Virat Kohli Vs South Africa

Kohli the key in South Africa

Ever since Virat Kohli has taken up the mantle of Indian Cricket team, everything has been going his way. From becoming the number one test team to winning everything, that has come their way in the ODIS. India under Kohli have won 10 consecutive test series and 8 one day series too. However, what is common in all these wins is that either almost all of them come at home or against teams that are weak. Barring a series win in West Indies, India has won all the matches in Asia. 

At the start of 2018, India will tour to South Africa where they will play three test matches and 6 ODIS. The series has been dubbed as the ultimate test for both team India and its skipper Virat Kohli. If Virat manages to win the series on African soil, he will become the first Indian captain to achieve the feat and that will make him the cricket’s uncrowned king. He will achieve what no Indian captain ever has achieved.

Both Ganguly and Dhoni have been highly successful in the subcontinent and what has eluded them is the series win away from home on fast pacy tracks. And it is this feat of winning away from home that could set Kohli apart from the two greats of Indian cricket.  Ganguly came close to winning in Australia in 2003 and Dhoni almost did it against South Africa in 2008. Both came agonizingly close but were unsuccessful, however cricket pundits have high hopes on Kohli and that he could be the first Indian skipper to win a test series in South Africa.

While Ganguly struggled on foreign tours with the bat, Dhoni struggled with handling his bowlers on the overseas tours. And it’s here that the pundits believe that Kohli with his greatness could do what both of the former great captains could not. Kohli is both aggressive and a freak with a bat, and he could very well inspire his team into performing well in South Africa. His batting would be detrimental to the fate of his first overseas assignment against a strong team. If he performs with the bat, his performance would bring confidence in his captainship too, which will augur well for the team, and India will end up winning its first series in South Africa. If he fails with the bat , it will affect his captaincy and India might end up losing the series embarrassingly

Kohli has been in sublime form in both tests and ODIs, but his weakness with the moving ball was well taken advantage of by the English bowlers in his last tour to England . if Kohli finds a way to handle the swinging ball he might very well become the greatest captain ever. However, be rest assured it will take a lot of doing to negate the fearsome attack of South Africans that will be bolstered with the return of Dale Steyn

Is it the end of Broad and Cook

Have the Ashes ended careers of two England legends? 

In the build up to the Ashes of 2006, former Aussie great Glenn Mcgrath on being asked to predict the score line had famously said that Aussies would win the series 5-0.. Having lost the last Ashes in England , not many had taken Mcgrath’s prediction seriously. But come the last test in Sydney in 2006, England lead by Ashes hero Andrew Flintoff  had been drubbed 5-0 and the performance of the Poms had been described as one of the worst.

  Pre Ashes banter has been a trend since the beginning of cricket's oldest rivalry. Predictions before the series have been used as a ploy to  exert mental pressure on opponents. However it’s the Aussies who have raised the bar in the Ashes  and  have  lived upto the expectations of the nation and themselves. 

Continuing with its legacy of pre Ashes banter , A ploy to unnerve the English camp, the Aussies this  time managed to raise a few English tempers  by declaring before the Ashes that few English players would end their careers by the time the series is over . Nathan Lyon, who has been sublime with the ball during the course of the series, said at  the start of the series that they were looking to end few English careers. And boy hasn't he been spot on with his prediction. Not even at the end of the Ashes, that voices against two main England mainstays have grown and we might very well witness the end of Alistair Cook and Stuart Broad. 

Former cricketers have questioned cook's longevity, with former teammate Graeme Swann doubtful over his hunger for the game. Having scored just 83 runs in his six innings of the Ashes series so far in the ongoing Ashes series, it looks highly unlikely that Cook will feature in any future series; he might even hang his boots after the end of this very match. 

However, with over 11000 runs in 150 test matches 33 year old   is  a strong cricketer, and  one can only hope that he fulfills predictions  of the former Indian great Sunil Gavaskar who had once said that cook could very well score 15000 runs and make 50 centuries. With the way past 17 even innings have gone for Cook it looks highly unlikely. Not only has he looked weary but also his hunger to score to score big has been missing.

