Picture a bird swooping down, having spotted prey. Think of a river in spate, carrying everything in its wake in a flood. Imagine the fastest train in the world breezing past a small-town station. Then visualise Dale Steyn, ball in hand, running rhythmically to the bowling crease, focused as the bird, rampant as the river and rapid as the express train. Watching Steyn in his run-up used to thrill me in a way few things on the cricket field have done. His bowling action appeared to be...
With the rain ruining what might have been an interesting finish to the Test match, there’s very little on-field action to talk about. Consequently, Srinivas resorted to making his own entertainment. Enjoy… While going through the archives of The Cricket Monthly, I came across a fascinating article, published in August 2018. Written by Anuj Vignesh, it discussed the prospect of five popular comic book heroes playing cricket. Inspired by that article, here is a cricketing eleven...
With India scheduled to play five Tests in England next month, here is my recollection of Rahul Dravid’s 148 in the Headingley Test of 2002. In August 2002, as a Chennai lad living in a musty-smelling hostel in Bengaluru (then Bangalore), I had taken to wandering the old streets of the city, hoping somehow to find a slice of home that would, if only temporarily, press the ‘snooze button’ on my growing homesickness. During one of those walks, I stopped almost automatically in front...
It was the summer of Franklin Rose and Shivnarine Chanderpaul. It was the summer of Navjot Singh Sidhu’s snail-paced 201 at Port of Spain. It was the summer during which an Indian batting line-up which boasted the likes of Mohammad Azharuddin, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar failed to chase down 120 on an up-and-down turf in Barbados, putting the West Indies on the right side of the one outright result in a series where all the other matches ended in draws. It was...
One of the fruitiest axioms one hears about cricket is that it’s a contest between bat and ball. This means bowling is as integral to a cricket match as batting. It is therefore natural to expect leading bowlers in cricket teams to become captains just as often as leading batsmen do. The reality does not match the expectation, however, and has not done for a long time. Last year’s delayed IPL, for example, saw six teams – Delhi Capitals (Shreyas Iyer), Royal Challengers...
Today Srinivas returns with this look at some cricket’s of most unusual and memorable names. Billy Birmingham really didn’t have to look far for inspiration! Feel free to add your personal favourites in the comments … When I was a schoolboy in the 1990s, the following question was often asked in sports quizzes: which cricketer has the longest name? The answer to the question, of course, was Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Usantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas, abbreviated rather...
