India

Evening Standard

British aid to India was once an admirable, benevolent gesture. But to carry on giving aid is a colossal failure to understand how the country has changed.

Just consider the new India. The ninth largest economy in the world by GDP, it is growing at over seven per cent and is predicted to overtake the UK by 2022. There are more billionaires in India than in this country. Since India gained independence in 1947, Indians have squirrelled away more than £900 billion in Swiss bank accounts, more than the rest of the world combined. India also gives £3.5 billion of aid to Africa and is spending £2 billion to put Indians into space.

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PlayUpCricket

The painfully long wait for Sachin’s next ton must end so India can be liberated. Mihir thinks the pressure of waiting for Tendulkar to score his 100th hundred is impacting on the performance of the Indian team.

PlayUpCricket

Mihir Bose says IPL is not the reason for India’s demise in Test cricket. India should have implemented a process to blood young players so they don’t get stuck with a team of aging batsmen. Bowling attack is under par.

BBC London Radio

With Jason Solomons, Michael Smiley, Mihir Bose, ‘Cover To Cover’ and Seal.

The Robert Elms show is a celebration of every aspect of London.

Three hours a day, revel in the stories and characters, memories and aspirations which make London such a great place to live and work.

Art, architecture, history, movies, shopping, drinking and dining all carried out to a soundtrack of music for grown ups.

The Robert Elms Show is tailor-made for you, dear Londoner.

Click here to listen to the programme (Note: Section with Mihir starts at 1:36:40.  This programme will only be available until the 26th January)

Click here to read more about The Spirit of the Game

Outlook – Opinion

A wealthy Board, wealthy players, but a poverty of strategy and ambition—and a ‘cool’ captain who’s clueless

Indian cricket is in the classic position of the rich man who finds that money does not bring success, let alone happiness. To anyone brought up on Bollywood films, that is hardly a surprising script, but it’s the grim reality that stares Indian cricket in the face. What makes it worse is its predictability. The easy thing would be to fault the IPL. It is more than that. The sad situation is the result of years of mismanagement and any lack of strategic thinking. This is a problem that goes beyond cricket to what may be called the national psyche.

I was made aware of this back in 2002. India had just won a Test in Trinidad—the first Test they had won in the West Indies since that epic victory, also at Trinidad, back in 1976. After the victory, captain Sourav Ganguly kissed the turf of the Queen’s Park Oval; I felt it epitomised the new India. Yet the next Test in Barbados saw Ganguly run out Rahul Dravid and an abysmal batting collapse. Far from looking like victors, Indians looked a deflated team waiting to go home. A perceptive critic defined it as the poverty of ambition. India had won one Test in the Caribbean; what more was required? Indian cricket has always suffered from this syndrome.

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