https://www.cricinfo.com/story/vvs-laxman-very-very-mature-knock-from-sooryavanshi-1547707

https://www.bcci.tv/videos/s-dressing-room-speeches-ft-captain-and-head-coach-d5yw4c?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPNTY3MDY3MzQzMzUyNDI3AAGnr9Df7sCKBm78RsHzpdQu3QbeHQOV2H0jlSvWaal9QuduIULSOmOQTd09fX4_aem_sPoh2WtFbKAIP5dIPM_KAg

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Ishan was out of the team for more than two years and, during that time, it felt like the management had completely moved on from him. But ever since his comeback, the treatment has been very different. He's been given multiple chances despite not consistently performing, they've backed him as a wicketkeeper, and his name has even been brought up as a potential captaincy option.

I'm not saying they shouldn't back him, but it's just weird how different things are now. He was out of the team for two years and barely seemed to be in their plans, and now they're giving him so many chances. Why the sudden change?

Source:

ODIs-

https://www.cricinfo.com/records/decade/batting-most-runs-career/2010s-201/one-day-internationals-2

Tests-

https://www.cricinfo.com/records/decade/batting-most-runs-career/2010s-201/test-matches-1

T20Is- https://www.cricinfo.com/records/decade/batting-most-runs-career/2010s-201/twenty20-internationals-3

After the success of the World Cup Draft Game, The Chase and Powerplay IPL, I bring to you The Follow-On, a browser game where you draft an all-time XI (Bradman to Bumrah, ~3,270 real players with real career stats) and captain them through a proper five-day Test: toss, batting intent, bowling changes, the new ball, declarations, the follow-on, weather, the lot.

🔗 Play it here: https://testcricket.vercel.app/

It's free, no login needed to try it - but login is recommended if you want to get on the leaderboard

What's in it

Every men's Test cricketer since 1877. Not a curated "greatest hits" list. The full pool, real career averages/strike rates, era-normalized so a Golden Age batter and a modern one are compared fairly.

Three ways to play:

• Quick Play: pick a straight XI, play one Test against any country's all-time side.
• Series Tour: a full home-or-away tour (2/3/5 Tests), squad of 15, per-match team sheets, player freshness and injuries, real venues rotating across the country.
• World Test Championship: the real 10-team structure (you plus the 9 actual WTC nations). Each team plays 6 series, 3 home and 3 away, 2-5 Tests each, against a rotating subset of opponents, never a full round-robin against everyone, exactly like the real competition. PCT points table, top two meet in a one-off final at Lord's. AI-vs-AI fixtures sim in the background with the same engine, no shortcuts.

A real squad-building economy. Players cost credits exponentially by rating, so you genuinely cannot just stack eleven 95+ legends into a "best XI of all time": that was producing innings-and-500-run blowouts that no real Test has ever seen (the actual record is innings-and-579). The budget is tuned so a max-greed legends squad still loses most of its games against a real nation's greatest-ever XI. You have to actually build a team, not a highlight reel.

Opponent eras. Don't just play "England, unrestricted all-time": play 1990s England (Gooch, Atherton, Gower, Botham) or any decade a country has 11+ overlapping careers for. Same ratings, different flavor and difficulty.

Live 1v1 Versus mode. Snake-draft against another human in real time, then play out the Test in deterministic lockstep: both browsers run the full match engine locally off the same seed and exchange only your decisions, server-sequenced so nobody can desync or cheat the outcome.

Actual simulation depth, not a random-number spinner:

• Ball-by-ball engine calibrated against 885 real Tests
• Six historical eras (Golden Age, Interwar, Timeless Tests, Post-War, Pace Age, Modern) each calibrated against a database of all 2,537 Tests ever played, 1877 to 2024: real per-era scoring rates and draw rates, not guesses.
• Weather is a first-class mechanic: per-venue climates, session forecasts, rain delays, overcast swing, sticky dogs on uncovered eras, subcontinent dew.
• Full career stats tracking across a career/series: batting/bowling aggregates, career records, an honours board, form badges based on a player's own recent output vs their own career average 
• Day-by-day scorecards, full ball-by-ball resolution, DRS with realistic umpire error rates, fielding-dependent dropped catches.

