📢 On Headingley

Reflections from the 1st India-England Test

Indian players couldn’t stop smiling on Day 5 in Headingley. The disparity between body language and match situation was of Carlo Ancelotti proportions.

Sai Sudharsan cheekily grinned at Shubman Gill after a DRS review for a Ben Stokes dismissal, that had been taken on his insistence, showed the ball had clearly missed glove.

The typically combative Mohammed Siraj couldn’t keep a straight face in his attempts to sledge Ben Duckett. After a bruising morning, he could be seen giggling with Gill as they walked off the field for lunch.

In his first over of the second session, Jasprit Bumrah took a tumble as he ran in. Alarms went off across India but he coolly dusted himself off, chuckling while doing so.

Yashasvi Jaiswal dropped his third catch of the Test in the morning session and was goaded by the Barmy Army through the day for it. After another fumble late in the day drew a sardonic cheer from the crowd, a mischievous smile broke across his face.

India’s fielding efforts showed why Rohit Sharma called them garden mein ghumne wale bandhe. And, Thakur’s misfield of a tame Joe Root drive soon after lunch epitomised their sloppiness. The all-rounder’s slip saw the ball pass by him at mid-off, but instead of chasing after it, he remained seated on the grass and held his pose. By the time he snapped out of it, Root and Stokes had already run three.

And you know what he did as Jadeja furiously berated him? I’ll tell you what he did. He smiled.

Don’t get the wrong idea, India’s equanimity didn’t come at the cost of application. If anything, it allowed them to take the Test as deep as they did. That can feel like a backhanded compliment to a side defending 371 on Day 5. But really, it’s more of a hat-tip to England’s chasing prowess.

Albeit thrilling, England’s systemic brutality in the fourth innings isn’t a new development. The intrigue around the series lies in this new iteration of India. This was their first Test since 2011 that hasn’t featured one of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma or Ravichandran Ashwin.

The retirements of the trio kicked off a transition process that should have really begun a year ago. The triumphs and tribulations of India’s white-ball sides had smoothed over the fact that they have won just one away series (Bangladesh, 2023) since the famous Border-Gavaskar win of 2021.

For all his impact in the shorter formats of the game, Rohit failed to build a clear playing style for the Test side. India won just two of 7 away Tests and lost five in 10 at home.

A new World Test Championship cycle felt an opportune time to wipe the slate clean.

So what did we learn after their five-wicket defeat in the first Test? The bowling attack is over reliant on Bumrah. Jaiswal and KL Rahul complement each other well at the top. Rishabh Pant is a generational talent and Gill’s captaincy style is simultaneously frantic and stoic.

The only caveat here is that we knew all this before a ball had even been bowled. It’s anyway hard to extract concrete learnings after the first Test in a five match series. Only near the halfway mark do teams start to tell you who they actually are.

The only thing you can glean from this Test comes from India’s relaxed demeanour. It felt indicative of a side without baggage or a point to prove. This is a young team and they look keen to enjoy being young. In his post-match interview, Gill spoke of the side being a “learning one” and how he expects them to rectify the fielding and lower-order collapses moving forward.

The 25-year-old’s appointment as captain was the first sign that it was a team being built for the future. The decision to not bowl Bumrah in the closing stages - he bowled just three overs after lunch - reinforced the belief that this isn’t a win-now side.

This series is a legacy defining one for England. It’s a foundational one for India.

England’s red-ball reset in 2022 took place under the umbrella of a clear ideology. For India, identity is something they hope to strike upon on this tour. There will be growing pains this summer but they don’t plan to suffer through them.

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Cricketing Consumption Corner

Read: Lots of interesting details on Karun Nair’s comeback journey in this Daily Mail interview. There is a bit in here about how he aggressively shopped on Oxford Street after being not being picked for the final Test of the 2018 England tour.

Listen: There’s a nice balance between analysis and anecdotes in Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler’s new show.

📢 The era of sustainabilty

On Bumrah's decision to play just three Tests in England

“I love cricket more than captaincy,” Jasprit Bumrah explained, in his typical sedate manner.

In an interview with Dinesh Karthik (who is fast becoming one of my favourite broadcasters), Bumrah opened up about his decision to rule himself out of the Test captaincy.

