Matches (16)

IPL (1)

T20I Tri-Series (1)

County DIV1 (5)

County DIV2 (4)

CE Cup (2)

ENG v PAK (1)

USA vs BAN (1)

WI vs SA (1)

RESULT • Qualifier 2 • IPL • T20 • Chennai

SRH

175/9

(20 ov, T:176) 139/7

SRH won by 36 runs

Schedule Table Report Series

RESULT • 6th Match • T20I Tri-Series • T20I • The Hague

IRE

161/6

NED

(20 ov, T:162) 158/5

Ireland won by 3 runs

Schedule Table Series

Clickbait

Top shot

What's the height of cricket fandom?

Nishi Narayanan

11-Nov-2015

What do you do when a match is sold out and you want to watch it really, really badly? TV and illegal streaming's all right, but nothing beats the pleasure of being at the ground… or thereabouts.

Who's the contractor for the newly laid roof in the above photo, taken during an India-New Zealand ODI in Guwahati in 2010? And what cement did he use? Was the owner of the property enterprising enough to charge people for the view? Might the roof's capacity be greater than that of a New Zealand ground? Did the people in the stands in front feel a bit silly about having paid for their seats when a possibly better and free alternative was available?

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Let's play, y'all

Cricket in the USA? Not as outlandish as Americans would like us to believe

Nishi Narayanan

26-Oct-2015

The All-Stars series scheduled in New York, Houston and Los Angeles next month is cricket's latest attempt to endear itself to Americans. It's unlikely that the matches, featuring Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Muttiah Muralitharan and others, will prompt American sports fans to drop their baseball bats, footballs, basketballs, ice hockey sticks and pick up our beautiful willows, but that doesn't mean cricket doesn't have a presence in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Above, in a photograph from 1861, cricket and baseball share space in a field at Princeton University. Cricket's possibly the one on the left, given the sightscreen-like structure there. The earliest college cricket club in the United States is said to have been formed at Haverford College in 1834. In 1881, the Universities of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia and Princeton joined with Haverford to form the Intercollegiate Cricket Association, which survived till 1924.

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Float like a butterfly, sip like it's tea

The secret of Muhammad Ali's success

Nishi Narayanan

05-Oct-2015

Stop the press! Or break the internet! Muhammad Ali on the Lord's balcony drinking what could only be tea. This was in 1966 - during the England-West Indies Test - when, having refused to be drafted into service for the Vietnam War, Ali travelled to Canada and Europe for championship bouts.

A month* before the Test, on May 21, Ali, beat Henry Cooper in six rounds at Highbury, the fight stopping when Cooper suffered a deep gash over his left eye and had to concede the match to Ali. "The cut was so bad I had to go see a plastic surgeon," Cooper said later. "The way Ali fought, he was the type of guy who dragged your flesh, so he hurt me really badly - I needed a hell of a lot of stitches."

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Bruiser

Brian Close was not afraid of the cricket ball

Nishi Narayanan

18-Sep-2015

To really enjoy watching a fast bowler bowl you need at the other end a batsman willing to take him on. And Brian Close was a batsman who took on West Indies' fear-inducing bowlers - Griffith and Co in 1963 and Holding and friends in 1976 - with bat and body.

Sent in to open the batting at Old Trafford in 1976, in what was his final Test innings, 45-year-old Close hung on for an hour on the third evening, taking repeated blows. And he wasn't happy when umpire Bill Alley warned Michael Holding for bowling too many bouncers. "I said to Bill, 'What the hell did you have to do that for?'" recalled Close. "'He's bowling too many bouncers,' said Bill. 'Don't you realise the bloody bouncers aren't hitting us?' I told him. 'It's the ones halfway down that are the problem!'"

Viv Richards, who played under Close at Somerset, was concerned about the blows his county captain was receiving. "Close got hit in the chest by Wayne Daniel and sank to the floor," Richards told the Observer in 2007. "I went up to him. 'Are you OK, skipper?' Closey eventually gathered himself together and bellowed 'F*** off.' What a man."

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It's a hit!

Hollywood goes to cricket. You won't find this on TMZ

Nishi Narayanan

04-Sep-2015

Long before the IPL, cricket was favoured by glamorous movie stars. Here's the debonair Cary Grant posing in a cricket sweater. Grant was a member of the Hollywood Cricket Club, founded by actor and Test cricketer Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, and was involved in a charity match to raise funds for British Commandos at the end of World War II.

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The Michael Clarke highlights

A look back at why the retiring Australian captain was such a mane man

Nishi Narayanan

19-Aug-2015

Keeping with the title of this blog, we've misled you into believing that you'll get to watch clips of Michael Clarke's career. The only clips here are of the scissor variety. Clarke wasn't Dhoni-like in the hairstyle department, setting trends, but you can still divide his career into pre- and post-highlights (of the blond type).