Opinion

India's Batsmen Lost The Adelaide Match - by Mukul Kesavan

This team needs remaking. "Recklessness over respectability" should be its founding mantra.

Surya Kumar Yadav's Sixes And The Stamp Of Genius - by Mukul Kesavan

Our expectation of cricketers in differing formats will diverge and so, in time, will our vocabularies. Careless Test batters will continue to sky the ball; T20's virtuosos will SKY it.

Wordle, A Gentle Obsession - By Mukul Kesavan

Is Wordle is the purest pastime in the English-speaking world? It is. Let me count the ways. One, this 5 by 6 grid of thirty squares is free. Two, you don't need an app to play it, Safari or Chrome will do. In a cluttered online world, where the sinu

Opinion: The Reason Why Djokovic Is Both Unequalled And Unloved

It's hard for a sporting public to sustain a faith in an athlete's innocence when he is caught out breaking rules and then lying about these violations.

Opinion: Kohli Exposes Sourav Ganguly With Captain-Like Skills

Too often in Indian cricket has discretion been embraced as the better part of valour. Kohli spoke up for Shami when the BCCI wouldn't. Now he has spoken up for himself. We are in his debt.

Opinion: Ashwin & Eoin - Haunted By The Spirit Of Cricket

A spectre is haunting cricket, the spectre of its holy spirit. Its most recent victims are Eoin Morgan, England's white ball captain, and his supporters, chief amongst them Tim Southee, Shane Warne and Jimmy Neesham.

Opinion: When Kohli Resigned From The Captaincy...

Virat Kohli has resigned as captain from the wrong cricket code. On no account should he give up the captaincy of India's T20 team.

Opinion: The Ascension Of Jasprit Bumrah - by Mukul Kesavan

The chorus of admiration Bumrah received was not the praise that greets a fine cricketing performance; this was more than that.

Opinion: Kohli's Fast-Bowling Fantasy - Over And Over, The Same Mistake

During the match, Kohli should be given a designated area with a giant monitor where a KohliCam livestreams him reacting to the match in exactly the same way as he would in the middle.

Opinion: Why Ashwin Must Be Played In The Third Test

It's a cricketing tragedy that Kohli, who hasn't earned his keep as a Test batsman for two years now, should keep Ashwin, the Dagar of the long game, from bowling for India.

Opinion: Bumrah, Bumrah, Bumrah And That Lord's Masterpiece

Pity poor Aamir Khan - no one will watch Lagaan again. I have the last day of the Test on video. I'll never record over it.

The Racism Of The Euro Final - Bo Jo Is Guilty

One question about English football has been comprehensively answered. Why does the English team take the knee to insist Black Lives Matter? Because racist English fans and dog-whistling English politicians pick on black football players.

Opinion: Team India And Captain Kohli - The Road Ahead

Kohli's competitiveness registers as a constant state of combative excitement. This works best when India is in the game or winning.

Opinion: The Absolutely Justifiable Renaming Of Stadium After PM Modi

To make room for Narendra Modi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was taken off the marquee and given the important supporting role of naming the sports enclave in which the stadium is set. There is a nice metaphor in that: Sardar Patel as the setting for the solitaire that is Modi, the Loh Purush as warm-up act for Non-Stick Narendra.

Opinion: Captains Courageous, like Tendulkar, vs Rihanna

The one downside to all this heroism is that the Test series starting tomorrow will be an anti-climax. After routing Rihanna in single combat, what price Joe Root?

Opinion: A Butterfly In Brisbane And India's Magic - by Mukul Kesavan

The newspapers have been full of the rousing backstories of India's novices: their journeys out of poverty, their personal tragedies, their sacrifices. We should be careful not to patronize their purely cricketing achievement by sentimentalizing it, but it's hard not to be moved by the human dramas that came together in this crescendo of a contest. Deprivation out of ...

Opinion: The Importance Of Being Shubman Gill - by Mukul Kesavan

Is Shubman Gill for real? After his cameos in the Melbourne Test, I called clued-up cricketing friends for a reality check. Was he, in fact, the best desi prospect since Tendulkar? Or even, touch wood, the most highly finished debutant in whites since Sunil Gavaskar took guard at the Queen's Park Oval half a century ago? Or was I dreaming?

Opinion: India's 36 Shocker At Adelaide - What Went Wrong

To be clear, no one died. It wasn't a day-darkening, world-ending event...even if I did want to stab the screen with a breakfast fork when Captain Kohli sliced his drive to slip. A total of 36 is a cricketing shocker, but in the larger scheme of things, it is rather less important than your second cousin twice removed coming down with Covid. Pandemics bring perspectiv...

Opinion: Bihar Result Throws Up A New Fact - How To Ally With Owaisi

You can no more be nearly Chief Minister than you can be nearly pregnant. But as a public display of political muscle, as a platform for future alliances, Tejashwi Yadav made an extraordinary debut.

Opinion: Is Kamala Harris Suppressing Her Tambram Origins?

Kamala Harriss selection as the Democratic Partys vice-presidential nominee excited Indian Americans. The fact that her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was an Indian Tamil enthused Indians and Tamils in India and the diaspora.