It was for the same reason that Hardik Pandya wasn’t made T20 captain last year. Workload. The difference was that in Bumrah’s case, the concerns over his workload stemmed more from within.

The recent tour of Australia felt like the turning point. It simultaneously boosted Bumrah’s captaincy credentials and took away from them. India’s only win of the series came under him, and Rohit Sharma’s struggles with the bat only compounded the belief that it was his team.

Leadership was a light load on his broad shoulders, and he ended up as the man of the series with 32 wickets at an average of 13. But rewriting the narrative of Indian fast-bowling and cricket machismo proved back-breaking. Bumrah’s body gave up on him in the fifth Test, in what eventually turned out to be a stress-related injury to the lower-back.

He subsequently missed England’s white-ball tour early in the year and wasn’t a part of India’s Champions Trophy-winning side either.

After consulting with “people who manage his back”, including his surgeon, he informed the BCCI he doesn’t want to be considered for a leadership role.

Shubman Gill will be leading the team for the five-Test series in England, of which Bumrah will be playing three. The ability to ordain which games he will play was another reason he cited for turning down the captaincy.

A Test tour of England is one of the most high-profile fixtures on India’s calendar. Their last series win came in 2007, and in the three tours since the head-to-head record stands at 13-4 in England’s favour. With all due respect to newly-crowned WTC champions South Africa, who will be touring at the end of the year, this is Bumrah and India’s biggest assignment until next year’s T20 World Cup.

And yet, there has hardly been a murmur of dissent around India’s best player deciding to play just three Tests. The lack of reaction is reflective of two things. One, his stature in the game. Just think back to India’s felicitation at the Wankhede Stadium last year after their T20 WC triumph, where Virat Kohli used the occasion to call on the BCCI to allow Bumrah to manage his schedule as he saw fit.

And two, how we are in the era of the sustainable athlete.

Developments in sports-science and technology have transformed the lifespans of sportspersons. They are better equipped to take care of their bodies than those of previous eras have ever been. The access to data also means that they are hyper-aware of their limits.

Bumrah’s decision to scale back his workload feels a strategy of less eventually being more. Somewhere, there must also be a recognition that he actually hasn’t played a lot of Tests. The 31-year-old has played significantly fewer Tests (46) than his contemporaries Kagiso Rabada (71) and Pat Cummins (68), both of whom are in the same age-bracket as him.

Kapil Dev, Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan - the three Indian fast bowlers above him on the all-time wickets leaderboard - had all played more Tests than him by this stage.

Managing your load in your early 30s will undoubtedly have a greater restorative effect on the body than taking up veganism and teetotaling (hello Ben Stokes) when you’re 34.

In today’s world of instant gratification, we have been programmed to view athletes as content creators we have perennial access to. It’s why a showstopper like Bumrah asking for rest can feel like an unfathomable act of rebellion.

He isn’t the first to do so. Across sport today, you’ll see stories of athletes being intentional in their battle against burnout. Last month, England’s star defender Millie Bright ruled herself out of selection for the upcoming Euros due to mental and physical exhaustion.

"As much as I want to be out there running through brick walls for England and fighting alongside my teammate, stepping back is the right thing for my health, my future in the game and most importantly the team," she said in a statement.

This is a player coming off a season in which she had captained Chelsea to a domestic treble that included an unbeaten league campaign.

Carlos Alcaraz, to the chagrin of his coaches, pencils in downtime at Ibiza nightclubs as a part of his recovery. In the fascinating Netflix docuseries ‘My Way’, he speaks of how he needs that time away from the toils of the circuit to keep himself refreshed.

LeBron James takes a clean break from playing basketball in the first six-eight weeks following an NBA season. The time away gives him the space to nurse the niggles and bandage the bruises, and also allows for a mental reset. On his podcast Mind the Game, he spoke of how after crossing the 15-year mark in the league, inspiration becomes a tough commodity to access. Giving himself the chance to miss the game keeps him coming back.

Modern sport isn’t just survival of the fittest. It’s survival of who has the most energy.

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Consumption Corner

Listen: I’m a sucker for narrative journalism and this Guardian series on the disappearance of environmental journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon’s Javari Valley is beyond

Watch: I was recently shamed into watching Derry Girls by a couple of friends. After finishing the show last week, I understand why my confession of never having watched it was seen as blasphemy. The series tracks the escapades of a chaotic group of school girls in 1990s Northern Ireland during a time of deep political strife.

