Five players nobody outside their state associations was seriously discussing at the start of the season. Five players who, by the final, had changed the conversation about India’s red-ball future. Jharkhand Cricket found a batter averaging 56 in his debut season. Goa produced one averaging above 70. Haryana’s spinner took 26 wickets at 15.69. Karnataka’s […]
Five players nobody outside their state associations was seriously discussing at the start of the season. Five players who, by the final, had changed the conversation about India’s red-ball future. Jharkhand Cricket found a batter averaging 56 in his debut season. Goa produced one averaging above 70. Haryana’s spinner took 26 wickets at 15.69. Karnataka’s […]
Aiden Markram was not always an opener. Three years ago, he was South Africa’s flexible middle-order option, the batter who came in at four or five and steadied innings rather than launched them. What he is now is something entirely different. At the T20 World Cup semi-final stage, Markram sits at the top of South […]
The IPL makes a reputation. The Ranji Trophy tests them. In the 2025–26 season, five players who had built genuine white-ball profiles walked into red-ball cricket and found that franchise form doesn’t travel. Jammu and Kashmir claimed the title. Karnataka stayed competitive. And five well-known names left the domestic season with questions attached to their […]
After the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026, a comparison started circulating that deserves a proper look. A Zimbabwe top-order batter, 57 matches into his T20I career, is being measured against the early numbers of one of the format’s greatest players. The stats are closer than most people expect, and the context makes them even […]
India beat Zimbabwe comfortably. The margin flattered nobody; it was a clinical performance built on batting depth and disciplined bowling from the frontline five. But one number from that match is sitting awkwardly in India’s tournament picture: Dube’s two overs cost 31 runs at an economy of 15.5. Against Zimbabwe. On a surface that gave […]
Both teams were already out. The Super Eights had come and gone, and this match at Pallekele was cricket played without consequence, or so it seemed. What actually happened was the most fluent, aggressive, and tactically clear cricket either side had produced all tournament. Pakistan posted 197/4. Sri Lanka chased it down to 189/6 in […]
Nobody had touched Virat Kohli’s single-edition T20 World Cup run record for years. Sahibzada Farhan didn’t just touch it; he dismantled it. At Pallekele’s batting paradise, on pitches that rewarded clean striking and penalised poor lengths, Farhan turned a favourable environment into something historic. This isn’t a story about one brilliant innings. It’s about what […]
Two scores of 250-plus conceded. A medium-pace attack with no real change of pace. A specialist spinner watching from the sidelines whose absence is getting harder to defend. Before Zimbabwe face South Africa, the most destructive batting unit in this tournament, their bowling unit needs answers it hasn’t found on flat Indian surfaces. This isn’t […]
Not many leg-spinners can go under 80 km/h in T20 cricket and actually become harder to hit. Rashid can. His economy rate holds firm when he reduces pace, his wicket-taking rate climbs, and batters who think they’ve read him end up dragging catches to mid-off or stumbling past a wrong ‘un on a sluggish surface. […]
After the Zimbabwe demolition, team management has a problem that most coaches would love to have: a combination that actually works. The top order finally clicked, the middle order had defined roles, and the bowling held its shape under pressure. Heading into a Super 8 fixture against West Indies at the T20 World Cup 2026, […]
The West Indies have always been a team of match-winners. But match-winners need someone to hold the structure together, and that’s exactly what Jason Holder does. His 100 T20I wickets didn’t arrive by accident. They came from being the man captains turn to when the game is slipping, when the batter is set, when the […]