'Cricket in general is played at a pace below what it needs to be. Cricket needs to be speeded up in all forms of the game. If it puts pressure on captains and bowlers, so be it. We need to ask captains and bowlers to be a little bit surer in their plans'
Former skipper Steve Waugh has heaped praise on the current Australia captain Steven Smith, labeling him 'the gap hitter I've ever seen'. A guest speaker at the India Today Conclave 2016 in New Delhi, Waugh was asked to describe the prototype for his perfect batsmen, which involved him cherry-picking the greatest strengths from the best players he's seen. Waugh praised Smith's ability to pierce the field with his 'strong and subtle wrist'. "I think Steve Smith would be in there purely because he's the best gap hitter I've ever seen of any cricketer," he said. "If you watch him bat, he rarely hits the ball to the fieldsmen. That's why he scores so many runs. "Even though his technique is not great, he finds the gaps incredibly well." Smith had recently accepted that it's timing and form that he relies on when looking to go big. "For me, hitting sixes is about trying to keep my shape as much as possible," Smith said last week.
Cricket Australia has made an attempt to lure away its key players from the lucrative Indian Premier League by offering them multi-year central contracts, a report has claimed.
The WADA investigation found that the sample analysis methods of the NDTL were not upto the mark. The NDTL can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Lausanne in the next 21 days.
Former Board of Control for Cricket in India chief Sharad Pawar wants Justice J N Patel, who is part of a three-man probe panel set up by the Board to investigate the IPL corruption scandal, to come clean on his reported links with the body's interim president, Shivlal Yadav. He also deprecated the presence of former India captain Ravi Shastri on the inquiry committee, citing conflict of interest.
The MCA stadium at Gahunje in Pune will host the remaining six 'home' matches of IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK) after these were shifted from the southern city following protests over the Cauvery water-sharing issue in the Tamil Nadu capital.
High drama was witnessed in the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA) on Monday with a rebel group electing state Sports Minister Imran Ansari as the body's president in an attempt to end Farooq Abdullah's 35-year rein but the move was stayed by a Jammu court.
A bench of Justices V M Kanande and M S Karnik, however, said on Thursday that it will not staying the match on April 9, but wanted to know from the state government and the municipal body whether the water supplied to the stadiums in tankers is potable or non-potable.
Alex Marshall, ICC's general manager of its anti-corruption unit, met Interpol officials in Lyon last week to seek closer working relations, it added.
Unless the impasse ends next week, the upcoming Australia 'A' tour of South Africa, a two-Test series in Bangladesh and a limited-overs tour of India are under threat from the dispute, with the Ashes also looming at the end of the year.
With an eye on the October 18 biennial elections of the Mumbai Cricket Association, senior cricket administrator Prof Ratnakar Shetty is all set to challenge in the court an amendment made to its election rules in July which debars him from contesting the elections.
Fresh from his good showing for India 'A' during their recent tour of Australia, paceman Umesh Yadav revealed that his Kolkata Knight Riders bowling coach Wasim Akram helped him get his yorkers right and he is now keen to use the toe-crushers against England batsmen in the limited overs series.
The Mumbai Cricket Association has changed its eligibility rules for contesting its forthcoming elections. The move is widely seen as a bid to prevent senior administrator Prof Ratnakar Shetty from regaining his place in its managing committee.
Pace spearhead James Anderson said the visitors will have to bowl and bat out of their skins to dig themselves out of trouble in the second Test.
A countdown clock could be one way of addressing the issue.
India's new chief coach Anil Kumble will be keeping a keen eye on speedster Mohammed Shami's fitness along with the form of opener Shikhar Dhawan when the team begin its tour of West Indies.
Landmark judgments follow new CJI's assumption of office.
The Union Health ministry put the number of positive cases at 82, eight more since Thursday night, which includes the woman and a 76-year-old man from Karnataka who became the country's first coronavirus fatality besides 17 foreign nationals, Health Ministry officials said.
Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were suspended from the Indian Premier League for two years for betting activities of their key officials, Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra, during the 2013 season of cash-rich Twenty20 cricket tournament.
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development headed by Satyanarayan Jatiya has slammed SAI for not roping in sportspersons even 20 years after being asked for restructuring of the "unwieldy and monolithic bureaucratic organisation
Indian cricket's fortunes ebbed and flowed in 2015 with Virat Kohli successfully leading the national side in Tests and Mahendra Singh Dhoni appearing to be losing his midas touch, while in off the field drama Shashank Manohar returned as the president of Board of Control for Cricket in India.
From Rohit Sharma's record breaking double century in One-Day Internationals, the team's never-ending woes in overseas Tests, to the controversy surrounding Board of Control for Cricket in India's president-in-exile Narayanswami Srinivasan over the Indian Premier League spot-fixing scandal, Indian cricket had the good, bad and ugly in equal measure in 2014.
The court said a 'scam was created when there was none'.
If you don't have power in a game you are masters of, the world will walk all over you, notes Shekhar Gupta.
A selection of musings from around the cricket World Cup.
An Olympic campaign saved by the fortitude of three women, a cricket team that rediscovered itself under a bold and zealous Virat Kohli -- Indian sports in 2016 was a dramatic mix of highs and lows wherein athletes mostly raised the bar but administrators found new ways to embarrass the country.
Sachin Tendulkar's farewell speech.
The year 2014 has been an eventful one for India. The country got a new government and a new state, broke new frontiers in various fields and of course its share of controversies.
Prem Panicker, on the Rediff chat, delves on what went wrong for Team India and what to expect from Sunday's trans-Tasman World Cup final.
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