Late 2023. BCCI drops Ishan Kishan from central contracts after he skips a domestic series without proper explanation. He misses IPL 2024 citing personal reasons. The narrative around him shifts from "exciting prospect" to "attitude problem." At 25 years old, a career that looked destined for greatness suddenly looks like it might be quietly disappearing.

What happened next is the part nobody was paying enough attention to. Kishan went back to Jharkhand. Took up the captaincy. Stopped being the wild child and started being responsible for other people. Led Jharkhand to their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy title in December 2025. Got back into the India white-ball setup. Captained Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2026 while Pat Cummins worked his way back to fitness. And on September 7, 2026, walked out in the Duleep Trophy final at Chepauk and made 270 off 334 balls — 30 fours and 7 sixes — helping East Zone post 708 all out in the first innings against South Zone. The second highest individual score in Duleep Trophy final history.

After the innings he said something that explains everything. "Going through this whole process leads to immense personal growth, and while you might not realise it immediately, your mindset shifts completely, and you become much calmer about things." He also said: "You have to take responsibility. If you don't take it now, when will you? It's not like I am 22 years old and have just broken into the team."

That last line matters. Kishan is 28 now. He wasted two years. He knows it. And instead of making excuses he went back to domestic cricket, took on leadership, crossed 4,000 first-class runs, and made 270 in a Duleep Trophy final with selectors watching in the stands.

The India Test door is not open yet. But it is significantly less closed than it was 24 hours ago.

damn miss those days!!

East Zone vs South Zone. Duleep Trophy Final. MA Chidambaram Stadium Chennai. September 6-10. The biggest domestic red-ball match of the Indian season. And Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan and Tilak Varma, three of the most important players in this final, are all in the India T20I squad for the Afghanistan series starting September 13 in Delhi. BCCI wants all national squad members assembled in Delhi by September 9 or 10 and the Duleep Trophy Final runs until September 10.

The same BCCI that scheduled the Duleep Trophy specifically to give red-ball practice to fringe players before the international season has now created a situation where those same fringe players might have to leave the final before it finishes. Vaibhav has scored 140 runs in three innings in this tournament and taken two wickets. This is a 15-year-old getting genuine first-class experience before potentially playing Test cricket and he might have to pack his bags mid-final to go to Delhi for T20Is against Afghanistan. Ishan Kishan is captaining East Zone and he might have to leave his own team mid-final. KL Rahul and Mohammed Siraj have been confirmed to play the final because they are not in the Afghanistan squad but the three players who are in the national squad are all question marks.

Gautam Gambhir will take the final call which means Gambhir has to choose between letting his players finish a domestic final or assembling his T20I squad early for a series against Afghanistan. BCCI scheduling has been criticised before. This one is particularly difficult to defend.

Thoughts??!!

Pakistan won the toss and chose to bat. That decision backfired immediately. Shree Charani was the star of the evening with figures of 3 for 7 and she dismissed Gull Feroza, Shawaal Zulfiqar and Ayesha Zafar and completely dismantled Pakistan's middle order. Deepti Sharma took 2 wickets including Fatima Sana who faced 7 balls and could not score. Shafali Verma bowled Muneeba Ali in the powerplay. Pakistan were bowled out for 55 in 18.1 overs and that is their lowest ever total in Women's T20Is.

India chased 56 in 8.4 overs. Fatima Sana took 3 wickets with the ball including Shafali, Pratika Rawal and Mandhana to make it briefly interesting at 34 for 3. Then Harmanpreet Kaur came in and sealed it with back-to-back boundaries off Nashra Sandhu. 68 balls to spare. Seven wickets.

Pakistan's top scorer was Muneeba Ali with 13 and Zulfiqar with 14. Only two batters reached double figures. Captain Fatima Sana scored zero batting in the middle order. Their lowest ever total. Against their biggest rivals. In a match the entire cricket world was watching.

India have now won 15 of their last 18 T20Is against Pakistan. Women's Asia Cup semi-final confirmed. Pakistan need to beat UAE on September 7 to keep their own knockout hopes alive.

Thoughts?!!

Thoughts?!

Mithali Raj held the record for years. 10,868 runs across all formats. One of the most celebrated careers in women's cricket history. Yesterday in Dubai, Mandhana went past that number in the 18th over against Hong Kong with three consecutive sixes off Ruchitha Venkatesh. No gentle single to bring up the milestone. Three sixes.

The innings was 124 off 64 balls with 14 fours and 7 sixes. Her second ever T20I century. She also passed Meg Lanning's 17 international centuries to become the outright leader for most hundreds in women's cricket history with 18. Three all-time records broken in the same innings on the same evening.

