Recent Blogs

It has been a wonderful sojourn in Durban so far and our win against the Nashua Dolphins in a warm-up game at the magnificent Kingsmead Stadium on Monday has obviously put us all in good heart. The players who were not part of the warm-up game had a long net session while the team also had a small get-together on Saturday in the restaurant at the team hotel......

So, here we are at the Suncoast Hotel and Towers in Durban, South Africa, after the long flight from Chennai, and I couldn’t wait to get down to matters cricketing ahead of the IPL 2009 commencing on April 18. Suncoast Towers, located by the side of the beach with a 24-hour Casino, is the perfect place to be in. The ride to the ground is only 15 minutes. The view from the glass-fronted elevators would stay with all of us for a long time....

It has been a while since I attacked the keyboard, but now that we are more or less well-settled in our “home away from home” in Durban, South Africa, I thought I will let it rip, for there is plenty I would like to share with you. In a nutshell, it has been an amazing experience thus far and I have a strong feeling that this trip could well turn out to be one of my most memorable outings....

Let me put it this way. At the time of writing this piece, I am to hear anything on Michael Hussey pulling out of 2009 IPL. If it is so, then we will be obviously missing him and I say this for a good reason. When Hussey came on board last year, I straightaway realized that he brought far more to the table than just his cricketing talent. He is an amazingly simple person who blends well with the team, especially the youngsters. I think there is a lot about Hussey that other cricketers would do well to imbibe. ...

I wish I were 20 years younger at this very moment! The relocation of the IPL 2009 to South Africa might not have met with unanimous approval from all, but from purely a cricketing perspective, I think, the move will open up a whole new vista. For young cricketers in particular, it is a huge platform to play in alien conditions and on foreign soil, rubbing shoulders with some of the best players in the world today. I would give anything to...

About a year ago, we all were groping in the dark, not really knowing how best to approach the Indian Premier League as far as forming our Chennai Super Kings team from the scratch. In the end, I thought we did a pretty decent job by picking players for specific roles and then fine tuning as we went along. We were hoping to win the inaugural Cup, but lost the final by one ball! Wiser by our 2008 experience, we went into the auction in Goa on...

It might be a bit late in the day to recap the 2008 IPL season but with the next edition looming large on the horizon, some reflection on the inaugural competition could throw up a few lessons for us. If anything, it was a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me as well as the Chennai Super Kings who started strongly, but tapered off before picking themselves up for the push to the final. The fire-power of Hayden, Hussey, Oram and Murali...