Santhosh's Blog (2009-2018)

Note: this blog post was written and published prior to the 3rd India-England Test at Mohali, and excludes his performances in the IPL and other similar T20 tournaments This year may have been terrible in many ways for a lot of us, but I'm sure Virat Kohli isn't complaining. He has indeed had a fantastic 2016, and the numbers speak for themselves! The reason why I'm writing this post is because I was just very curious about what the numbers have to say about Kohli's nearly perfect 2016 and his career in general. So I went on looking online for the various statistics, and they were SO phenomenal. Moreover, from looking up his 2016 success online, I ended up getting stats about his career itself, and my jaw kept dropping even lower and lower every single time. So I thought to myself "Why not just share these thoughts I have on Kohli's career thus far in a post on my good ol' blog?" I have not published many cricket-related posts on the blog off l...

So the ICC World Cup is finally over. Firstly, congrats to Team Australia for the big win! Well deserved, no one can deny that! Personally speaking, the way this World Cup ended, made me more sad than happy. To elaborate more on this, and other aspects, I have divided this blog post in 4 parts. One part per semi-finalist. Will speak of my thoughts on each of the teams which made to the semi-finals, including the one I supported, India. Hope you enjoy this read! Thoughts on India's exit This was truly sad, for myself, and I'm guessing for Indian fans all over. I honestly didn't expect the Men in Blue to be rolled over by the Aussies, to end up being "thrashed" so badly in the semis. © AFP All that having been said, we had a fantastic World Cup! Kudos to the whole Team and Management for having played so beautifully till the semi-final! Our batsmen were good, and the bowlers were excellent. Fielding from the Indians was also brilliant, we were...

We got thrashed in England. We lost a Test series 5-0. We lost an ODI series that was almost ours. We lost the T20 match too. We were even ridiculed by English commentators, accused of Vaseline-usage, and called donkeys by Nasseer Hussain. They had the psychological advantage. We lost out on our best players - Sachin, Sehwag, Zaheer, Yuvraj. We had a whole new bunch of youngsters coming in to replace them. Then comes their turn to come to our own backyard, expecting a good contest. Five matches they had, and here's what happened: Thrashed at Hyderabad by 126 runs. Chased down beautifully at Delhi by 8 wickets. Took the series at Mohali, by 5 wickets. Chased a total with 10 overs to spare in Mumbai. And then saved a thrilling victory for the end of the series, to win the 5th one at Kolkata by 95 runs!! What was shocking, was that not even a single match was a close one... all were one-sided, and won comfortably in the end by India. And one can't even say "Ah, this i...

©Cricinfo Dear Readers, Firstly, sorry for the delay in writing this blogpost. I was wanting to write it since quite some time, but was travelling, so didn't get the opportunity to write it down. And as the saying goes, "Better Late Than Never!" So here goes. Here's dedicating this one to Team India. Chak De! Content: Analysis of the Indian Squad - Plus and minuses of the Indian team: what to look out for in the coming weeks. World Cup Predictor: my predictions of Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals and Final Concluding note   Analysis of the Indian Squad   To begin this blogpost, let's have a look at the 14-member Indian squad.     MS Dhoni (c/wk) Virender Sehwag (vc) Ravichandran Ashwin Piyush Chawla Gautam Gambhir Harbhajan Singh Zaheer Khan Virat Kohli Ashish Nehra Munaf Patel Yusuf Pathan Suresh Raina Sreesanth Sachin Tendulkar Yuvraj Singh A great squad, to say the least. The bes...