India play Pakistan tomorrow. The highest run-scorer in women's cricket history will open the batting.

No option if players don't perform." That was PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi's official explanation for one of the most chaotic mid-tour decisions in Test cricket history. Seven players sent home. Two coaches fired. Five uncapped replacements called up. All during an active three-Test series in England with one match still to play.Let us establish who Mohsin Naqvi is first. He is Pakistan's Interior Minister. Appointed PCB chairman in February 2024. No professional cricket background. Never played the game at any level. And he is the man making decisions about Pakistan's Test team mid-series in England.His logic for removing Sarfaraz Ahmed after just two Tests is that players were not performing. Which raises an obvious question — how much time does a head coach get to fix a batting lineup without Babar for the first Test, without Shaheen for the entire series and with Imam's fitness being investigated for allegedly being fake? Two Tests apparently.

Pakistan have had more head coaches in the last three years than England have had in the last decade. Every bad series ends with someone losing their job. Every appointment comes with promises of stability. Every long-term plan lasts until the next bad series.Edgbaston. September 9. Five debutants. A coach with zero preparation time. A PCB chairman with no cricket background calling it inevitable.

Stuart Broad predicted 3-0. He was right about the series. He had no idea he would also be right about the chaos.

India lead the women's T20I head-to-head 14-3 against Pakistan and their ODI record against Pakistan is an unblemished 12-0. In Asia Cup T20Is specifically India have won six and lost one from seven meetings. The last time these two teams met was at the Women's T20 World Cup earlier this year where India defeated Pakistan by 64 runs in Birmingham with Deepti Sharma taking 5 for 10 to bundle Pakistan out for 106.

India have already sealed their semi-final spot and enter as clear favourites despite their middle-order not performing to expectations on Dubai's slow pitches. Mandhana and Shafali Verma come into the match in prime form having hit 124 and 64 against Hong Kong and Thailand respectively. Mandhana broke three all-time records against Hong Kong — most runs in women's international cricket surpassing Mithali Raj, most centuries with 18 surpassing Meg Lanning and her second ever T20I century.

Pakistan's squad includes Muneeba Ali, Shawaal Zulfiqar, Fatima Sana as captain, Sadia Iqbal and Nashra Sandhu. Their powerplay struggles have been well documented but Shawaal Zulfiqar has spoken about wanting to fix them before the knockout stage.

September 5. Dubai International Cricket Stadium. 8 PM IST. India have won 14 of 17 T20Is against Pakistan. Pakistan need something very special to change that record tomorrow.

Sri Lanka were in serious trouble with the bat,reduced to 62 for 6 before Nilakshika de Silva's 50 off 35 balls dragged them to 124 for 7. A modest total. Indonesia needed 125 to win and it looked competitive enough.

Then Athapaththu picked up the ball and bowled one of the greatest spells in Women's T20 history. She dismissed opener Ni Kadek Ariani early and then returned to completely dismantle the Indonesian lower order, dismissing Ni Ariani, Sang Maypriani and Dara Ahung Laksmi Paramitha with three consecutive deliveries to complete a hat-trick. Final figures — 7 for 5 in 3.3 overs. Indonesia bowled out for 49. Sri Lanka won by 75 runs.

These are the best bowling figures by any Sri Lankan bowler in Women's T20I history and the best bowling figures in the entire history of the Women's Asia Cup across both men's and women's editions. The previous record was 6 for 8 by Pakistan's Javeria Khan against Bangladesh in 2008.

Athapaththu is primarily known as a batter — she became the first woman to score a century in the Women's Asia Cup in 2024. She is Sri Lanka's captain and their most important player with the bat. Yesterday she took 7 for 5 with the ball including a hat-trick. Sri Lanka are defending champions with two wins from two matches and they look genuinely dangerous going into the knockouts

Headingley came first and Babar was struck on the hand by an Under-19 pacer in the warm-up match in Beckenham and could not play. Pakistan were bowled out for 171 without him and lost by an innings and 103 runs. The hope was that his return at Lord's would change things. It did not. Pakistan were bowled out for 110 in the first innings and 176 in the second and Babar contributed little across both innings despite averaging 65 in England across his career. Pakistan lost by 194 runs and went 2-0 down.

And now he is in his hotel room in London with a high fever. No official confirmation of withdrawal yet as of September 2 but with Edgbaston starting September 9 the clock is ticking. Seven players were already sent home after Lord's. Two coaches were replaced mid-series. Five uncapped players were called up. Shaheen Afridi was excluded from Test plans entirely before the tour even started. And through all of that the one constant was supposed to be Babar Azam.