Read: The recent French Open has once again made me question why I don’t follow tennis more closely. Riding the wave of this annual love-in, I’ve begun reading The Warrior, a biography on Rafa Nadal’s relationship with clay.

📢 Namdu

RCB won the IPL last night and it was beautiful

Royal Challengers Bangalore. IPL Champions. Pinch me.

For 38 overs of the final, I was broadly okay.

Yes, I had been ranting in my school group chat from the first over. About how I wouldn’t be able to sit with Punjab (Punjab!) winning the IPL before RCB did. Of the trauma flashbacks from finals in the Modi dome. About Virat’s strike-rate. Livingstone being sent ahead of Jitesh. About Romario’s dropped catch. About Romario’s wicket.

But, I was broadly okay.

Periodic outbursts like these are par for the course when your team is in a final. Especially when they’ve lost their previous three. And especially if they’ve never won before.

Around the 18th over of the Punjab innings, as the win began to appear in sight, the cameras cut to AB de Villiers. And then it all just hit.

It was only right that he was there by the boundary for this moment. The look Virat and he exchanged carried the weight of this 18 year wait.

A circle was closed last night. I didn’t cry when the trophy was sealed. I just felt older.

My family group got on a call moments after the win. It was a natural instinct. Watching RCB games at my grandparents’ place with my cousins is a defining childhood memory. Later, my grandmother sent me videos of the celebrations on the street from her balcony.

Right after, I hopped on a call with my school friends. The same ones who I had watched the traumatic loss in the 2016 final with. “I wish we were all in Bangalore for this,” my friend Adi messaged a couple of balls before the end.

I’d do anything to be back home right now. Especially because outside India, there exists a skepticism towards the IPL. ‘It isn’t even real cricket’ is the look I get from people when I talk about RCB. It’s a reaction I am always baffled by because I have wanted RCB to win the IPL as much as I’ve wanted India to win the World Cup.

RCB is also different to other franchises, purely for the reason that it isn’t one. Its roots in the city run deep in the way those of European football clubs do. Few things stoke the fire in this typically sedate city in the way RCB does. There are no supporters, only zealots.

The fandom is illustrative of the power of collective trauma. RCB have wildly oscillated up and down the table in these 18 years, but their place as the tournament’s Banter Team has been fixed.

The atmosphere at the Chinnaswamy is undoubtedly the best in the country and yet no team has lost as many games at a single venue as RCB have there. On the back of Virat’s historic 971 run-season, they reached the 2016 final that was at the Chinnaswamy. And then, lost.

The next year they put out a promotional video titled Ee Sala Cup Namde (this time the cup is ours) and promptly finished last.

Only one team has scored more 200+ totals than them. No team has been bowled out for below 100 more times than them. There’s a reason my family’s cricket group chat is called RCB Support Group.

It’s maddening to support RCB but it’s never dull. Last season, they lost seven of their first eight games but amazingly won the last six on a bounce to scamper into the playoffs. It was the type of run that made you believe the cup had their name on it.

In a fit of emotion, I ordered the jersey online in the hope that it would arrive before the Eliminator. A couple of my school friends live in London and we decided to watch it together. I left my office early, one of them worked during the game and one took leave! And of course, we completely rolled over.

I found the jersey I had ordered waiting for me when I got home that night.

Delusion is baked into the RCB experience so of course it only took a couple of wins for us fans to begin whispering about Ee Sala. And last night after 18 years, Namda finally became Namdu.

“I’m so happy we could experience this together,” my dad said, as my parents and I shared a group-hug. Sakshi later joined on call as we huddled around my laptop to watch the interview with AB, Kohli and Chris Gayle.

In the aftermath of the win, RCB Director of Cricket Mo Bobat said how the next title won’t take 18 years. Frankly, I don’t care if it comes in the next 80. We can finish last in each of the next few seasons and it won’t matter.

All that fans like myself have wanted is to win it at least once. To be a champion city. And to do it with Virat.

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Consumption Corner:

Watch: One of the best Mr.Nags interviews in my opinion.

