After taking Rishabh Pant's wicket, Head pointed one finger into his other hand, which was shaped like a circle.
If the men of 1983 gave India a reason to dream, the women of 2025 could give it something rarer -- the courage to live that dream in full daylight, under an open sky that finally belongs to them, points out Prem Panicker.
Sack Gambhir before he damages any more careers, if you must. But it cannot stop there. The project ahead must be bigger, more ambitious, and far more urgent: Rebuilding the spine of Indian cricket from the grassroots up, and giving the Test team the seriousness it deserves. Only then will Indian cricket stop lurching from one crisis to another and begin, once again, to imagine greatness, suggests Prem Panicker.
Jasprit Bumrah now holds an exceptional record of 203 Test wickets at an average of 19.42 -- the first bowler ever to achieve 200 wickets at an average under 20 in the longest format.
'Only he knows whether he has the hunger to go on.'
Prem Panicker previews the day-night Test at Adelaide.
Here's Prem Panicker's unique take on all the action from the second day of the 2024-2025 Border Gavaskar series.
Here's Prem Panicker's unique take on all the action from the third day of the 2024-2025 Border Gavaskar series.
'I saw him quite emotional on the field yesterday.' 'That's unusual for us to see Rohit like that.'
'Who'll tell him that the bigger problems lie elsewhere?'
Here's Prem Panicker's unique take on all the action from the fourth day of the 2024-2025 Border Gavaskar series.
Kohli could manage only 190 runs in his nine innings in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, repeatedly offering edges to the slip cordon or keeper.
The good news is the team management has enough time on hand to think through the defeat and to find answers to the questions Adelaide has thrown up, around both its batting and bowling before the next test begins.
As part of a series of weekly chats on cricket, Prem Panicker appeared on the rediff Chat at 1300 EDT/1000 PDT on December 8.
As part of a series of weekly chats on cricket, Prem Panicker appeared on the rediff Chat at 1300 EDT/1000 PDT on December 15.
Transcript of Prem Panicker's cricket chat.
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.
'It's not really up to Rohit Sharma.' 'The chairman of selectors has the power to do what's best for Indian cricket, so it's not so much about Rohit himself deciding what should be the future.'
He was a storyteller who made me feel the pulse of history, the stakes of human ambition, and the thrill of a well-told tale. Prem Panicker recalls his debt to Frederick Forsyth, who passed away on Monday.
India did not respect the match situation, the playing conditions, and the bowlers, and they've paid a price for it.
Transcripts of Prem Panicker's chat on Thursday.
Images from Day 1 of the fifth Test between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday.
At the end of the first day of play, it is the home side that is firmly in control, and India that is now reduced to chasing the game.
Indian batters, with the exception of Yashasvi Jaiswal (84), faltered yet again to lose the match by 184 runs and trail 1-2 in the five-match series.
It was a proper Test innings, it was of the highest class, and given the circumstances it came in, it was one of the best innings by an Indian batsman in recent memory, applauds Prem Panicker.
Those three wickets for six runs, in a manic final 15 minutes of the day's play, undid all the good work that had gone before, asserts Prem Panicker.
It was one of the most tantalising days in Indian Parliament. Parties debated for and against the nuclear deal. MPs crossed swords, armed with allegations and statistics. As the nation kept glued to the happenings, rediff.com's Prem Panicker gave its readers a blow-by-blow account of what happened. Here is the transcript:
When you are defending to save a game, a loose delivery comes along and you suddenly opt to play an attacking shot, you are unlikely to hit as well as if you were playing your naturally aggressive game all along. First Pant, then Jaiswal, found that out the costly way, observes Prem Panicker.
Bouyed by the vociferous crowd at the WACA, India thrashed UAE by 9 wickets.
Author Rajni Bakshi discusses with Editorial Director Prem Panicker how her latest book Bazaars, Conversations and Markets came about.
At this point it is still anyone's game, with a draw also an option, says Prem Panicker in his analysis of Day 4.
In the days since September 14, have you heard of one 'common man' or common woman even, getting his or her truss in a knot over Tharoor's remark? No, because the common man/woman/person has much larger issues to worry about -- unlike some of our elected representatives, says Prem Panicker.
'The liberalisation of the Indian economy has triggered a growing belief in education, because they believe they can be a part of the economic bandwagon and benefit from it.'
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Salopek is on an intercontinental journey of 24,000 miles, tracing humankind's movement out of Africa right down to South America.
The seeds of India's defeat were sown in Melbourne, where Bumrah had to bowl 53.2 overs -- 24.4 in the second innings on the back of 28.4 in the first innings. With just three days to recover, that was an inhuman burden on a bowler who had bowled 151 overs in this series.
Ramnaresh Sarwan's unbeaten 98 lifted the West Indies from a precarious position in the second ODI.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
Former Pakistan pacer Sarfraz Nawaz has accused the ICC of favoring the Indian team.
The West Indies pulled off a sensational victory in the second ODI and ended India's chasing streak of 17 wins.
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