Former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi has said Mahendra Singh Dhoni is "not 'Captain Cool' anymore" and suggested yoga sessions for the beleaguered cricketer to overcome the tough phase.
Aruneel Sadadekar/Rediff.com picks his IPL Dream Team of Season 9. Check it out!
Even as the dust settles down on IPL 9, Bikash Mohapatra/Rediff.com presents his Dream XI.
Harish Kotian/Rediff.com's report card on India's three-ODI series in Bangladesh.
Brilliant bowling by the pace duo of Umesh Yadav and Morne Morkel, followed by skipper Gautam Gambhir's superb half-century, powered Kolkata Knight Riders to a comprehensive eight-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in their Indian Premier League (IPL) match on Saturday.
Ashish Nehra has contributed significantly to the Indian team's recent success in Twenty 20s, and the old warhorse says he is enjoying his role of a mentor in the fast bowling department.
Featuring India, the West Indies, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan.
Kolkata Knight Riders will have to break the agonising sequence of debacles when they clash with defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL eliminator, in Bengaluru, on Wednesday.
Dinesh Karthik is always ready to deliver whatever the situation may be and his experience and repertoire of strokes make him a suitable candidate to provide the final flourish for India at the death overs, skipper Rohit Sharma said.
Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 17 runs in their Indian Premier League match, in Kolkata, on Saturday.
Sunrisers Hyderabad won their maiden Indian Premier League trophy. Even as the team from Hyderabad celebrates their triumph, let's analyse the four major turning points of the match.
Two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders would look to assert their supremacy, while Sunrisers Hyderabad will have revenge on mind when the two teams clash in the Indian Premier League (IPL) Eliminator in New Delhi on Wednesday. Both Sunrisers and KKR finished their league engagements on 16 points each but the Gautam Gambhir-led side ended fourth behind Sunrisers due to inferior net run rate. But going into the do-or-die game, KKR have psychological advantage over the Sunrisers having beaten them on both the occasions during the league stage. KKR thrashed Sunrisres by eight wickets in their first meeting this season and came out victorious by 22 runs in a must-win match last Sunday to qualify for the play-offs.
Srinivas Bhogle and Purnendu Maji analyse Week 1 in Rediff.com's Most Valuable Players ratings.
David Warner slammed a whirlwind 50-ball 92 to set up a comfortable 15-run win for Sunrisers Hyderabad over Royal Challengers Bangalore in their Indian Premier League match, in Hyderabad, on Saturday.
Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 45 runs in their opening match of the Indian Premier League.
Dinesh Karthik and Hardik Pandya smashed half-centuries to propel India to a formidable 324 for seven before Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav sent Bangladesh crashing for 84, in the ICC Champions Trophy warm-up match at The Oval in London, on Tuesday.
Karun Nair kept Delhi Daredevils' slender hopes of qualifying for the play-offs alive with a 59-ball unbeaten 83 that guided them to a six-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad in Friday's Indian Premier League match, at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh stadium in Raipur, that went down to the wire.
Bangladesh skipper Mashrafe Mortaza admitted they were in a state of sorrow in the aftermath of their inexplicable one-run loss to India but hoped they would return home with their heads held high by winning against New Zealand in their concluding league fixture of ICC World Twenty20 in Kolkata on Saturday. "The whole team is in a state of sorrow, everyone is broken. Nobody is blaming anyone but we've somehow accepted the defeat. Everyone was very upset. They just could not talk to each other. It was so disappointing," Mortaza said summing up the team's mood after their loss in Bengaluru. "We have never lost this way. We have to play our best again. If we get the opportunity, we have to make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes. The conditions are similar but the wicket is different. New Zealand are on top clearly, whereas we lost all three. We will try our best." Mortaza further said saying 'sorry' to their fans would not be enough and they would try to play hard to put the disappointment behind and try to get over the line against the unstoppable Black Caps.
Demoralised Bangladesh will look to end their campaign on a high when they face a rampaging New Zealand.
Bangladesh shocked New Zealand by five wickets to keep their hopes alive of making it to the semi-finals at the ICC Champions Trophy in Cardiff, on Friday.
Rising Pune Supergiants will stand in the way of Kolkata Knight Riders's revival when they clash in an Indian Premier League T20 match?
David Warner played a captain's knock, smashing an unbeaten 90 runs off 59 balls to power the Sunrisers Hyderabad to a 7-wicket convincing victory against defending champions Mumbai Indians on Monday. Chasing a modest 143-run target, the Sunrisers chased the target with 15 balls to spare in Hyderabad. The Sunrisers have recorded their first points in the points table of IPL 9, while MI have now lost three out of their last four games.
