Off Stump

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...

Given his personality (or the supposed lack thereof), it feels slightly odd to imagine Kallis donning a cape and costume but amongst modern day cricketers (ie post 1990) he came closest to being superhuman in terms of his overall achievements in Test cricket alone. Tendulkar and Ponting have more runs (and the former more hundreds), Dravid has as many runs and a few more catches, Ponting and Waugh have more Test match wins, but the fact that Kallis scored as many runs as he did (at an average over 55), took nearly 300 wickets and picked up 200 catches puts him above them all as an all-round cricketer. Add to that over 11000 runs and 270 wickets in ODI cricket, and a pretty successful IPL career (including a pivotal role in one title win) and the superman image starts to build up quickly. My memories of the man however are nowhere close to that image. The first two things that came to mind when Kallis announced his retirement were - 1) All of the cricketers on my favourite XI(I) are ...