Same is the case with Stuart Broad who has been below par throughout the series. 31-year-old pacer has been bowling military medium with little effect on flat Australian tracks and has been one of the main reasons for England’s dismal performance. Broad who has been a lion hearted performer for the Poms has looked tired in this series; he has averaged more than 50 with the ball which goes on to show that the veteran of more than 100 tests is weary.  With Mark Wood and Jake Ball on the sidelines England might very well drop Broad in the next Match , and that could very well end the career of the pacer.

17 year old story teller from Pulwama

On an Eid day in summer 2014, then 14-year-old Sahil Ahmad Lone was busy, like many children of his Barpora village in district Pulwoam (Pulwama), in playing games. Throughout the day, Sahil and his friends made merry and were excited in celebrating the festival of Eid. Sahil’s day had started with a bath and wearing his newly-bought dress, in which he offered the ritual Eid prayers. As the day progressed, Sahil relished various delicacies with his family and friends. When dusk fell, he started to realize that the cherished festive day was now nearing its end.

At night, Sahil lay in his bed, unable to sleep. At 1 a.m. in the middle of the night, he rose up and started crying, profusely.

Recalling that night, Sahil said that it was the images of people affected in the more than two-decade-old conflict of Kashmir that started to haunt him. “As I closed my eyes, I pictured mothers of my nation who had lost their sons to the conflict, mothers who had been waiting for years for their disappeared sons. I thought of mothers whose daughters were raped by Indian forces. I saw a mother who had refused to sit in shade because her son had lain on the ground for days in the scorching sun. I saw a mother whose son was languishing in an Indian jail for decades,” Sahil said.

As a child, Sahil said, he couldn’t bear to see a horse being flogged by its master. How, then, could he bear to see his people suffer? “I am very sensitive. I couldn’t bear to see the tonga-wallah beating his horse while on my way to school. The beatings to the horse would make me cry at night. You can imagine how much the suffering of my own people must affect me. But unlike many, I didn’t choose the gun; I picked up the pen.”

The story of a woman who had been waiting for her son for more than two decades moved Sahil to write one of his widely-read stories, “Laash” (Corpse). “It was 1:30 a.m. and I started writing, while tears were rolling down my face,” he recalled. The story was published in one of the leading Urdu dailies of Kashmir, Taemeeli Irshad. Sahil received accolades for it from near and far. “Tameeli Irshad has a huge readership in Kashmir. I was praised by many. I was very happy that my work was being appreciated,” he said with a sense of pride.

Among those who praised his story was the human rights activist Abhay Singh of Chandigarh. “It was a great moment for me to be praised by such a renowned human rights activist,” Sahil said. He recalled Abhay Singh’s words about the story: “Skilfully portrayed pain of Kashmiris.”


A story about Sahil in an Urdu daily Srinagar Times.
Sahil has more than 40 publications to his credit, most of them fictional Urdu stories, “some of which are columns that talk about social issues prevalent in the society, and I write Ghazals too,” he said.  He has been published in leading Urdu dailies of Kashmir and in national and international magazines. One of his stories titled as “Gumnaam Qabr” or an unknown grave is about a woman whose husband is picked up by government forces, and is later disappeared. “Like thousands of other Kashmiris, he disappears too. The story is about the struggles of his wife how she searches for him and in the end finds an unnamed grave, and it is there she concludes the fate of her husband. And hence gives up the search, and that is why the title unknown grave,” he said.

The story was published in Pindar and Qaumi Tanzeem from Patna. Calling himself as someone whose writing stems from the surroundings, Sahil says he wrote “Khudkashi” or Suicide when there were student suicides taking place in valley, “The story was widely read and I received good feedback. It was about the discrepancies in the education system and how it was ruining lives of students,” he said.

Similarly, he has a story on the dowry system Known as “Jahez” translated in English as Dowry. The story talks about the prevalent social evil of domestic abuse due to non-payment of dowry, “During those day   reports of domestic abuse by the