With a Pinch of Salt

Showmanship ends with KP ‘s exit -Agransh Anand Ian Botham, the legendary all-rounder, retired from international cricket in 1992. With him, he took away whatever flamboyance, charisma, a flair for dominance and stardom that the English side ever possessed. They did produce a lot of ‘competent’ cricketers thereafter, but none who could match the aura of Botham. Most of them were ‘wooden’, far too deep-rooted in the snobbish culture which has gripped England and the England Cricket Board (ECB) for years now. Too afraid to think out-of-the box, to adapt with the changing times, too much bound by the code of conduct and punishing those who didn’t toe the line. In the summer of 2005, during one of the most historic test series ever played, against their arch rivals Australia, the home team was joined by a cricketer named Kevin Pietersen (KP). A tall, lanky cricketer, with golden streaks of hair, charging down at Shane Warne at the Mecca of Cricket, Lord’s, didn’t really ...

Indian Premier League - To See or Not to See…That’s the question . It’s been more than a week now that the World Cup got over, with a finale that promised us the moon but left us high and dry. I won’t say that it was the most exciting end to the grand tournament but certainly was played by the two teams which deserved to be there for that momentous occasion. In the end, Australians showed that while the rest of the cricketing world struggles to find their foot in ICC events, for them it’s far too easy to produce champions generation after generation. If McGrath will win for them in 2007, then Starc will do the honours in 2015. Having said that, we are once again, in that period of the year when the biggest cricket carnival arrives to keep the public engaged for a good measure of two months. In due course, the debates between the purists of the game and the modern administrators will spark up again, whether IPL is good or bad for the game. Some will crib about flat track...