Speed gun data made the decision for the selectors. Shaheen’s pace has dropped to 126 km/h in recent matches, well below what Test cricket demands from a strike bowler, and that alone was enough to leave him out of both squads. His numbers slipped too, just 27 wickets in his last 16 innings since knee […]
Speed gun data made the decision for the selectors. Shaheen’s pace has dropped to 126 km/h in recent matches, well below what Test cricket demands from a strike bowler, and that alone was enough to leave him out of both squads. His numbers slipped too, just 27 wickets in his last 16 innings since knee […]
Only one change is unavoidable, and it belongs to Washington Sundar’s hamstring. Everything else on the team sheet is a genuine call, not an injury replacement. Gurnoor Brar has bowled well enough to keep his place, yet Arshdeep Singh’s left-arm angle offers something India haven’t tried at this venue. KL Rahul’s expected return solves a […]
Because the calendar did not wait for either problem to resolve itself. The touring squad for Darwin has to be picked within weeks, and neither the No. 3 spot nor the spin-bowling role has a settled answer right now. One issue is a form slump stretching back three years. The other is a 38-year-old recovering […]
Barring a dramatic reversal nobody inside Indian cricket actually expects, the answer is close to none at all. Selectors have already told Rohit Sharma directly that his ODI career ends after the third match at Lord’s this weekend. He is reportedly unhappy about it, and has pushed back in private conversations with board officials since […]
Two names, and only two, have run this setup for years, and Mithali Raj says that gap should embarrass everyone involved in selection. Speaking to PTI on July 16, the former captain argued the senior job should have changed hands two or three years ago already. Her real complaint sits one level below that, though, […]
Virat Kohli is precisely one big innings away. His run through England’s bowling attack has pulled him level with Viv Richards on fourteen fifty-plus ODI scores against the same opposition, and one more score at Lord’s would send him clear of that mark entirely. He reached the number on Thursday at Sophia Gardens, batting through […]
Three centuries fell in the same T20 match for the first time ever on July 15 at Oakland Coliseum, and two of them grabbed every headline going. Nicholas Pooran’s 31-ball hundred and Steve Smith’s unbeaten 110 dominated the recaps, while the third, Andries Gous’s 132 off 51 balls, carried a different kind of weight entirely: […]
Sri Lanka’s franchise league opened its sixth season with five hundred drones lighting up the sky at a venue it had never used before, and the spectacle answers less than it appears to. Two of the tournament’s five teams had no confirmed owner as recently as May, the fallout from two terminations for unpaid contractual […]
A photograph answers it best: an eight-year-old boy standing between Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie outside a Darwin cricket centre in 2003. That boy is now the most likely opener to walk out for Australia when the Baggy Green returns to Marrara Stadium this August, against the same opponent, Bangladesh, that Australia beat on that […]
Luvnith Sisodia was the better buy, and it isn’t close. He cost less than half of Karun Nair’s price and still outscored him by nearly a hundred runs, then lifted the trophy Nair never got near. Nair arrived as the headline signing, a national name captaining the defending champions. Sisodia arrived from the domestic pool […]
India won this one from the bottom of the card up. Axar Patel and Washington Sundar put together an unbroken 102-run stand while Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli managed just 16 runs between them inside the first ten overs. Shubman Gill’s 80 kept the chase alive before a hamstring injury forced him off, and three […]