Blog Posts by Kunal Diwan

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Danish Kaneria has maintained an obdurate façade of innocence and plans to appeal his life ban from English cricket.

The other dirty party – Mervyn Westfield – was let off by the deciding panel with a five-year suspension in the last two years of which he will be allowed to compete in domestic cricket.

The ban for the 24-year-old medium-pacer was lighter as he pleaded guilty to the charge of having ‘received a reward, resulting from his conduct in the Durham Essex match, which could bring him or the game of cricket into disrepute’.

Kaneria’s response to the verdict was predictably brazen.  

"I'm very upset about this decision. For what reason they have convicted me I do not know.  It is a very, very unfair decision against me. I've come all the way from Pakistan to say the truth.

“They (the ECB) don't have any proof against me. I don't know why they are saying this,” said Kaneria, apparently exasperated by the three-man panel chaired by lawyer

Read More »from Them again

Over the years, middle-aged debutants in ODI cricket have fallen conveniently into distinct categories. There have been those whose careers were on the wind in the early to mid 1970s – the dawning of ODIs – and that reduced their haul of limited-overs cricket to a handful of games after a belated, ill-adjusted inauguration.

Then there are the second-generation citizens of ICC’s Associate Members - the minnows, if you like - whose delayed entry into the eleven, mostly at an age northward of 40, is almost ritualized every four years come the World Cup. Thus you have a Nolan Clarke turning out in Dutch colours for the first time, in the 1996 World Cup, after having completed almost half-a-century on planet Earth; or a 43-year-old Rahul Sharma debuting for Hong Kong – as captain, no less – in the 2004 Asia Cup.

Playing in his first ODI this past week, Sri Lanka left-arm spinner Sajeewa Weerakoon fits in another group entirely. Neither is his age of breaking in – 34 – comparable to the Read More »from Old, not over the hill

Lovers of sport have it easy these days. There is something live to watch on television almost daily, and summer – that most sought after commodity in Europe – brings with it an abundance of riches for couch potatoes.

With several different contests in currency, evenings in India for sports fans revolve around perplexing choices: should they pitch their voyeuristic tent in the red sludge of Roland Garros, or tail the fortunes of the bickering Englishmen as they take on the equally fractious West Indies; should they chuck these entirely to watch another combustible entity – perhaps the most volatile in modern sport – erupt into a flame of excellence down in Sri Lanka?

What the viewer hasn’t yet factored in is the play of the elements. Rain and sport have a storied, and much-hated, history and it is often claimed in parts that have been worst hit by the fickleness of Mother Nature that the surest way to end a drought is to drive in three pegs of wood in a field, and wait for the skies to

Read More »from Cricket's oldest foe

An unrequited labour of love or yet another attempt by India to usurp the ICC’s supremacy? The rejection of Indian engineer V. Jayadevan’s system for managing rain-curtailed cricket matches at the ICC Cricket Committee’s recent meeting has been - with a little help from the fanners of the fire - imbued with a regional slant.

Jayadevan, an IIT alumnus, spent the better part of the past decade developing and perfecting his mathematical model for calculating target scores in interrupted matches, a methodology he feels is superior to the Duckworth-Lewis method currently in use in International cricket.

The Kerala-based civil engineer’s enterprise, however, was thwarted at the apex body’s latest meeting in London, which deemed that the new system offered absolutely no advantage over the D-L system presently in place, and thus a replacement was unwarranted.

“My system doesn’t adhere to an exponential increase of the scoring rate throughout an innings. Normally, the scoring is faster in the Read More »from Rain rule debate turns into India vs ICC fight

 
Chennai Super Kings are the Manchester United of IPL, for more reasons than one. It’s not just a superlative record across the five years that the league has been in existence for that fosters favorable comparisons. There is also the small matter of the undisguised hate that their success has spawned.

Wherever one goes, people – rabid followers, casual viewers, disinterested passersby – are dismissive, even openly venomous, of the consistency that has been Chennai's hallmark since 2008, the year the IPL was unleashed upon the Indian consciousness.

In a format that thrives on unpredictability, in which regular success is illusory and reliability rare, the Super Kings have made four finals and a semifinal in five seasons. They have lifted the IPL trophy twice, in succession, and a hat-trick of wins may well have resulted on Sunday night were it not for Manvinder Bisla’s freakish knock and the unfortunate no-ball that Ben Hilfenhaus bowled.

In contrast, there are at least three franchisesRead More »from Super Kings still top dogs despite loss

A look at all that went pear-shaped in IPL5

Once again, Chennai Super Kings find themselves in a hole, not as deep as the one they burrowed into in the previous two IPL editions, still cavernous enough to warrant drastic corrective action. After a listless middle phase, Chennai registered wins on the bounce – against Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Daredevils – and need to hold it together for another couple of matches to squeeze into the qualifiers.

The games in hand are against the strong Kolkata Knight Riders, to be played at the Eden Gardens on Monday, and Kings XI Punjab, to be played at picturesque Dharamsala - the site of Chennai’s rousing 2010 win, which M.S. Dhoni and S. Badrinath engineered via a magnificent heist chasing a huge target.

Success from this tight corner will hardly be a walk in the park. KKR have performed like genuine title contenders and Punjab too have everything to play for. But Chennai have emerged unscathed from trying circumstances earlier, each time answering the call for something special with Read More »from Will Super Kings rule again?

 

Cricketers and Bollywood personalities are the most recognizable faces in the country and are hence madly sought after for product endorsements. But in some cases roping in a wooden sportsperson to heighten a sales pitch doesn’t have the desired effect.

For instance, how many viewers would opt for a particular brand of mobile phones, which is currently being promoted by a sheepish Virat Kohli mumbling pick-up lines that went out of style in the last century? Here’s a look at some of the unintentionally hilarious and plain disturbing advertisements that our worshipped cricketers have lent their persona to. Not everyone is blessed with the charisma or camera-friendliness of Shane Warne, but is a basic ease before the eyepiece (on the part of cricketers) and a sense of decency (on the part of the makers) too much to ask for?

Not that sportspersons are supposed to excel at turning on the style quotient; neither does this persistently touring lot has time enough to perfect their lines and Read More »from A few bad ads