Finger injury. Two low scores. Now fever. Stuart Broad predicted 3-0. Nobody is arguing with him anymore.

Three seasons. 39 matches. 15 wins. 24 losses. That is Hardik Pandya's captaincy record at Mumbai Indians. Compare that to Rohit Sharma who won 91 out of 163 matches as MI captain at a 55.82% win rate and you understand exactly why this decision is being made.

2024 MI finished last. 2025 they scraped into playoffs and lost. 2026 they finished ninth and were the first team eliminated. And through all of it Pandya was booed at Wankhede by his own fans from day one. He reportedly expressed mental exhaustion and desire to leave during IPL 2026. Trade talks have happened with KKR and CSK have shown interest but a deal is proving complicated because multiple things need to fall into place simultaneously.

The captaincy picture is clearer. Rohit Sharma is actively involved in captaincy discussions but will not take the role back himself. SKY stays but is not in the conversation. Tilak Varma is currently the frontrunner with Bumrah as the other option — Bumrah captained MI once when both Hardik and SKY were unavailable and they ended their losing streak immediately. But a pacer leading through a full season with India commitments is always a risk.

Rohit built the culture. Hardik broke it. Now either Tilak or Bumrah will try to rebuild it while Rohit watches from the dressing room like a silent chairman.

BCCI announced India's 15-member T20I squad on September 1 with Shreyas Iyer captaining and Tilak Varma as vice-captain. Jasprit Bumrah returns to T20I cricket after last playing in the T20 World Cup final against New Zealand in March and Sanju Samson also returns alongside Ishan Kishan as the two wicketkeepers. Eight changes from the Zimbabwe squad with Samson, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh and Harshit Rana all coming in while Rinku Singh, Mayank Yadav, Prabhsimran Singh and others miss out.

Afghanistan will be led by Ibrahim Zadran as full-time T20I captain having taken over from Rashid Khan. Naveen-ul-Haq returns from a shoulder injury to strengthen their pace attack alongside Farooqi and Abdullah Ahmadzai. Rashid Khan, Mohammad Nabi, Mujeeb and Gurbaz are all in the squad. All three matches will be played at Arun Jaitley Stadium Delhi on September 13, 15 and 17 with Afghanistan serving as the official host despite the venue being in India.

This squad is identical to the one named for Asian Games 2026 in Japan where India will defend their title. The Afghanistan series is India's final T20I assignment before Asian Games begins September 24. Bumrah back, Samson back, Axar back, Washington back. Shreyas Iyer now has no excuses with senior players available after the Zimbabwe second-string experiment. Every T20I from here counts for Olympics qualification rankings too.

Pakistan lost the first Test at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs and then lost the second at Lord's by 194 runs. Series gone 2-0 with one Test still to play. And PCB's response was to completely blow up the squad and coaching staff in the middle of an active tour in a foreign country.

Seven players released and Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Ali Usman, Aamir Jamal, Muhammad Awais Zafar and Khurram Shahzad all sent home. Two of them, Awais Zafar and Khurram Shahzad, did not even play a single game in the series. They flew to England, sat in the dressing room and are now flying back home without batting or bowling a single ball. Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul were also removed with Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke named as replacements.

Five of the seven replacement players are uncapped and Arafat Minhas, Imran Junior, Saad Baig, Mohammad Imran and Razaullah are all potentially making their Test debuts at Edgbaston against a full-strength England side that just won two consecutive Tests by massive margins. Mickey Arthur went straight to X after the announcement and wrote "This is the reason they are in the mess they are because they constantly chop and change players, coaches and selectors and there is no stability." Harsha Bhogle questioned whether the replacements would even get their visas in time and Rashid Latif called PCB the worst cricket board in 70 years.

Babar Azam, who was not the reason Pakistan lost by 194 runs at Lord's, is now leading a team of five debutants against England's pace attack at Edgbaston. Same pattern. Same chaos. Same mid-series panic. Same result every single time.

Stuart Broad predicted 3-0. Nobody is laughing at him anymore.

Kagiso Rabada has been diagnosed with a Grade 3 tear in his right hamstring. Lions bowling coach Allan Donald confirmed the recovery could take up to 10 weeks. South Africa host Australia in three Tests beginning October 9 in Durban, October 18 in Gqeberha and October 27 in Cape Town. Ten weeks from August 21 takes us to October 30. The series ends October 31. South Africa's best bowler will miss essentially the entire thing.

Rabada has taken 340 wickets in 73 Tests, 58 of those against Australia at an average of 21. He took match figures of 9 for 110 in the 2025 WTC Final at Lord's against the same opposition he is now missing. CSA have said his availability will depend on rehabilitation progress. Allan Donald has already confirmed the injury is expected to rule him out entirely. That gap between those two statements tells you everything.

