Cricket now

Daryl Mitchell celebrating with others (PC: BLACKCAPS/X) Subhayan Chakraborty in Mumbai For New Zealand’s men’s cricket team, their topsy-turvy tour of the sub-continent will come to an end with the third Test against India at Wankhede Stadium. It started with a 0-2 series defeat in Sri Lanka, followed by a headline-making washout against Afghanistan in Noida, and is set to conclude with a historic, first-ever Test series win against India. The Mumbai Test presents New Zealand with the opportunity of a clean sweep on Indian soil, something not achieved by any team since 2000. Daryl Mitchell, who kicked off the sub-continent tour with a punchy 57 against Dhananjaya de Silva, Ramesh Mendis and Prabhath Jayasuriya, is looking to end the series on a high. This is the same venue where he scored a stunning 134 off 119 in the ODI World Cup semi-final, albeit to a losing cause. A match-winning, history-making knock here would offer sweet closure to what has been a gruelling couple of mon...

KKR Winning IPL 2024 (Credit: @iplt20 on instagram) To break news in advance is one of the major tasks of a news organisation. Before something has happened, they say that this is going to happen. It’s not like making predictions about the future. It’s more of deducing, based on the knowledge of the past and present, which helps form an idea of what’s coming. It requires hard work and a continuous process of staying in touch with reality. RevSportz reporting on retention of players for the 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League has been a shining example of that. Almost 100 per cent of the names mentioned by us across our different platforms have been retained. Here’s a tiny example, we reported that Punjab Kings would keep hold of Shashank Singh and Prabhsimran Singh. That’s exactly what has happened. It’s easier to mention prominent names. Not quite when it comes to these uncapped players. That’s what we did. This happened only due to diligence and hard work. Let’s take Chen...

From Left : Nicholas Pooran, Shashwat Goenka, Boria Majumdar. He has always had a sense of calm about him. A very West Indian kind of relaxed mindset and demeanour. And having seen adversity, he knows that one needs to celebrate and value the good that comes your way. The urge to keep getting better, to be the best version of oneself, is what defines the new Nicholas Pooran. That’s what came through in the long and candid conversation at RPSG House in Kolkata as we settled down to speak about his IPL retention. Shashwat Goenka, now much more hands on than he was a few years back, outlined in detail what prompted the franchise to choose Pooran and also spoke at length about the auction strategy. Excerpts from the conversation: Boria: Shashwat, I will start with you. Why Nicholas Pooran for a whopping amount of 21 crores? Shashwat: As you mentioned before we started, he is currently one of the best T20 batters in the world, and arguably the most destructive. Look at his strike-r...

Gautam Gambhir attended the Press Conference ahead of the 3rd test between India and New Zealand. Subhayan Chakraborty in Mumbai Despite the poor showing of India’s batters, Gautam Gambhir, the head coach, refused to pin the blame on certain individuals while accepting that the entire squad was hurt after losing their first Test series at home since 2012. India head into the third Test against New Zealand at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai bidding to avoid a clean sweep, while also aiming for a crucial win in the context of the World Test Championship (WTC). “I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” Gambhir told reporters in Mumbai on the eve of the third Test. “Obviously, it’s hurting. And it’s good that it’s hurting because it should hurt. Every time you lose a game, be it at home or be it away from home, it should hurt. That hurt will make us better. Sometimes people say that it should not hurt. But it should hurt. “When you’re playing for your country, what’s wrong in being in that ...

Team India players in practice in Mumbai (PC: BCCI/X) Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Mumbai Pedology. It’s a word not remotely connected with cricket. Yet, it resonates every now and then, when Test cricket visits the Indian shores. It gets intricately related with the game, especially when it comes to the prelude to a game and refuses to leave, until the national team moves to other countries. It’s a so close yet so distant relative of India’s cricketing fortunes. Pedology means the science of soils. It studies the chemistry of the contents of its composition and decodes the unknown facts, like the chemical components, formation and evolution. In cricketing terms, it tries to explain how a pitch may behave, based on its natural and artificial constituents and external factors like heat, humidity and moisture. Of late, one can notice an overdose of this. Take the ongoing New Zealand series for example. There is excessive talk on the pitch and the ratio of colours of different types of s...

Nicholas Pooran for LSG in IPL (PC: X) Contrary to the popular perception that he has been paid 18 crores, Nicholas Pooran, the West Indies white-ball specialist who was in Kolkata yesterday to meet Dr Sanjiv Goenka, is being paid over 20 crores by the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) franchise as their top retention. A source confirmed that it was a unanimous call from the coaching staff to choose Pooran whose astounding IPL strike-rate of 162.29 put him well above KL Rahul, the other option for LSG as a top retention. Pooran, to his credit, has been a stellar performer in T20 leagues across the world and, in a match against RCB in 2024, had scored at a strike-rate of over 300. Overall, he struck 499 runs last season, as a strike-rate of 178.21. That’s what modern T20 cricket is all about, and in terms of impact, Pooran has the ability to change games within overs, something the cricket think tank of LSG – Justin Langer and Zaheer Khan – were hugely impressed with. Rahul, on the othe...

Abhishek Nayar at the PC ( Source RevSportz) Subhayan Chakraborty in Mumbai India’s prospects of qualifying for the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 final have taken a hit following their historic series loss to New Zealand. That also ended their long-standing invincibility on home soil. To secure a spot in their third consecutive WTC final without depending on other results, India must win four out of their remaining six matches. As they prepare for the third and final Test against New Zealand at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, assistant coach Abhishek Nayar backed the senior pros, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, to come good despite their recent struggles in the longest format. Pertaining to reports that Harshit Rana had been called up for the third Test against New Zealand, Nayar, in the pre-match press conference, said, “No additions to the squad.” Addressing rumours about the Indian team manipulating pitch conditions to favour spinners, Nayar was quite clear.“We wish we ...

Wankhede’s pitch ahead of 3rd pitch and Harshit Rana (PC: Subhayan and X) Subhayan Chakraborty in Mumbai Delhi’s Harshit Rana is in line to make his Test debut in the third and final Test against New Zealand at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. Rana was quietly added to India’s squad for the third Test on Tuesday after he scored a 59 and picked up seven wickets in a Ranji Trophy match against Assam. Similarly to Washington Sundar in Pune, it could be Rana’s turn in Mumbai. Under Gambhir’s mentorship at the Kolkata Knight Riders during IPL 2024, Rana impressed, securing 19 wickets, which played a key role in KKR’s success that season. His knack of extracting additional pace and bounce, particularly from a good length, distinguishes him from his peers. Rana was on the verge of a T20I debut against Bangladesh, but a viral infection delayed his international debut. The selection between a three-pace attack or two pacers with three spinners will dictate his inclusion, possibly leading to res...

IPL teams’ captains last year (Source: X.com) We are all talking about the IPL retention deadline. In fact, social media is in a tizzy with all sorts of stories floating around. Come October 31, and it will finally be known to the world who are the players retained by the 10 franchises. While a number of names are already out in the open, there is still conjecture over the fate of a number of key individuals. But that’s not the point here. The point is how the IPL Governing Council and the BCCI have successfully made this process far more interesting than it could have been. One such decision I want to highlight is the fourth retention at 18 crores. With this one call, the entire auction dynamic has changed. Had it been the conventional 18, 14, 11, 8 – almost every franchise would have used the 8-crore bracket or whatever the lowest one was. At 18, things are vastly different. All of a sudden, people are being forced to rethink. Should we or should we not? Should we use the Right ...