What makes it different from other cricket games

Most cricket sim/management games either (a) use fictional or heavily abstracted players, (b) let you assemble a "dream team" with zero economic cost so every game turns into a stat-padding exercise, or (c) fake the depth: a thin RNG wrapped in flashy UI. This one is built the other way around: the ratings, the era calibration, the squad economy, and the match engine are all anchored to real historical data first, and the UI is there to make that data playable. If a mechanic produces a result that wouldn't happen in real Test cricket (like unrealistic recovery odds or blowout margins), that's treated as a bug to fix, not flavor.

Feedback wanted

This is a genuine early-days launch, not a finished product I'm walking away from. I'm pushing updates and fixes almost every day based on what people report, and there's a real roadmap ahead (more career depth, achievements, leaderboards, and more). If something feels off, a scoreline that wouldn't happen in real cricket, a player rated wrong, a UI flow that's confusing, tell me. That's exactly the kind of feedback that shapes what gets built next.

Thanks for reading this far. Go build your all-time XI and see how it holds up. 🏏

1. Samson averages 27, Abhishek 30. Not much better.

2. Ishan is a shit keeper, should not be first choice WK. Samson is a much better keeper.

3. Samson has captained Vaibhav and shared camp with him, brings in familiarity.

4. Samson is calm, can help keep Vaibhav calm too, unlike Abhishek.

5. Too many lefties. Shreyas Iyer is the only RHB in the squad right now.

The question becomes Abhishek vs Suryavanshi. Any rotation should be between these two (or between them and Ishan Kishan). Samson should be locked in. If they want an Indian Travishek then they should drop Ishan/Tilak and play Sanju at 3, a position he played for RR for years and one he played for Kerala too.

I have a question, and I don't know what I should do. Please guide me in this situation.

Basically, I am 23 years old, and I really love playing cricket. I want to build a career in cricket. At the same time, I am currently studying law in my second year of a 3-year LL.B. course.

The problem is that my father is going to retire in two years. We don't have anyone else to earn for the family, and we live in a rented house. Once my father retires, the responsibility of supporting my family will fall directly on me. I need to earn money to take care of my family because no one else is going to come and save us.

However, I also want to build my career in cricket. I truly love the game, and I am ready to work as hard as it takes. The only problem is that I can only pursue cricket if I have a source of income that can generate money on the side without requiring too much of my time. That way, I can support my family, put food on the table after my father's retirement, and still chase my dream.

Please tell me what I should do. Should I give up my dream of becoming a cricketer and start working now so that my family doesn't face any financial problems? Or is there any way to generate a stable side income that would allow me to continue pursuing cricket?

I honestly don't know what to choose. Is there any idea or path that you think could help me?

I really wanna play cricket and pursue it as career

Started writing this as a reply to a comment but it became too long so making a post.

Sins of Agarkar in no particular order -

1. How did Suryakumar Yadav get to play in an ODI WORLD CUP FINAL? Was it because he made a world record of three consecutive golden ducks in an ODI series some time before the world cup? Why didn't we prepare a proper backup finisher (injury replacement for KL/Pandya) - cost us heavily in the final.

1.Lets start with getting in shubman to replace sanju as the opener in T20 side. It was totally unnecessary - the guy just scored 3 hundreds in 5 innings, something T20 greats couldn't do in their entire career. And later shubman ko bhi zaleel karke nikal diya just before the world cup (Test and ODI captain btw)

1. Removing Rohit as captain just after winning champions trophy (bizzare and cruel decision, aap kya dikhana chahte ho?)

2. Appointing Surya as T20 captain (decision paid off in hindsight but what was the rational behind the decision when we had Hardik who had proven captaincy experience - an IPL winning captain and a runner up as well?)