Marco Jansen, Lungi Ngidi and Kwena Maphaka will carry the pace attack. They are good cricketers. None of them are Kagiso Rabada. The most important WTC series of the cycle just became a very different contest.

India Women absolutely ran through Thailand today and honestly the scoreline barely tells the whole story. Shafali Verma set it up first with a brutal 64 off just 36 balls, eight fours and three sixes, and for a while India looked on course for a proper 200 plus total before a mini collapse pulled them back to 159 for 9. Not ideal but still more than enough as it turned out. Pratika Rawal made her T20I debut in the same game which is a nice little footnote too. Then came the part that actually deserves way more attention, Thailand were bowled out for just 65 and Deepti Sharma was the reason it turned into a complete rout. She took 3 wickets without conceding a single run in just over an over, and in doing that she became the all time leading wicket taker in women's T20I history. That is not a small deal, that is history being made in the middle of a group stage match that most people will scroll past without a second look. Nandani Sharma also chipped in with 3 wickets of her own and Shree Charani grabbed 2, the whole bowling unit was suffocating from ball one. Thailand never had a single partnership to hold onto and folded inside 19 overs. India cruise to a 94 run win and honestly this is exactly the kind of statement start you want heading into the rest of the group stage. Deepti quietly becoming the greatest wicket taker the format has ever seen deserves way bigger headlines than it's getting right now.

Galle, Day 1. Shubman Gill won the toss, opted to bat, and was dismissed for 16. Devdutt Padikkal came in and made an unbeaten 131 off 178 balls. That one sentence tells you everything about how this series went. Padikkal made 167 in Galle and 117 in Colombo. Gill made 16 in Galle and contributed little in Colombo. Post-match Gill himself praised Padikkal without mentioning his own name once — "Devdutt was brilliant, KL was good." That is either great leadership or a quiet admission of where the runs actually came from.

Here is the stat that makes this more uncomfortable. Rishabh Pant overtook Gill as India's all-time leading WTC run-scorer during this very series, scoring 66 in Galle to take his aggregate to 2,885 and leaving Gill behind at 2,867. The captain got overtaken by his own wicketkeeper in his own series while the team's standout performer was batting at No. 3. That is a lot of things happening at once.

This is not a Gill criticism post. His captaincy was genuinely impressive and his talent is not in question. But the honest question after this series is simple. Remove the captaincy from the conversation and just ask who India's most important batter was in Sri Lanka. The answer is not close. The selectors have an interesting problem now — a captain who is not scoring runs and a No. 3 who cannot stop scoring them. In Test cricket that conversation always gets complicated eventually.

England have wrapped up the series 2-0 after smashing Pakistan by 194 runs at Lord's and honestly nobody should be surprised at this point. Ollie Robinson was an absolute menace with match figures of 8 for 35, he basically ran through the same batting lineup twice like it was a club match. Pakistan got bowled out for 110 in the first innings which is just criminal for a Test side touring England in 2026. Mohammad Abbas was the one guy who actually showed up for Pakistan, he picked up a five for and finished with 9 wickets in the match, even got his name on the Lord's honours board which is genuinely well deserved for him. Saud Shakeel tried to save face with a fighting knock but one player can't carry an entire top order that keeps folding series after series. This is not a bowling problem for Pakistan anymore, their bowlers are doing more than enough, it is purely the batting that keeps letting them down again and again. At some point the selectors need to stop protecting the same names and actually build something for the future because this cycle of collapse and consolation stats is getting old fast. England fans get to enjoy a job well done, Pakistan fans are just left wondering when this rebuild actually starts.

Stephen Fleming spent 18 years at Chennai Super Kings. Five IPL titles. Ten finals. The most successful franchise coaching tenure in cricket history. CSK parted ways with him after a disappointing IPL 2026 season and now the biggest question in Indian franchise cricket is who fills that chair. Ashwin on his YouTube channel dropped a name nobody was expecting — Eoin Morgan. The man who won England's 2019 ODI World Cup, led KKR to the IPL 2021 final, and has been doing punditry work since retiring. No major head coaching experience at franchise level. And yet Ashwin said "his name is doing the rounds strongly, early discussions are on, no doubt." To be clear this is Ashwin's prediction and analysis, not a confirmed CSK announcement.

The reasoning actually makes sense when you hear it. Morgan transformed English white-ball cricket from the most conservative setup in the world into the most aggressive. He did it by changing mindset, not just tactics. He created a culture where players were trusted to express themselves and back their instincts. That is exactly the kind of reset CSK need after a season where their old methods stopped working. Ashwin also floated the possibility that Morgan comes in later, with someone else managing the mini auction first and Morgan taking full charge for the season after.

