Samir Chopra

Legalise it - The case for ball-tampering

At a time when cricket has increasingly become a batsman dominated game, when the single biggest threat to Test cricket is not the IPL or T20 but the roads that are routinely produced by groundsmen the world over, what precisely is the case against

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Memories, faithful and unfaithful

Sigmund Freud famously wrote of the impossibility of autobiography and biography

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Getting caught out as captain

A couple of weeks ago, on my return to play a game with my old Sydney team, I was generously invited to captain the team in the absence of our regular captain, who had been called away on family duty

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Gods no more

I had grown, and the players hadn't

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Of fielding and statistics

Fielders do not figure on cricket scoresheets except for when they take catches

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Cricketing friendships and nationalist rivalries

The stories that surrounded the Botham-Richards friendship were numerous and of varying quality and veracity

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

An early vote for India-Pakistan Tests in England

My weekend got off to a rough start, but the news I read this morning, that India and Pakistan might play Test matches at a neutral venue (sometime after 2012) has put a huge smile on my face.

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

My uncle, my mentor

Cricketers have mentors

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Ranjitsinhji's many lives

The particular plight of the immigrant, his involuntary schizophrenia caused by his locational and cultural displacements, is a familiar trope today

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

The Duleep and Roy Show

A staggering display of flair and style from two batsmen in a Sri Lankan team that was still struggling to find a foothold in world cricket

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Play a game away from home

In the US (in a way well described in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland), cricket, despite being proudly played by large, important, immigrant communities, sticks out, and is played on sufferance

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

The Oval Test (but not the one you have in mind)

Everyone is talking about The Oval, so I might as well get into the act

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Easy on the exoticising please

While believing this story about the modern cricketing game would certainly aid in the construction of a narrative that says 'unpredictable, divine genius' will always trump 'solid, old-fashioned, mechanical competence', it did nothing to help us

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Watching alone isn't always fun

There is nothing quite like having a fellow fan at hand to receive, amplify, and enhance, one's immediate, unvarnished take on a game of cricket

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

The India-Australia relationship is a special one

On the cricketing field, it has provided some of the best cricket of recent years

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Ricky don't lose that aggression

Still, whatever his problems as a captain, and a communicator, I like watching him when he steps on to the field; he is, as he might like to hear, "very good value."

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Freddie Flintoff and the adjective 'great'

To call Flintoff a 'great' Test cricketer is to admit him to an exclusive club whose membership has taken far more work, dedication, skill and longevity on the part of its members than Freddie has been able to show.

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Of Cemeteries and Cricket

Given this dissimilarity, it would be nice if all of us could ease up on the "sport is war" analogy-making

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Sing that anthem

my attitude is that if it doesn't cause offence, and it helps to assert the primacy of the international game, then I'm all for it

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

Flexibility should lie in batsmen

I realized, with a little start of surprise, as this World Cup went on, that I have absolutely no idea of what the Indian batting order, is, or has been, for a while

25-Feb-2013•Samir Chopra

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