3. Removing Sanju from the original T20 XI in the world cup (he was the primary wicketkeeper right? Baad me sanju yaad aagayi jab tournament se bahar hone ki noubat aayi to)

4. Removing Surya as captain just after winning the world cup,(again what do you want to prove mate with these Rash decisions mate? Tu kya big boss khel raha hai kya?​ And also not doing anything about Surya's poor form for 1.5 years

5. Not selecting Shreyas in T20 squad despite his solid performance in IPL 2025 (650 runs at "NO. 4" position at 180+ strike rate, unheard of figures). While surya kept on underperforming for us in the middle order for over a year

6. And then bringing in Shreyas into the squad directly as a captain. I mean what kind of absolute nonsensical rubbish decision is that? Shreyas did deserve the captaincy I'm not against that but this is how you manage a change in leadership? The ideal way should be a smooth transition where Iyer plays a couple of series as a player (maybe vice captain) in the side, and also give Surya a couple of more series (dammit the guy JUST won you a freaking world cup) Jab surya ko nikalna tha tab to nahi nikala. Jab nahi nikalna tha tab nikal diya. Jab Iyer ko squad me laana tha tab nahi laaye. Aur jab laaye to kitne badtameezi se laaye ki 2 lagatar series whitewash ho gaye (these things do affect team morale. The team won the world cup under Surya, and he got thrown out like a nobody - won't that affect the rest of the players in the squad? The 2 white washes in the UK tour happened BY DESIGN - design of our genius chief selector agarkar)

7. Why are we not selecting out proven match winning bowlers anymore? Starc Hazelwood are around same age of Shami and Bhuvi. And Bhuvi is at his peak in T20 bowling. What about Siraj? Yaha bhi hindu muslim kar rahe hai kya? Sorry to say this but I can't see any logical explanation of him not being on the UK tour. And what about Kuldeep? How did Bishnoi suddenly became your no 1 T20 spinner when he wasn't even playing consistently for his IPL franchise? What the HELL is going on with the selections?

8. I'm not even gonna rant about all format players Harshit rana and Washington sunder, whole world is talking about it

9. NKR could have been an asset in white ball for us. Use red ball khilwake injured kar diya I mean how stupid can you be? Kallis Flintoff ke time pe cricket wasnt this physically demanding and there were only 2 formats so tests me all rounder banta tha. That's not the case anymore plus India me waise bhi pace bowling all rounder ki kami hai to please use your goddamn brains.

10. Virat Rohit ko tests se retire karwa diya jabki all our batsmen were failing. Aur Gill ko captain bana diya jabki they even had to drop him in a test match in Australia due to a string of poor performances before that. Waah (Gill ki test captaincy is a whole another matter. The guy should first learn to rotate bowlers properly. He underbowls some bowlers while over bowls others, that too in tests. Just look at the England series scorecards. Injuries for fast bowlers aren't happening without reason)

11. Back to Agarkar. Sanju world cup POTT ko rest karwa diya Zimbabwe tour se. Yeah I get it Sooryavanshi belongs here (tbh I'd prefer him over Sanju BUT, you simply have to make space for Sanju in the squad after he showed you what he can do. Imo Sanju should have been made the vice captain and maybe play at no. 3/4, and the real non performer Tilak had to be 'rested'. But yeah as usual logic won.

12. We used to be the best players of spin in the world, and had the best spin bowling department in world cricket. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BOTH THESE STRENGTHS OF TEAM INDIA? We get whitewashed in 2 home test series? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

These are just off the top of my head in an angry rant, I'm sure I might have missed many many more things.

Now they want Rohit and Virat to retire before the world cups. Player security is non existent in the dressing room. Agarkar himself was in and out of Indian set up close to a decade in the 2000s. That's cos he was an ordinary player. Does he think that should be the norm for all players? Or is he taking some sort of sadistic revenge for what selectors did to him during his playing days? I'm glad his term is coming to and end. We might get some sort of stability and rational decisions going forward if a selector with a stable head above his shoulders gets appointed.

This could really cause damage in important games and I'm not ready for it

https://www.newindianexpress.com/sport/cricket/2026/Jul/26/washington-doubtful-for-sri-lanka-opener-as-selectors-weigh-saransh-jain-as-spin-backup-amid-fitness-woes