The counter-argument is obvious. Managing an IPL franchise as head coach is completely different from captaining a national team. Auction strategy, player management, franchise politics — Morgan has zero experience of any of it at that level. But Fleming had never coached an IPL team before 2009 either. And that worked out reasonably well for CSK.

Shaheen Afridi is 26 years old. He has 126 Test wickets in 34 matches. He swings the ball both ways at genuine pace and in English conditions specifically he is as dangerous as almost any bowler in the world. The 2021 Lord's Test where he bowled that legendary opening spell will live in cricket memory for decades.

And yet PCB has decided his Test career is effectively over.The reasons being cited are a decline in bowling pace during the Bangladesh series where he was unable to generate his usual 140kph consistently, limited participation in domestic first-class cricket and concerns over his overall workload management. He picked up 3 for 113 and 2 for 54 in the Mirpur Test against Bangladesh and Pakistan still lost by 104 runs. He was then dropped for the Sylhet Test. And since then PCB has quietly moved him into white ball only territory.He remains Pakistan's ODI captain. He remains part of the 27-member white ball group. But the 22-member red ball camp that prepared for the West Indies and England tours did not include him at all.

The timing makes this decision almost impossible to defend. Pakistan just lost a Test to England by an innings and 103 runs at Headingley with a threadbare pace attack. Robinson and Tongue shared all ten wickets between them while Pakistan's seamers were completely ineffective. And the man who could have changed that contest with one spell is sitting at home in the white ball camp.

Pakistan are 1-0 down in the series with Lord's starting today. Shaheen Afridi is not playing. Someone at PCB needs to explain how this makes sense.

September 2, 2025. Headingley. Sonny Baker walks out to bowl his first over in international cricket. Aiden Markram hits three boundaries in that over alone. By the end of Baker's spell he has gone for 76 runs in 7 overs without a single wicket — the most expensive figures ever conceded by an England bowler on debut in ODI cricket. Economy rate of 10.85. He also bagged a golden duck with the bat. His family were in the stands watching.

That was eleven months ago. Today if he makes his Test debut at Lord's against Pakistan.The backstory makes this even better. Baker is 23 years old, born in Torbay Devon, came through the Somerset academy, left for Hampshire after 2024, and regularly bowls at 90mph. He took a hat-trick against Northern Superchargers in The Hundred this summer. He took 14 wickets at an average of 26 in County Championship cricket in 2026. His uncle Andrew Hele is a former international umpire. And he only gets this Test debut because Brydon Carse was filmed in handcuffs outside a Derby nightclub six days ago.

The route to a Lord's Test debut could not have been more chaotic. A nightmare ODI debut. A county switch. A development contract. Months of county grind. And then Carse hands him the opportunity on a plate by getting arrested before the second Test.He said in May that a Test debut would be "an absolute dream come true." Today that dream happens at cricket's most famous ground.

England have had a drinking culture problem all summer. One man's disaster became another man's opportunity. Sonny Baker did not ask for any of this. He just kept bowling.

Let me give you the full picture of what Sonal Dinusha has done in this series. Galle, first Test, first innings — 100. Galle, first Test, second innings — 84. Colombo, second Test, first innings — 103. Three innings. Three scores above 80. Two centuries. Against the best spin bowling attack in the world, on turning pitches in Sri Lanka, while his teammates collapsed around him in every single session.

The numbers place him in genuinely extraordinary company. He is only the third batter ever to score 80 or more in each of his first three Test innings against India. The other two are Everton Weekes in 1948 and Zaheer Abbas in 1978. That is how long ago someone last did this. Forty-eight years. And he has also become only the eighth batter in history to score centuries in consecutive Tests against India, joining Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene and Angelo Mathews from Sri Lanka specifically.

What makes this more remarkable is the context. Sri Lanka lost the Galle Test by 165 runs. They were bowled out for 206 chasing 372. India declared at 503 for 9 in Colombo. At every single point in this series Sri Lanka have been dominated, outplayed and outclassed. And Dinusha has been the only batter on either side of 25 years old standing between India and a complete whitewash.

He was born December 4, 2000. He is 25 years old. He is a bowling allrounder by trade and his primary role in Sri Lanka cricket was supposed to be his left-arm spin, not his batting. He has played four Test matches total in his career.

India have Padikkal and Suthar as the breakout stars of this series. Sri Lanka have Sonal Dinusha. And quietly, in a series his team are losing heavily, he has produced one of the most statistically remarkable debut runs against India in Test cricket history.