Read: This NYTimes piece on a group of British men who inhaled Xenon gas to scale the Everest, and the ethical storm their expedition set off.

Listen: This Instagram-discovery from Indian Indie duo Khosla-Raghu.

📢 On Arsenal Women

When can you call yourself a fan of a team?

Stina Blackstenius was the unlikely hero in Arsenal’s Champions League triumph.

There is a category of players that make you feel safe. The ones whose decision-making you trust blindly. The ones who give you a brief respite from your match-anxiety. The ones you don’t have to yell instructions at through the screen. They don’t get you to the edge of your seat, rather allow you to sink in.

Martin Ødegaard is that kind of player. Mariona Caldentay is. Cesc Fabregas was. Stina Blackstenius is not.

Few footballers have infuriated me in the way the Swedish forward has. But then last Saturday, she went and scored the winning goal to lead Arsenal to Champions League glory against the mighty Barcelona.

The dissonance of the moment sent me spiralling down a path of reflection over my relationship with the team. And the role Blackstenius has inadvertently played in shaping it.

Women’s football remains stuck in a conceptual stage in India, so my exposure to the sport was limited until I moved to London. England’s triumph at Euro 2022 catalysed the growth of the game in the country and few clubs rode that wave of interest in the way Arsenal did.

It was an easy gateway into the sport. Less than a week after moving, I attended the women’s North London derby at the Emirates. Barring the big names, I didn’t know a majority of the players involved that afternoon. But, even a casual like me could see that a crowd of 47,367 attendance at the Emirates was special.

Curiosity drove my foray into this world. The players wore the same colours, played in the same stadium and fought for the same badge. Yet, it all felt new.

Over the past year in particular, I’ve followed Arsenal Women closely. And this immersion into a new footballing culture got me thinking about when you can call yourself a fan of a team?

Is it when you start regularly attending games? Or when you buy the kit? Maybe after joining the team’s subreddit? Is it when results start to feel proportional to your mood?

I ticked most of these boxes and yet until recently, felt hesitant to call myself an Arsenal Women fan. This was in part due to the fact that my fandom is inherited, not innate. I hadn’t done the hard yards to follow the team when they played in decrepit stadiums in front of measly crowds. I boarded the train when it was on the fast track. Such has been the influx of people like myself into the sport since the England’s Euros triumph that those who had been involved in women’s football prior to the tournament often feel the need to point out that the sport existed in the country before 2022.

I remember leaving the Emirates after a Women’s Super League game (WSL) in the tail end of 2023-24, and overhearing a couple of supporters asking a merchandise seller if they had any Lotte Wubben-Moy scarves.

The guy running the shop was an old-timer, the type who had been around for years. After the girls passed, he turned to his colleague and quizzically asked ‘Who is Wubben-Moy?’

‘Oh she’s the big fan favourite here for the women’s team,’ he replied.

Passion can’t be faked or rushed, and mine was a gradual conversion from spectator to supporter. And this Trumpian weave brings us to Blackstenius, who played a key role in this process.

It’s February and Arsenal are playing Manchester City in a key WSL clash. I’m watching from home, working a weekend shift. It’s a frenetic game where goals are flowing. And as are Stina’s misses. After a particularly egregious one where she scuffed a one-on-one alarmingly wide off goal, I find myself ranting on Slack to a colleague.

By then, I had a grasp on fan sentiment. I understood the reverence for captain Kim Little. I got why Leah Williamson was put on a pedestal and why Katie McCabe polarised opinion. But, the cult status Stina held baffled me.

Stina holds cult status in the fanbase

Stina is more chaos than clinical. Her ability to find space in the box is unparalleled - she has the highest xG/90 in the WSL this season. It is what makes the discrepancy in her output so jarring. The fact that she had scored in a cup final and key league clashes made fans more forgiving of her flaws. It was something I struggled to do.

The City game was the typical Stina experience. After banging my head about her for the entire game, she went and scored a late winner to shut me up.

But, I wasn’t quiet for long. It wasn’t personal - I just did not see how she fit in with the direction the team was moving in. The strength of my opinion surprised me. No player on the team had evoked such deep-rooted sentiment

Frustration with a player is just the flip-side of loving them. The currency in both cases is one of care. Stina and her misses made me feel something.

