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Cricket, Stats and Opinion: India tour of England in 2021.

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Image Source: BCCI and ECB official websites. Test match is arguable the toughest format of the game and one of the most interesting formats too. A lot of thought is given to the selection of athlete(s) for the Playing XI for a given Test Series and each Test Match, to be precise. If it is a five-matches series in England, the stakes are significantly higher than usual. We all are enthusiasts and fanatics of sports (in this case Cricket), and we can feel the difference when it comes down to playing a sport for 5-days and when the game itself resembles our day-to-day lives. Doesn’t it? You start fresh every day, with new and more exciting challenges (such as weather), new opportunities, new setbacks, new record-breaking performances. Irrelevant of the Nation or the Team you represent. Harsha Bhogle kind of sums it up quite nicely for us, “I like many things about Test Match Cricket. We go through difficult phases in life. Maybe, financially we are not that well-off. The fact that you p
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Sports Development: A template for amplifying athlete(s) or team(s) performance.

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   Image Source: https://conceptboard.com First and foremost credit of the idea goes to Amazon Prime Series The Test: An Era for Australia’s Team , based on the journey of redemption of the Australian National Cricket team after the ball-tampering scandal in 2018, aka the Sandpapergate scandal. In the very first episode, Pat Cummins talks about the idea of having a template of being an athlete and being a successful team . It was about the gold-plated era (words of Peter Lalor) of Cricket Australia in the 1990s and 2000s. They were invincible. In the 1990s, watching the foreign players (especially cricketers) was like watching soldiers going to war for each run or each ball. They would never let the opposition take any lead in any game. And by in-the-game, I mean the batting, bowling and fielding. Some of the players from teams like England, South Africa, New Zealand, and of-course Australia would jump on the ball to stop it, which would make a difference in the overall result and perf
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A Test between the Best.

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  Image Source: https://www.cricket.com.au/series and https://www.24h-lemans.com/ If we are keen sports followers (in this case Cricket fanatics ), we are eligible to learn a thing or two from different discipline(s) in many ways, which we probably cannot justify all of it in a jiffy. But, we tend to realize these little nuances over time as we get better at understanding what does it take to get to be there and various aspects that tend to make or break the game. In this era, OTT-platforms have given us an interesting direction. We can now watch multiple sporting events such as the 24 Hours Le Mans, which are relatively lesser-known events in many countries. In India, we know Cricket is the dominant sport, specifically when it comes to Australia .vs. India #AUSvsIND the things start to become a bit more serious, because there is this preconceived notion of performing against the best in the world, dethrone them to become the best in the world. #TestOfChampions Image Source: Sony Spor
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Fight against Doping with Athlete IDRD techniques.

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  Playing a sport and becoming a champion, or being called Greatest of All Times, it all starts with having fun in whatever we do and igniting that spark, which says yes, I can do it , aka self-belief . Nobody in the world at the age of 5-6 years, knew that they would be the world record holder of tomorrow. All they thought, was to enjoy for that hour or 45-mins, be with some friends playing or fighting over little things. It is that daily routine of coming together, as friends or family, to learn the fundamentals and also learn the art training to be champions of tomorrow. That is what made them who they are today.  But as time passed, some of them lost their focus halfway around the journey and felt the need for some external yet internal help – generally known as doping . It is nothing less than a murder of sportsmanship, and the core values , on which athleticism is built-on. We are decades into this sports doping crisis and a growing consensus about a central question, How do
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Once an Athlete, Always an Athlete

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The title resembles a thought, that some of the defense services of different countries like to believe-in. The most popular one is  Once a Marine, Always a Marine,  by the US Marine Corps with the motto Semper Fidelis or Semper Fi meaning, always faithful or always loyal. Athletes are loyal too, aren't they? They dedicate their lives for that one thing they have believed - in, with enormous support from their families, friends, followers/fans & also the governing bodies of that country as well as respective national sports federations (NSF) to some extent. I came across this, loyal/faithful thought from a series on Amazon Prime named NCIS . One of the characters is Leroy Jethro Gibbs - who is a marine, and keeps reminding everyone around him what it means to be a marine, and there is no such thing as an ex-marine/former-marine . Well, the same concept applies to the athletes. Doesn't it? Once an Athlete, Always an Athlete, and there is no such thing as an ex-athlete/
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