Ahead of the first Test between India and England in Rajkot, Rajneesh Gupta looks at the two teams and their numbers.
The Indian squad led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni departed for New Zealand from Mumbai on Sunday for a five-match ODI series followed by a best-of-two Test rubber against the hosts.
Ravichandran Ashwin and Rodney Hogg were engaged in a war of words with the former Australian pacer saying that the Indian spinner was successful against South Africa mainly due to the spin-friendly wickets during the Test series.
Given below are five more instances when a team suffered a staggering collapse:
India's marauding cricket team will be aiming to reclaim the No 1 spot in ICC rankings when it takes on an unsettled New Zealand in the second Test starting, in Kolkata, on Friday.
India's Team Director Ravi Shastri indicated that Ravichandran Ashwin will play in the opening cricket Test against South Africa, saying the off-spinner is "absolutely fine".
Former India spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan lamented that the current lot of leg-spinners don't have the ambition to play Test cricket and blamed it on too much stress on reverse swinging the ball these days.
Delhi Daredevils defeated Mumbai Indians by 10 runs in their IPL match at the Feroz Shah Kotla.
Ravichandran Ashwin said that the slowish tracks in the Caribbean will be a big challenge for the spinners and he is ready to bowl "boring lines all day" during the upcoming four-Test series against the West Indies.
Indian cricket team, led by skipper Virat Kohli, on Thursday reached St Kitts to play a four-Test bilateral series against the West Indies starting with the opening match at Antigua on July 21.
Former Pakistan leg-spin legend Abdul Qadir says he would have also liked to see leg-spinners like Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla in the team since India does not have intimidating pace bowlers.
Help coach Anil Kumble and captain Virat Kohli in selecting India's best 11 for the first Test against the West Indies.
The pilot of Vishal Bhardwaj's much-anticipated adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Sittaford Mystery is here. Aditya Roy Kapur's hotel manager takes on Anil Kapoor's all-powerful arms dealer. Idris Elba is back in action. Sukanya Verma shares her OTT recommendations this week.
KKR are heading into the contest after an embarrassing batting performance against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Manish Pandey continued his good form in the limited-overs' format, scoring an unbeaten 99 as defending champions Karnataka beat Mumbai by four wickets to enter the semi-finals of the National One-Day Championship, for the Vijay Hazare Trophy, in Vadodara, on Friday.
A compilation of results from the Vijay Hazare Trophy matches played on Saturday.
Under fire after a below-par show on a good batting strip, the Indian spinners will aim for an improved show on a comparatively more helpful track as they take on a gritty England in the second Test, starting in Visakhapatnam on Thursday.
Rookie off-spinner Jayant Yadav, who is set for his maiden India tour of Zimbabwe next month, says he will never attempt to bowl a 'doosra' since it cannot be done without a bit of elbow kink.
Back in the top half of the league table after a convincing win over Sunrisers Hyderabad, Delhi Daredevils will look to build on the winning momentum when they take on defending champions Mumbai Indians in their Indian Premier League match in Visakhapatnam on Sunday.
A supremely confident Delhi Daredevils return to their den and have a struggling and injury-ravaged Rising Pune Supergiants in their firing line up next in the Indian Premier League, in New Delhi, on Thursday.
The shocking loss to Kings XI Punjab in their last match, notwithstanding, table-toppers Gujarat Lions will have to get their act together quickly if they wish to end their home campaign on a winning note against a formidable Delhi Daredevils in an Indian Premier League match, in Rajkot on Tuesday.
The building, which housed godowns on the ground and first floors and four families on the top floor, collapsed at 1.45 pm on Saturday at Wardhaman Compound in Valpada of Mankoli area.
What should India's playing 11 be for the 1st Test against England?
It will be interesting to see if India bring back regular opener Shikhar Dhawan for the crucial semi-final match against South Africa or persist with Ajinkya Rahane at the ICC World T20.
New Zealand beat India by 19 runs in the fourth one-day international to level the five-match series at 2-2 as the hosts suffered a mid-innings collapse at Ranchi on Wednesday. - Scorecard: Chasing 261 for a series clinching win, India were all out for 241 with eight balls to spare. Opener Ajinkya Rahane's fluent 57 put India on course for the chase and the right-handed batsman added 79 for the second wicket with the in-form Virat Kohli (45).
Struggling teams Delhi Daredevils and Kings XI Punjab take on each other in an Indian Premier League match in Mohali on Sunday as they desperately seek to get back to winning ways to stay in the hunt for a play-offs berth.
Dhoni's men will have to adapt to the conditions quickly to avoid any such hiccup in the play-offs.
Defending champions Mumbai Indians kept their hopes of making the last four stage alive with a clinical seven-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad, in Hyderabad, on Monday. Chasing Hyderabad's modest total of 157 for 3, made possible by a late assault from David Warner (55 not out) and solid batting by opener Aaron Finch (68), Mumbai cruised home with eight balls to spare.
For a team that looked at ease all along, it was their first defeat in the UAE leg -- and three from 11 matches this season -- as Delhi struggled to get going against KKR bowlers who made full use of the slow surface after opting to bowl.
In major embarrassment for the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the International Cricket Council rated the track at the Vidarbha Cricket Association ground in Nagpur, on which the third Test between India and South Africa was played, as "poor", triggering a review of the performance of the pitch under the ICC Pitch Monitoring Process.
Exactly 13 years after he impressed with his incisive swing bowling in the Under-19 World Cup and the inaugural edition of IPL, left-arm seamer Pradeep Sangwan will now be a designated "net bowler" for Delhi Capitals in the UAE along with five others.
Uttar Pradesh clinched their maiden Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy with a thumping 38-run win over two-time champions Baroda in the final under flood-lights at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Wednesday.
A fierce competition among parties to offer freebies and guarantees, a scramble for tribal, OBC, women votes and a touch of Hindutva -- all have combined to make the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls a high-stakes battle with main rivals BJP and the Congress pulling out all the stops to gain power.
Images from Day 2 of the first Test between India and South Africa in Mohali, on Friday.
Former India captain Sourav Ganguly said he wouldn't be surprised if India swept Aussies 4-0 in the upcoming Test match series, commencing on February 23 at Pune.
By the time, Mumbaikar gets to where it wants to be via a twisty third act, we begin to see how much better the film could have been. But it's almost too little, too late, complains Mayur Sanap.
At the conclusion of the Asia Cup, Srinivas Bhogle and Purnendu Maji make an assessment after 36 matches India has played so far in the 2013-14 season.
His scheduled visit to Sashastra Seema Bal's Patna Frontier on Sunday morning was cancelled due to 'unavoidable reasons', a statement said.
Anthology movies are a strange beast. They can be as monotonous and harmless as munching away a bumper bag of chips -- you eat one, you have to finish the rest. Or they can be like discovering a rare treasure marked by profound insight and offbeat experiences, observes Sukanya Verma.
126 of Ashwin's 176 Test wickets, points out Bikash Mohapatra, have come on home turf. Half of the remaining 50 have come on similar surfaces in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
