Ten Thousand kms

Ten thousand. This five-numerical figure has fascinated people for a long time. As an example, Sunil Gavaskar’s 10,000th run. I can vividly recall Gavaskar nudging a quick single through the slips to become the first cricketer to reach 10,000 test runs. I had watched that moment on TV—the fourth test match against Pakistan at Ahmedabad … Read the essay

Poetry and Medicine

Poetry and medicine. For centuries they have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Ancient mythology tells us that Apollo was the Greek God of medicine, music and poetry. John Keats abandoned a career in medicine to concentrate on writing. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote poems throughout his medical career and continued to do so long after he … Read the essay

Bevan Congdon

Bevan Congdon died today. I remember his two towering sixes in the 1969 Nagpur test (India vs. New Zealand) – incidentally, the first cricket match that I saw live at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground, Nagpur. A connoisseur’s dream, he scored match-winning sixty-plus in the first inning and had no problems reading the variations in … Read the essay

Vidarbha wins Ranji trophy

Vidarbha did it! What a victory! This day reminds me of Kapil Dev lifting the 1983 World cup in England: the Vidarbha team was as much an underdog as the Indian team was in 1983. Thirty-five years ago, a bunch of Indian players took over the mighty West Indian team and made history by defeating … Read the essay

Vidarbha inching towards a victory

Rajneesh Gurbani seems to be in sublime form! This morning, he scythed through Delhi’s middle and tail for a hat-trick against Delhi— no mean achievement in a Ranji Trophy final— and went on to claim four wickets in just six balls. He bowled intelligently today: neither Mishra, nor Saini, nor Shorey could read his incredible … Read the essay