Off Stump

I've written before about not just doing longish posts here but never actually lived up to it. So here's an attempt to actually start a new series and (very cheesily) I'm calling it quick singles. A single thought about any aspect of the game, the players, or administrators. To kick us off is a player I never warmed up to really though I've always admired his fighting spirit as a batter and his attitude as England captain. In a world not governed by stardom, Strauss (and not Cook) would have held the record for captaining England most often in Test cricket. And now that he's at the helm (so to speak) of English cricket in a different capacity, he's been a really progressive thinker. Whether it's the emphasis on white ball cricket (and the results are there to see) or being much more forthright about what the best decisions are for the team (eg Buttler captaining in Bangladesh), Strauss has pulled no punches. This latest call to let different groups ...

The last leg of India's marathon home Test season kicks off in a couple of days, with Kohli and his men a good chance of going into fourth place on the list of consecutive matches without defeat . But while it is tempting to write off Steven Smith's team (like many are doing), the current 8-0 scoreline for the season masks how hard the Indians have had to fight at times. Expect no less from the Australians. Notwithstanding the fact that they got clobbered in Sri Lanka and have lost their last 9 matches in Asia (and 8 out of their last 10 in India), they will fight hard. And Kumble clearly realises this , one of the many reasons why he's the best choice for the Indian team in its current stage of evolution. My India vs. England preview wasn't the most accurate as pre-series callouts, and especially in terms of the best players (Broad and Rahane were mostly injured!!). Here's hoping this one works out better. Thoughts on the factors/players that will make the dif...

Growing up (from a cricket watching perspective) in the 1990s, I am terribly unused to Test cricket being the format in which the Indian team is most successful and looking like potential world-beaters. Still early days, but this is exactly the way things seem headed currently for Kohli and his men. Since Jan 2015 (when Kohli took over as full time captain), India's record reads: P 21, W 14, L 1, D 6. The absurd W/L ratio will of course not last and many critics will point to the fact that most of the victories have come at home. Teams can however only overcome the opposition they are faced with and so far India have ticked off the overseas boxes they have been faced with (in Sri Lanka and the West Indies). And at home they have been utterly dominant, destroying everyone they've met. But most hearteningly, it's the way they have battled back from adversity that builds the most promise for the future. Too often in even the recent past (let alone the 1990s), Indian teams ...