Analysis of Cricketing Event of the Week

A GAME PLAYED ON THE STREETS There is always a charm about listening to former legends of the game, maybe none so greater than the ‘Morgan Freeman’ of cricket- the great West Indian fast bowler, Michael Holding. In a recent interview Holding pointed out that he rarely watches one day cricket because he believes T20 cricket is more often a ‘circus’ than a sport. And I don’t think anyone who watches and understands the game even to a meagre extent would disagree that Test Cricket is the highest and the purest form of cricket. But, a recent incident made me rethink the fact. I saw a group of 8 to 10 year olds playing cricket, and almost half of them trying to emulate Rashid Khan and his leg spin. Rashid Khan, being no stranger to us for his heroics with the Sunrises Hyderabad, has surely left a deep impact on IPL 2018 and its audience. Another interesting story was once narrated by former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist. He described how when he was very young h...

IPL 11 has been a grand season in so many ways, that experts already started terming it as the best ever IPL season played, even before the playoffs started. As a cricket fan, I never really bought into those comments, as I felt, I have witnessed better IPL seasons than this one, in the past- until & unless I saw what transpired in the playoffs. I have written in my previous blogs on IPL, that 3 teams actually played the best cricket and got into the playoffs and as far as RR was concerned, they just got a bit lucky to find themselves in the playoffs. But, when the playoffs began, in the final week of IPL, the standard of cricket played actually portrayed that the 4 deserving top teams of the league are actually fighting it out in the middle, for the coveted title. So, without further delay, let us get to the individual playoff matches & analyse, the performance of the teams. Qualifier 1 This match reminded me of a match, played 15 years ago, at St. George...

Sir/Mam, The reason why you are reading this letter, is either because you have trolled IPL 'n' number of times, claiming the entire tournament to be fixed, or because, you, being a true cricket fan, are absolutely tired of listening to the fixing allegations about the consecutive close matches of IPL. If you are in the group of the former, then, the blog is for you; if you belong to the latter group, maybe this is what you wanted to shout out loud & tell the world, for long. So, let us begin with something that has been rocking all social media platforms, for the past few days.  KKR vs CSK- The advertise for the fixed IPL final, that was supposedly webcast on hotstar. The entire twitter & media went gaga over this, claiming its a fixed tournament and the finalists of the tournament are already decided by the organizing body, before the tournament began. Now, let us look a bit deep into this. I strictly believe there are 2 kinds of fans who follow ...

The round-robin stage of IPL has come to a conclusion at the end of the 6th week of the league, and probably this has been the most mind blowing version of the league after the much talked about 2014 edition of the competition. We will go into the detailed analysis of the teams & their performances in the later parts of this blog. However, to be short & crisp, CSK, SRH & KKR really slogged their back sides off to reach the playoff stages and for RR, (just because the term 'lucky' has got way too cliched in sports), let us just say that their prayers were stronger! Before, I get to the analysis of the final week of the league matches, I will request my first time readers to go through the analysis of the blogs of my last few weeks on IPL (links given below). While that will improve reader experience, at the same time, I have a habit of referring to my previous blogs, while writing. It will be comfortable for readers to follow any such references I make to m...

IPL 11 has completed its 5th week and as it steps into the final week of the round robin matches, the league is exhibiting a trend that has been established by all the past ten versions of IPL- the indecisiveness regarding the 4 playoff spots, till the final week of the event. At the completion of the 5th week of IPL 11, 2 teams stand qualified for the playoffs- along expected lines, the teams being CSK & SRH, the best teams in this edition of the tournament by far. But the remaining 2 spots are still up for grabs and as is so familiar in IPL history, around 3-4 teams are competing in the last week of the league matches for those 2 positions. I have been covering the tournament with weekly blogs, right from the beginning. Hence, I would request the first time readers to go through my previous blogs (the links are listed below), as in my writing, I will be referring to my past blogs time & again. Thus going through the previous blogs will make the experience smooth for...

IPL 11 has completed its 4th week and is gradually moving towards the business end. As the tournament proceeds towards later stages, from now, the next 2-3 weeks will probably present some exhilarating cricket and quite a few nail biting encounters for all us, cricket fans out there. At least the league table leaves us with expectation, that the coming couple of weeks will exhibit a lot of mouth watering contests for us especially between the bottom 5 teams of the league table. Before my readers proceed through this blog, if you have not read my past weekly cricket blogs on IPL, here are the links for them IPL 11- Analysis of Team Standings after Week 1 IPL 11- Analysis of Team Standings after Week 2 IPL 11- Analysis of Team Standings after Week 3 Going through my past blogs will make it easier for the reader, as I will be drawing references from my past blogs, in the present blog as well. So, as is the norm, I will be picking up the teams one by one, and an...