunlight. The port of call was Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui to catch up with New Zealand’s practice followed by India’s ahead of the fourth ODI here on Friday. Also, on the agenda was breakfast at an eatery on Maunganui Road. I chose TANK and I made the right choice. A chicken salad and a pineapple juice were ordered and then I saw a special person walking through the door. “Dada aap yehan pe aagaye ho (Dada, you are here),” was the greeting from Rohit Sharma. He was on a morning stroll with his family and decided to drop by for a glass of fruit juice. It was a chance meeting. Rohit wears his greatness and stardom lightly. Deep down, he still remains that Borivali boy — ‘Sharma ji ka beta’. Rohit and his wife Ritika now have two kids. Ritika pointed to the younger one when asked about who is more shararati (playful). “Do saal ka hai, shararati toh hoga (he is just two years old, he will be p...

IND vs NZ: Henry brushes aside fitness concerns ahead of two-match Test series

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Matt Henry. ( PC- ICC/ X) New Zealand pacer Matt Henry has brushed aside concerns about his fitness after being named in the squad for the two-match Test series against India, which begins in Wellington on November 17. Henry missed the third ODI against India after suffering a concussion following a freak collision with team-mate Devon Conway. The veteran pacer has since recovered and is available for the fourth ODI, which will be played in Mount Maunganui on Friday. He has also been named in the squad for the home Test series against India. “Yeah, no, not too concerned. That was nothing too major. It’s just that we’ve got a lot of cricket coming up, so we’re being smart about that. It was fine after a couple of days,” Henry said during a media briefing, addressing concerns about his fitness. Henry is also looking forward to catching up with Conway, with whom he collided during a training session. “Yeah, no, it wasn’t ideal,” he said ...

‘Virat Bhai, Williamson and Root’: Dhruv Jurel on Watching Videos and Overseas Preparation

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Dhruv Jurel (PC: RevSportz) India A’s preparatory series in New Zealand provided valuable game time and an opportunity for several batters to familiarise themselves with challenging overseas conditions. Among those who made the most of it was Dhruv Jurel, who returned with a hundred and a fifty. In an interview with RevSportz’s Rohit Juglan in Lincoln, Jurel discusses the lessons from the series, his preparation for overseas tours, the challenges of wicketkeeping in New Zealand and the importance of adapting to changing conditions. Rohit Juglan: Dhruv bhai, what were the key takeaways from this entire series? Although a definitive result couldn’t come through, there are plenty of positives. Dhruv Jurel: I think it was a good series for us because when you get game time, you come here and play in different conditions – the bounce is different, the conditions, the wind, everything comes into play. But I think we did really well. If you talk about our batting, there are so many positi...

Squad splits up — Ishan, Gaikwad and Siraj likely to feature in final two ODIs

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Team India departure (PC: RevSportz) Hamilton woke up to clear blue skies and shifting priorities began for the Indian team. Skipper Shubman Gill left for the Test camp in Wellington, with his longer-format deputy KL Rahul and seamer Anshul Kamboj in tow. That was around 10 am local time. About a couple of hours later, the squad for the final two ODIs boarded the team bus to Mount Maunganui. The fourth and fifth ODI are on Friday and Sunday respectively, and going by the weather forecast, the days are likely to be rain-free. The two matches will allow Shreyas Iyer, India’s T20I skipper, to get a feel of ODI captaincy as well. The split squad for the ODI series and the regular captain, Gill, moving to red-ball preparations attest the importance of the upcoming two Tests, the first of which will be played in Wellington from November 19.  India’s preparations for the 2027 World Cup has begun in earnest with the ongoing ODI series. But the ICC event is still 11 months aw...

SKY hails T20 Mumbai League, as champions celebrated and ninth franchise added

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  The MCA celebrates the T20 Mumbai League 2026 champions. WebDesk The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) on Tuesday hosted ‘Celebrating the Champions’, an evening to honour the winners of the T20 Mumbai League 2026 and celebrate the league’s growth, both on and off the field. The event celebrated the league’s progress as a competitive platform for cricketing talent as well as its growing commercial strength, with the formal induction of the ninth franchise marking an important milestone in its journey. The event was attended by India’s T20 World Cup-winning captain and Triumph Knights MNE skipper Suryakumar Yadav, MCA president Ajinkya Naik, T20 Mumbai League Governing Council chairman Rajdip Gupta, T20 Mumbai League players Sarfaraz Khan, Musheer Khan, Suryansh Shedge, Sayali Satghare, players from the teams, MCA office-bearers, members of the MCA Apex Council and League Governing Council, team operators and commercial partners and MCA club Secretaries. The evening saw M...

How India’s fast-bowling cartel continues to evolve

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Gurnoor Brar in action (PC: RevSportz) Close your eyes for a while and imagine Indian cricket from a bygone era. You might just end up visualising numerous quality spinners. As kids, we even heard stories of Sunil Gavaskar and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi looking to take the shine off the new ball. Mohinder Amarnath talked about this very subject at length in his autobiography when he made his Test debut against the touring Australians.   The arrival of Kapil Dev heralded a new era of sorts. Yet, India was best known for swing and seam bowlers. Meanwhile, pace bowlers from the West Indies, South Africa, Australia and Co. seemed to tower well over six feet. Not just that, a lot of them seemed to snap their backs quite hard and extract awkward bounce from a slightly fuller length.   In the 1990s, in that regard, Javagal Srinath felt like an anomaly; a 6’3” hit-the-deck fast bowler playing for India. It is true that his Karnataka teammate, Venkatesh Prasad, is tall too, bu...

An Ashes Summer and a £50 Million Hole – whats ailing ECB

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England and Wales Cricket Board (PC: ECB) England will host the Ashes in 2027 and could still lose £50 million. This sounds rather intriguing and needs deep dive; in a sense, it might just reveal more about any argument about whether Test cricket is dying. The grounds could be full and the cricket could be magnificent, but the ECB could still have a very bad year. The board’s audited accounts had already warned of a significant loss in a summer without a home men’s series against India. The reported ICC decision to hold back part of its distribution adds a second hit, with the amount still uncertain.  We need to break this down to understand what role India plays in world cricket. Is this a cyclical event and do broads plan for it that way? Or is the impact of own leagues like the Hundred. Lalit Modi challenged the Hundred’s investor projections in 2024, including an assumption that international TV rights would climb from £2.1 million in 2024 to £34.8 million by 2032. The ECB re...