Category: Conversation

Dear Mahesh There is a four-letter word that has been pissing me off over the last few months.  SENA. This, of course, stands for South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia. And a cricketer’s or team’s record in SENA countries is often brought up when discussing Asian players and Asian

I had mixed feelings about going for the Perth Test, primarily because of the guilt of missing out on so many opportunities to watch a Test at the WACA. But  the ODI between Australia and South Africa at the new stadium nudged me to choose Perth over other venues for this

Lovely piece on cricketing memories. It’s bizarre how YouTube can so emphatically raze the awe-inspiring structures we have erected in our minds. A YouTube highlights clip is so cruelly devoid of context. It tells you nothing about fans’ expectations back then. It reveals very little about the baggage that the

Are there innings or spells from the past that you have seen on video and later wished you hadn’t watched them?  There are many innings I had imagined as epics that proved to be quite underwhelming when I got to watch them on YouTube. But for the scale of disappointment nothing comes close to

In your previous email, I found this bit most interesting: … given the paucity of land, the low quality of life, and the sheer logistical nightmare of carrying a cricket kit in those crowded local trains in Bombay makes it so counterintuitive to understand the success of Bombay cricket. On the

I think Sairaj Bahutule will make many people’s list of a big hope whose international career never took off. The Challenger Trophy performance resonates  for it was a high-profile event in Indian cricket at that time and TV coverage helped immensely. But even beyond that Challenger Trophy, Bahutule was so consistent year after year

In one of your previous e-mails, you had asked: “… who are the cricketers you thought were the next big thing but whose careers never really took off? And what about vice versa? For instance, after watching Sehwag play just one ball against Shoaib in Chandigarh, I was absolutely convinced that he wouldn’t

Oct 24, 2018 Now that you have mentioned it (and I guess it was only a matter of time), might as well discuss the “proper Mumbai khadoos batsman” that Prithvi Shaw refers to. I know that you have followed Rohit Sharma’s career from his first-class days and have invested a

When I started the email thread on the epic scale of a 5 test series, I did so with some sense of guilt too for I am not sure if a 5-test series is necessarily healthy for cricket at a time when the big three corner the calendar disproportionately to

I am glad I didn’t have to endure jaundice during the 2001 India-Australia series – because that would have meant missing my second year finals in engineering college. But not watching each ball of an epic series is also a blessing. It keeps your interest alive for years to come.