One of my co-workers held similar views on the forward, and in the leadup to the Champions League final, she joked she’d get a jersey with Stina’s name on it if she scored.

‘Here we go’ I sighed to myself, seeing her come on at the hour-mark in the final with the game still goalless. She could have scored a hat trick, should have definitely bagged a brace but did score the winner. Her run behind the defence was as good as the finish. She later spoke of her shock at scoring. It’s a sentiment I related to.

1-0 to the Arsenal. Champions League winners. Blackstenius goal. I’ll be damned.

Minutes after the final whistle blew, my co-worker sent me a screenshot of her jersey purchase.

A moment in time.

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A WoSo Consumption Corner

Read: A Guardian profile on Blackstenius’ rise from the depths of Swedish football to the top of Europe.

Watch: The level of access DAZN were given for this six-part docuseries on Chelsea Women’s 2019-20 season is unprecedented.

Listen: An episode from the Arsecast breaking down Arsenal’s win over Barcelona and what it means for the club.

📢 On No.18

Some reflections on the Kohli retirement

The legend of Virat Kohli has been marked by contradiction.

His existence in Indian cricket felt inherently anti-establishment. And yet, few put a higher value on the traditions of Test cricket in the way he did.

He was wreathed in aggression, perennially foul-mouthed and often obnoxious. And yet, the manner in which he publicly simped over his wife and was always quick to point towards her role in his success was a dagger to his on-field toxic masculinity.

There was contradiction in the manner of his departure from Test cricket too. Virat retired 770 runs short of 10,000 - a milestone only three other Indians have reached. This is the same player who has painstakingly hogged the strike in the closing stages of matches in recent ICC tournaments to ensure he hits the three-figure mark.

At his core, Kohli was a showman. A player raised in the spotlight, whose performances were proportional to pressure. The runs dipped in the last few years but the promise of spectacle never did. It was tough to keep your eyes off Virat on the field (in part due to broadcasters’ obsession with him). And yet, blink and you would have missed him exiting stage left. The final bow was uncharacteristically muted, with a simple Instagram post and semi-poignant caption.

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Catharsis could be found in the comments section. From Bollywood actors to Olympians, from YouTubers to rappers, from an ex-colleague to my cousin brother, the eulogies (and crying-face emojis) poured in.

Personally, the Virat retirement made me feel the way I did when Arsene Wenger left Arsenal in 2018. I was firmly in the #WengerOut brigade but when the Frenchman did actually depart, I felt gutted. Guilty, even.

No cricketer has captured my imagination in the way Virat has but for some time now, I have been banging the drum for him to relinquish the whites. The fifth-stump line, the expression of disbelief as he edged again to slip, the average of 32 in the past four years - it was all just painful to watch. If he wasn’t Virat Kohli, he wouldn’t have been given as long a rope. If he wasn’t Indian, he would have been dropped a long time ago.

At the same time, it’s worth mentioning that in the past five years, of batters who have played at least 15 Tests, only one (Rishabh Pant) has averaged above 40. India’s batting collapses - which have grown progressively sharper over the past year - can’t be put on Virat’s shoulders.

But, his slump was reflective of a transition that had been put off for too long. The BCCI were happy to wait for Kohli to turn the tide. But after an Australia tour that he called one of the most difficult phases of his career, he knew his ship had sailed. Retirement was the only way for him to leave with dignity.

It’s strange and perhaps even wrong to call a career with 9230 runs, 30 Test centuries, a 70% win-rate as captain as a case of unfulfilled potential. But, this isn’t a putdown. It’s a testament to the heights to which he soared between 2014 and 2020.

In that period, he scored 5811 runs at an average of 56 with 22 centuries, nine of which came against England and Australia. For that period, he will be eternal.

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Consumption Corner

What I’m watching: I’ve been engrossed in the world of The Americans, the mid-2010s FX show of two undercover KGB agents raising a family in the suburbs of Washington DC during the 1980s.

What I’m listening to: An episode from the media podcast The Press Room on the publications that were lost in the 21st century.

What I’m reading: A Semafor piece on the growing rave and music festival culture in Saudi Arabia that details mocktail bars, women-only spaces and Eminem bellowing “My name is Salim Shadi, and you’ve all made me so at home I’m going to buy a house and move to motherf*ckin’ Riyadh!”