Sidharth Monga

India seem to be mulling playing five specialist batsmen and giving Stuart Binny a Test debut at Trent Bridge, going by how much action he has seen in the tour matches and in the nets

Usman Afzaal's new restaurant Slumdog, located bang opposite Trent Bridge, is all set to witness a Test match for the first time

Steve Birks, the man in charge of the Trent Bridge pitch, has said that the challenge for the teams will lie in the quality of the bowling and overhead conditions

The duration of the Test series will allow Alastair Cook and MS Dhoni to reassess the strategies, or provide enough time to get thoroughly exposed

On a day when the most exciting moment was a decision by MS Dhoni not to have a keeper for a delivery, the Indians completed a facile five-wicket win against Derbyshire

It might have been a low-intensity nearly-an-exhibition match against the 2nd XI of the second-worst team in county cricket this year but someone forgot to tell Cheteshwar Pujara

Mohammed Shami didn't bowl, Ishant Sharma bowled no-balls, and three batsmen who have not been finding a place in the Derbyshire first XI scored fifties on the first day

Musings about cricket in England, randomly thought, reread and rewatched on the nine-and-half-hour flight from Mumbai to London

Rahul Dravid's presence in Derby on the eve of the warm-up game against Derbyshire is unlikely to make the game any more intense

Tom Poynton has taken up a role promoting Derbyshire's match against the touring Indians as he continues to recover from the tragic car accident that killed his father

Plays of the Day from the Eliminator between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians

After a few off games, Chennai Super Kings held on to all their catches, after which Mumbai Indians fumbled in the field to clear the qualifier passage for the most consistent team in the IPL history

Aditya Verma has written to Sunil Gavaskar asking for clarification of reports that N Srinivasan was in Ranchi on May 13 at the time of Chennai Super Kings' IPL match against Rajasthan Royals in that city

Having left out Morne Morkel, who might have made the tactic work, KKR used Vinay Kumar to bowl short at Brendon McCullum, and he was only too happy to sit back in his crease and keep pulling

Aditya Verma used to stand outside the BCCI's offices, trying to get his case heard. These days he and his powerful friends are rather more of a nuisance for the board

The Cricket Association of Bihar, the petitioner in the ongoing Supreme Court case against the BCCI, plans to go all out during the hearing on Tuesday with its plea that N Srinivasan not be allowed to represent the board at the ICC

Plays of the day from the IPL match between Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals

Twice in a row, Glenn Maxwell and David Miller made light work of a massive target, this time 140 runs off 64 balls between them

This will be a clash of philosophies between batting-heavy Kings XI and bowling-heavy Royals

T20 is a cruel format that doesn't give too many players a shot at redemption. Here it's easy to identify a villain and bury him