Vijay Narayanan on December 19th, 2008

First a video clip from Times Now. You know what irks me? It is not that she (whose only real calling card is that she is somewhat remotely related to Aishwarya Rai) is dating him or anything. But that this report calls her a “popular South Indian actress“. Reminds me of Koundamani yet again: “மூணு [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on May 4th, 2008

As feared earlier, the Chennai Super Kings are faring poorly without the Aussies in the line-up. Two successive defeats, stemming from paltry totals, have temporarily derailed the Kings. Come on Chennai! Bring home the pride!

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Vijay Narayanan on April 29th, 2008

The Super Kings beat the Deccan Chargers to extend their run to 4 games! Rock on, Chennai! Lefties & T20 Selva has an interesting observation about whether left-handed batsmen have an advantage in Twenty20 cricket. One possible explanation, if this hypothesis were found true, is that most bowlers are naturally suited to bowl to right [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on April 27th, 2008

One of the nicest things about the Indian Premier League is that the Chennai team lead the pack now. Still the only unbeaten team in the league, the Kings of Chennai rock! Incidentally, I thought the Mumbai Indians would do better than lose four in a row.

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Vijay Narayanan on April 18th, 2008

After months of anticipation, the Indian Premier League kicked off today with a meek surrender by the Bangalore Royal Challengers, whose batting was neither royal, nor seemed like posing any challenge to the others teams in the league. Kolkata, in contrast, turned out to be awesome (though I am not impressed by their team name). [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on December 28th, 2007

India are chasing 499 for victory. We have two days to get there, to rewrite Test history. But one man can write a script totally unexpected – Rahul Dravid. At stumps on day 3, Dravid was batting on 3 off 30 deliveries, a scoring rate well above that in the previous inning, where he managed [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on September 2nd, 2007

Shane Warne has compiled his list of the top 50 cricketers, for The Times. The final ten has 5 cricketers from Australia (Warnie hasn’t included his name in the list), but there are no prizes for guessing who’s numero uno: You have to watch India in India truly to appreciate the pressure that Sachin Tendulkar [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on July 6th, 2007

A Texan billionaire has pledged $100 million over a period of three years to improve the game of cricket in the Caribbean. Allen Stanford believes that the expanded Stanford 20/20 tournament to be held in early 2008 will be a “life-changing experience”. The prizemoney up for grabs is $2.9 million. That is huge for a [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on April 4th, 2007

Over here, Vatsan argues that BCCI should break away from the ICC and fix major tournaments to ensure an Indian victory. Whereas you can treat that as a comment made in a lighter vein, it is hard to separate BCCI’s rise to dominance of world over the past decade from India’s own economic growth. For [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on March 26th, 2007

Sorry, Team Bangladesh, for the earlier post. And thank you very much for putting cricket first!

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Vijay Narayanan on March 24th, 2007

To the Indian cricket team: It’s okay. We lost, so what? It’s just a game. No one died. You didn’t go around asking us to support you. It’s really our mistake that we chose to hype you up and heap pressure on you. According to some rankings, the team was 8th in the world, so [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on March 24th, 2007

Okay, as expected, India have lost to Sri Lanka. Of the defeat, the lesser said the better. But, don’t count India out of the World Cup yet! The powers that be of Indian and world cricket know all too well that the money and viewership for this sport comes primarily from the subcontinent. Come on, [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on March 24th, 2007

Despite being bashed handsomely by Habibul Bashar on comments that India were 20 to 30 runs short, it is learnt that Dravid has still not let go of his usual comment. After the loss to Sri Lanka, I bet he would have said, “We were short by 70 runs… er.. yeah!”

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Vijay Narayanan on February 12th, 2007

For all the talk about getting the right combination and infusing young blood, India’s squad for the World Cup is just plain old fare. I would pity the selectors though. They really had little choice, and once you saw Sehwag’s name on the sheet, you knew they had thrown in their towels. Here is a [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on December 28th, 2006

The Ashes is becoming more and more humiliating for England with every passing day. And two guys are doing their best to ensure it. Not McGrath and Warne, nor is it Ponting and Hussey. Will Luke and Martin Williamson are the folks that commentate on Cricinfo.com during the Ashes, and their attack of England is [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on November 23rd, 2006

The word pathetic is inadequate to describe how pathetic India’s pathetic batting display was in the game last night. It is time we welcome back our former captain and (former) batsman Sourav Ganguly to the team. Here’s why… Sourav is the king of offside play. You could pay an entire month’s set-top box subscription just [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on October 26th, 2006

The only thing Rahul Dravid did not do today when India took to the field was to walk up to the umpires and say, “I’m handing the Windies a walkover.” Dravid seems to be the timidest (or is it, the most timid?) captain in recent memory. Not that captains can wave their hands and watch [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on August 1st, 2006

Peter Roebuck writes in The Hindu that Sachin Tendulkar should be picked in the Indian team without further ado, and that the master blaster should not be dropped until he claims himself that he is no longer fit to play. I’m a fan of both Tendulkar’s swashbuckling batting and Mr. Roebuck’s writing. I agree that [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on June 5th, 2006

Wasim Jaffer has just battled his way to his maiden double hundred, against the West Indies in Antigua. In doing so, he has joined a select band of Indian test cricketers – the 200-club is indeed elite. What he has also done is to walk into the media’s glare as another hero who will now [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on May 31st, 2006

One of the major problems in India’s downfall in the recently concluded one-day series against the West Indies is the absence of a solid opening pair.Sehwag has been very tentative for a long time now. A couple of boundaries and then he holes out. Gautam Gambhir’s inconsistency led to his being dropped from the side. [...]

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