India

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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Times Now

In a debate moderated by TIMES NOW’s Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami, panelists — Mihir Bose, former Sports Editor, BBC and Author; Boria Majumdar, Cricket Historian; Kunal Pradhan, Deputy Editor, Mumbai Mirror; Arun Lal, former Test Cricketer; and Atul Wasan, former Indian Test Cricketer — discuss the issue of India’s cricket team being humbled by Australia in 2nd Test match as well and whether the Indian team simply lost the magic touch or is it because Dhoni’s XI are tired warhorses.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

PlayUp

Emerging market targeted as growth at home stagnates

India may not seem the place where you go to learn new things about football.

Cricket, yes. But football? Surely this is one part of the world where the most popular game just does not work. That rather clichéd view needs to be revised. Indeed, India could prove the new frontier of the game.

No, not in terms of what Indian football will do on the field of play. There, India remains a desperately underachieving country, despite the popularity of the game.

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