Heena Sharma Blog

The International Cricket Council (ICC) launched the inaugural World Test Championship on Monday, setting the stage for a long tournament in red-ball cricket to determine the World Test Champion. The two-year affair comprises top nine Test teams-- Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies -- who will compete in 71 matches in 27 series. Each team will play three home and three away series. The top two teams at the end will compete in the ICC World Test Championship Final in the UK in June 2021. The first Ashes Test between England and Australia at Edgbaston will mark as the inaugural game of the event. India will not play against Pakistan because each team has picked six opponents by mutual agreement, within the existing framework of the Members rights agreements. Also, the teams can play matches outside the World Test Championship during this period. Accordingly, The Indian team would be playing against Wes...

Indian batting icon Sachin Tendulkar has been inducted into the International Cricket Council's Hall of Fame alongside South African pace legend Allan Donald. Joining Tendulkar and Donald in the Hall of Fame was two-time World Cup-winning Australian woman cricketer Cathryn Fitzpatrick. "It's a huge honour for me," Tendulkar said at the induction ceremony held here on Sunday night. The 46-year-old former right-hand batsman is regarded the greatest to have played the game along with Sir Donald Bradman and remains the top run-accumulator in both Tests and ODIs. He has 34,357 runs across formats and is the only batsman to have 100 internationals hundreds under his belt. The 52-year-old Donald is one of the finest bowlers to have played the game and had 330 Test and 272 ODI wickets to his credit before calling it quits in 2003. Fitzpatrick is the second highest wicket-taker of all time in women's cricket with 180 ODI scalps and 60 in Tests. As a coach...

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 has seen 315 million viewers tuning to the Star India network from across the country. According to the Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) data, television viewership for the tournament has been 182.7 million average impressions. While reach refers to the number of people who have seen the tournament for at least a minute, impressions refer to the number of people watching the tournament or a particular match at any given point during its telecast. Star India, the official broadcaster of all International Cricket Council (ICC) events in the country, is showing the matches across its sports network. Article Source -> Business Standard

The 1992 cricket World Cup reserves a special place in the living memory of the cricket fan. The coloured jerseys, the white balls, and the day-night matches are remembered for their then novelty; you can still find fans holding on to memorabilia from that tournament as if an ethereal truth about cricket was woven into them. When the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced a return to the 1992 format for the 2019 edition— each team was to play everyone else in the round-robin stage —fears about a ten-team World Cup were mitigated by nostalgia for a time when everything seemed just right. But like many fond memories from younger days, even the 1992 World Cup is tarnished now. Nostalgia, it turns out, can deceive one badly. As the 2019 competition makes the case for it to be called the most boring World Cup ever, the myth about the essentially good format is busted. There is nothing inherently great about a long phase where each team faces off against the others. In fact, i...

In a first, all the 10 participating teams of the upcoming ODI World Cup will have a dedicated anti-corruption officer attached with it to deliver a corruption-free tournament, according to a report. The report in the 'Daily Telegraph' said the ICC will attach an anti-corruption official with each team starting from warm-up matches till the end of the tournament. "Previously, the International Cricket Council's Anti-Corruption Unit had personnel deployed at each venue, meaning that teams would deal with a number of officials over the course of a tournament," the report said. "Now, the same official will be assigned to a team from the warm-up matches to the end of the competition, staying in the same hotel as the players and travelling with them to training and matches." It said the move was part of ICC Anti-Corruption Unit's effort to deliver a fixing and corruption-free World Cup and also an effort to build better relations between pla...

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the ODI and Test team and a few other awards for the year 2018 and to no one's surprise, Indian captain Virat Kohli swept all of them. Virat Kohli was named ICC ODI captain of the year, ICC Test Captain of the year, ICC Test player of the year, ICC ODI player of the year. He also won the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Men’s Cricketer of the Year. Three player of the year awards, captain of teams in both formats. He has become the first player in the history to bag all three awards. The flurry of awards reflects the kind of year Virat Kohli had in 2018. It won't be surprising if he now goes on to win the Wisden Player of the Year award as well. Virat Kohli amassed 1,322 runs in 13 tests and 1,202 runs in 14 ODIs in 2018. India won the T20 series in England, however, lost both ODI and Test series. As a batsman, England was probably the last frontier for Kohli to conquer; something he did. While India failed to win t...

Indian captain Virat Kohli Tuesday became the first cricketer to make a clean-sweep of individual honours in the ICC annual awards, claiming the Test, ODI and overall Player of the Year trophies besides being named captain of the world body's all-star teams. Kohli has become the first player in history to win the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Cricketer of the Year , his second consecutive, the ICC Test and the ODI Player of the Year awards following an extraordinary 2018. "Not only is Kohli the first player to win these three major ICC awards together but he has also been named the captain of the ICC Test and ODI teams of the year for a fabulous run in international cricket," the ICC said in a statement. Kohli scored 1,322 runs at an average of 55.08 in 13 Tests with five hundreds during the calendar year while in 14 ODIs he amassed 1202 runs at an astonishing average of 133.55 with six centuries. He also scored 211 runs in 10 T20Is. Read More Busine...