Claiming that the team has identified the reason for the loss in the first One-Day International against Bangladesh, India opener Rohit Sharma said that the bowlers should take wickets up-front to put pressure on the opposition in the must-win second match in Mirpur, Dhaka, on Sunday.
As far as the Indian team is concerned, even a 3-0 result against the hosts will not be enough for the second-placed side to claim the number one spot in the ICC rankings, while a favourable outcome for the home team will boost its qualifying chances for the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy.
Rajneesh Gupta presents the finest bowling heroics in the 20th over in recent T20Is.
Notwithstanding Rising Pune Supergiants' poor run in IPL-9, Sunrisers Hyderabad mentor VVS Laxman considers the debutante side as a formidable unit and said his team will have to put its best foot forward when they clash with them in their IPL match on Tuesday. "It goes without saying that (RPS Captain M S Dhoni) Dhoni will be looking forward to use Ashwin against Warner and Shikhar. I believe that Pune has got a very formidable batting line up," Laxman said in a pre-match press conference at Hyderabad. "Lot of people talk about Ajinkya Rahane, Steve Smith, Faf Duplessis being similar. They are all extrordinary T20 players. We cannot at all be complecent or we cannot at all underestimate the batting strength of Pune. We are very mindful," he added. The former Test batsman, however, exuded confidence that SRH can take on any opposition if it sticks to its plans and executes them well. "But, I believe that if we concentrate on our plans and try to execute our plans, then we can do well against any opposition. It's more about concentrating and playing to our strength, while strategizing for each and every opposition batsman or bowler," he said. Noting that the MS Dhoni-led Pune team would look to bounce back strongly, Laxman said no team can be ruled out as it is still the early part of the long IPL tournament.
Bangladesh all-rounder Mahmdullah finished as the MVP in the recently-concluded Asia Cup T20 tournament ahead of compatriot Sabbir Rahman, who was named as the man of the series. Purnendu Maji and Srinivas Bhogle present the latest edition of the MVP rankings.
Bangladesh defeated India by 79 runs in the first One-day international in Mirpur on Thursday.
Srinivas Bhogle and Purnendu Maji analyse IPL performances in Rediff.com's Most Valuable Players ratings.
Some teams have completely overhauled their squads. Others retained their core at the IPL Players Auction.
Unstoppable so far with clinical performances, a formidable India will square off against a passionate and sprightly Bangladesh in their quest for continental supremacy in the final of the Asia Cup Twenty20 cricket tournament, in Mirpur, on Sunday.
The battle for the final two available places in the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 will hot up when Bangladesh squares off against South Africa in the opening match of the three-One-Day International series in Mirpur on Friday and Sri Lanka hosts Pakistan in the first of five matches in Dambulla on Saturday.
India captain Virat Kohli reclaimed the top batting spot, while Australia's pace ace Josh Hazlewood has achieved the number-one position in the bowlers' rankings for the first time in his career in the latest MRF Tyres ICC ODI Player Rankings.
'...then Bangladesh would have been the world champions a long time ago!'
As we write this we still await the crucial India-Australia knock-out in Mohali. But India's individual performances in the T20 World Cup so far haven't been truly impressive. A look at the most valuable player index (MVPI) table reveals that there's no Indian player in the top 20. MVPI merges a player's batting + bowling + fielding performance into a single 'run equivalent'. The formula to compute the MVP is devised to reward batsmen who score runs at a high strike rate, bowlers who take wickets at low economy rate and fielders who field the best (take a lot of catches and participate in run-outs). Since this is a relatively low scoring tournament we have assumed a team's par score to be 150, and each wicket to be worth 15 'runs'. It isn't a surprise that players from New Zealand dominate the rankings so far, although Joe Root tops the table after his 83 in 44 balls against South Africa.
India's T20 World Cup challenge has ended. But it is likely that Virat Kohli (MVPI of 338) will go on to become the tournament's most valuable player because he enjoys a lead of 109 runs over second-placed Joe Root (229).
Rajneesh Gupta's fascinating look at the routes RCB and Sunrisers Hyderabad took to the IPL 9 final.
Rajneesh Gupta presents all the fascinating career numbers of players in the World Cup.
India's batting sensation Virat Kohli, named player of the tournament, is also the most valuable player of World T20 2016. With a fifty and two wickets, England's Joe Root is just behind him.