Virat Kohli – The Talisman Red Ball Indian Captain

“We want to be fearless, that’s the brand of cricket we would like to play”. Virat Kohli was chalking out a new roadmap for Indian cricket in the red ball format. His captaincy style discarded the defensive approach and drove the team to not settle for anything less than a win.

Kohli started his test captaincy in 2014, after Dhoni’s sudden retirement from test cricket during the Australian tour. In 2011-12, the team had been drubbed 4-0 in tours to England and Australia. It was at that time that Kohli took on the baton. A small teaser was the 2014 Adelaide test where the Indian cricket team fought for a win, going against expectations for a draw.

Virat’s mantra to win matches abroad was to get 20 wickets irrespective of the conditions. He, along with the support staff, created a pool of fast bowlers who were relentless and fearless. And, spinners took care of most test matches at home. Kohli’s tough period started with South Africa away tour, then England tour, finally to Australia. Though the SA and England test results were not in favor, there was a paradigm shift in Indian test cricket. The approach was bold, strategic, and most importantly, invoked fear in the minds of the opposition. Kohli always questioned the conventional wisdom, played 5 batsmen, 4 fast pacers and vouched more for all-rounders. At that time, it drew irks but the result was bound to come.

India tour of England, 2021

The current India-England series (we still don't know if it is complete or not) is proving to be quite extraordinary in more ways than one. It has been quite a seesaw affair. Apart from the Headingley Test, the other 3 could have been won by either team. 

The last Test at the Oval has brought so many new truths home. India has always been a team of great individuals who played fantastic cricket but couldn't gel with each other as a team to win matches. They were capable of walking into any world eleven on their own accord. Players like Merchant, Mushtaq, Hazare, Mankad, Manjrekar, Gupte, Ghulam Ahmed, Nawab of Pataudi, Farokh Engineer- the list is endless. Mankad's performance at Lord's in 1952 was of such a class that the MCC decided to label it as Mankad's Test. Freddie Trueman when asked about the players he didn't like bowling to mentioned Vijay Hazare. 

My Love Affair With Cricket

It all began with a trip to Goa, India, in early December 2007. I didn't realize beforehand I was going to a cricket-mad country smack in the middle of a Test series against Pakistan. It turned out to be a vacation that changed my life. Literally.

I became curious about cricket when I saw that the Indian newspapers were full of reports of the Kolkata Test – and found that I didn't understand anything of what had happened during the previous day’s play despite being fluent in English. Despite, in fact, being a translator. Returning home to Finland, I decided to learn enough cricket-speak to understand what was going on. Then I meant forget all about it.

But one thing led to another. As I read cricket reports online, I blessed Wikipedia daily. It has taught me pretty much everything I know about the Laws of Cricket. But it took more than a year of intermittent study, as understanding one term just presented me with more new words. Or, often enough, old words that proved to have entirely new meanings. There are the classics, like duck and beehive, but I was stumped (yes, stumped) by words like crease (clearly not a reference to ironing gone wrong) and beat (as in beating the batsman). And so many cricketing expressions leave big chunks of the action unsaid. Leg before, of course. But also It was going to hit the middle of middle and off. Imagine for a moment that English is your second language (or third, as it is for me) and you are faced with middle of middle and off. Trust me, you start looking for the word you missed on your first reading.

Ashes 3rd Test Review

After a heavy defeat at Lords and finding themselves 2 – 0 down in the series, Australia needed to bounce back in the 3rd test at Old Trafford and bounce back they did. Winning the toss and electing to bat first, their batsmen dug deep and fully applied themselves. Chris Rogers proved himself for the first time in the series, making a well constructed 84, falling agonizingly short of what would have been his maiden test century. Steve Smith also applied himself well and like Rogers, his dismissal came before he reached his hundred. Although these two innings were good they were dwarfed by a certain Michael Clarke. Struggling early on, Clarke got off to a slow start but only grew in confidence. He gave a lesson on how to play Graeme Swann during a fascinating battle between the two. Down the pitch and over mid off, then on the back foot cutting through backward point. True class. The Australian captain made 187 before chopping the ball onto his stumps from a short ball by Stuart Broad to give him his 200th wicket. Then came Haddin and Starc. Their enterprising partnership put runs on the board quickly to take the score up to 527.

Shiv the Selfish, Really?

And so England's international cricketing summer is up and running, with the West Indies facing the best test team in the world at the Home of Cricket this week. The weather has been decidedly moist in England over the past few weeks but remarkably it stayed dry for whole of the first day at Lords, and a packed house was treated to some fine cricket. Jimmy Anderson, proclaimed the ECB player of the year earlier this week dominated early on with the ball, teeing Kieron Powell up with a textbook out-swing, in-swing combination, before some nice stroke play from Barath and the hyperbole-drenched Darren Bravo - who was relentlessly compared to one Brian Charles Lara all day on Twitter - steadied the ship before lunch.