The Dugout: Deep Dives, Player Analysis, and The Latest Cricket Stories

Melbourne Renegades, Perth Scorchers, Hobart Hurricanes and Melbourne Stars are embracing Cricket Australia’s self-determination privatisation model. Sydney Sixers and Sydney Thunder are rejecting it outright, with Brisbane Heat and Adelaide Strikers sitting somewhere in between. The board approved the plan on September 8, 2026, letting each state decide independently whether to sell stakes in their […]

Bangladesh’s fast-bowling depth will be tested hardest by overlapping injuries, not by overall bowler quality. Four of their five frontline pacers were sidelined at the same time during the Australia Tests, forcing untested support into Test cricket. The 2026-27 calendar packs the West Indies, India, and South Africa into six months after an already brutal […]

Marnus Labuschagne’s axing from Australia’s 17-member ODI squad for the Zimbabwe and South Africa tours, confirmed September 1, looks less like rotation and more like a gamble. He’s missed just five of Australia’s last 56 ODIs, making his exclusion genuinely hard to wave away as routine. Selectors are framing this six-game tour, played across the […]

Chakravarthy heads into the Afghanistan series in Delhi carrying two separate concerns rather than one. A hamstring injury in England cost him the back end of that T20I series and the entire Zimbabwe tour that followed, while a full year of opposition scouting has started to chip away at the mystery that once made his […]

Ajit Agarkar’s plan in May 2026 was straightforward: rest Bumrah for the Afghanistan Series assignment and bring him back once England arrived. That plan held for exactly one tour. A knee injury at Cardiff during the ODI leg in July broke the sequence, forcing a Sri Lanka Test series without him and a rehabilitation stint […]

He is the spinning all-rounder who just produced the best match figures of the entire tournament and still barely got mentioned for it anywhere. Eight wickets and 51 runs in a losing semi-final, delivered on a surface that clearly favoured pace over spin, is not a stat line that happens by accident. Dubey has quietly […]

East Zone were still building towards a declaration at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai when Kishan reached three figures, then simply refused to stop. Jurel keeps the gloves for now, and one extraordinary innings from a man three years out of the side does not automatically change that. Kishan’s 270 forces selectors to reopen […]

They mean India suddenly has a name to reach for if Bumrah’s body gives way again. Mukesh is not on the reported five-pacer shortlist for New Zealand, but that list was drawn up before his seven-wicket semi-final. Bumrah has not played a Test since November 2025 and still needs to clear a match simulation before […]

Labuschagne’s Test form has been poor enough to justify real doubt, but the argument for keeping him ignores a record sitting in plain sight. He has never batted in a Test in the country of his birth, yet his white-ball numbers there are the best of his career by some distance. Selectors kept faith for […]

Namibia finished third in their own tri-series, but the scorecards say a lot more than the table does. They beat the eventual champions in the opening match and came within 11 runs of doing it again in the final group game. With the 2027 World Cup arriving in Windhoek next year, that kind of competitiveness […]

Laxman takes interim charge of a full-strength India squad for the Asian Games, and this version carries far more firepower than the side that won gold in 2023. Jasprit Bumrah and teenage prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi are both included this time, while Gautam Gambhir stays home to prepare the senior side for a home series against […]