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

Lucknow Super Giants’ bowling attack contains domestic quality. Mayank Yadav brings genuine pace. Mohsin Khan brings left-arm variation. The supporting seamers bring familiarity with Indian conditions and disciplined lines. What the current combination doesn’t contain is the specific fear-factor quality that a 150-kilometre-per-hour overseas spearhead provides to a bowling unit, the psychological disruption that elite […]

Nicholas Pooran’s front foot is landing too early. Not slightly early, consistently early, before the ball has reached the halfway point of its trajectory. Sanjay Bangar identified the specific technical problem: an over-committed front stride that removes every back foot option before the delivery length is confirmed. The pull shot against the short ball requires […]

Municipal elections in Ahmedabad required the security deployment that makes hosting a major IPL fixture at the Narendra Modi Stadium impractical. The BCCI’s response was a venue swap rather than a postponement; the April 26 GT vs CSK match moved to Chennai, and the May 21 match moved to Ahmedabad. The administrative logic is straightforward. […]

Ruturaj Gaikwad is technically excellent. He reads spin well, rotates strike intelligently, and constructs innings with genuine cricket sense. None of that is the problem. The problem is that he’s doing all of this in the powerplay, the six overs where modern T20 cricket demands boundary frequency above 140 strike rate from every batter, including […]

Sunrisers Hyderabad had raced past 100 without losing a wicket. Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma were in full flow on a surface offering nothing to conventional pace bowling. The match was heading toward 250-plus, a total that would have stretched even PBKS’s exceptional chasing ability beyond its reliable range. Shashank Singh came on to bowl. […]

Ten consecutive wins. Gautam Gambhir. KKR. Across IPL 2014 and 2015. That number has stood while every modern captain with genuine tactical quality has attempted to approach it and stopped at eight. Rajat Patidar stopped at eight across IPL 2025 and 2026. Shane Warne stopped at eight in IPL 2008. Shreyas Iyer stopped at eight […]

Matthew Hayden’s advice to Jos Buttler was not technical in the conventional sense. It wasn’t a change in grip, stance, or trigger movement. It was simpler and more fundamental than any of those things; watch the ball. Not as a general reminder but as the specific correction to the specific problem Buttler had developed through […]

Most T20 batters produce their best scoring in the powerplay, the phase where field restrictions remove the boundary protection that makes aggressive batting exponentially harder. The moment fielders spread to the boundary in overs seven and eight, the scoring rate drops because the shots that produced fours now need to travel further or find narrower […]

Punjab Kings chased 200 plus. Then they chased 200 plus again. A near-century opening partnership inside seven overs. Priyansh Arya is hitting clean from ball one. Prabhsimran Singh is extending his shot range. Shreyas Iyer is reading variations in the middle overs and targeting specific bowlers rather than rotating strike against everyone. The required rate […]

Abhishek Sharma scored at a strike rate above 250. That number usually means a batter attacking every delivery regardless of line, length, or field placement, the approach that produces spectacular highlights and equally spectacular dismissals. What this innings produced was neither the highlight reel of the reckless version nor the early dismissal that typically follows. […]

Sunrisers Hyderabad’s bowling attack in this campaign has been reduced to a single functioning threat supported by multiple bowling options that batting teams are treating as scoring opportunities rather than genuine problems to solve. Shivang Kumar has delivered impactful spells and taken wickets at important moments. The rest of the unit has consistently failed to […]