1

On being judged by your cover

✍️ Sriram Veera & Venkata Krishna B talk to the perennially pained Laxman Sivaramakrishnan about his cricketing and post-cricketing career, and why he feels like discrimination has been a constant throughout.

“He talks of other instances. How, on his 17th birthday, with the Indian team in Pakistan, Sunil Gavaskar, the captain, ordered a cake. The team assembled. Then, a teammate spoke. “Hey Sunny, you ordered the right colour cake. Such a dark chocolate cake for a dark boy.”

“I started crying and refused to cut the cake. Sunil Gavaskar had to pacify me and then I cut the cake with tears in my eyes.”

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2

The different types of T20 anchors

📊 Atharv Tambade/Aadityan Ganesh go deep – and I mean very deep – on the numbers of anchoring in T20 cricket by creating a new metric called Net Effective Balls to measure the value of the role.

“But not all balls are created equal. Surviving a delivery from Varun Chakravarthy is very different from seeing off one from Ravindra Jadeja. The former has a knack for forcing wickets in seemingly impossible situations, while the latter is famous for spells of 4–0–28–0 that quietly squeeze an innings without necessarily threatening the batter’s survival.

To account for this, we assign each ball a weight — its effective ball value — based on the bowler, the conditions, and the phase of the innings. Crucially, we normalise the length of an innings using net effective balls (NEB), rather than simply normalising by net raw balls faced.”

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3

Victoria’s royal run

✍️ Louis Cameron reports from inside the record-breaking 2025-26 Victoria Sheffield Sheild regular season.

“The Vics’ secret sauce, not only in producing one of the best regular-season Shield campaigns of all time, but also during more challenging periods since their last title win seven years ago, has been their enduring spirit. It’s what Todd Murphy channelled when speaking before the SCG match, what Mitch Perry embodies with his exuberance after taking a wicket, and even whatFergus O’Neill’s “dross” chat has done to make teammates giggle in the changerooms.”

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4

The best of the rest

• “An overview of Test Workhorses”
  📊 Somesh Agarwal defends the “workhorse” Test bowler with a deep dive on their effectiveness in the modern and pre-modern era.

• “From WPL auction snub to Test debut”
  ✍️ Vishal Dikshit talks to Sayali Satghare about her sudden rise for IND-W.

• “Miracle On Soil – Act III”
  ✍️ Sarthak Dev has on the 2001 Test when Harbhajan Singh announced himself with a 15-wicket haul against AUS.

• “The Brutal Economics of Associate Cricket”
  📊 Nitesh Mathur breaks down the financial details behind Associate cricket administrations, and shows why the system is completely broken.

• “BoC’s Playbook for the IPL”
  🚨 Tarutr Malhotra announced BoC’s coverage plans for the IPL, as well as potential roles for anyone who wants to get involved in the coverage.

5

The best videos and podcasts

• “The Art of Bowling in a Batters Era”
  🎤 Charlie & Harry Stebbings talk to Pat Cummins about captaining Australia, the business of the IPL and the BBL, & his strategies as an investor. [Apple/Spotify]

• “WI’s 2025 Annual Report – what now?”
  📽️ Machel Hewitt & Santokie Nagulendran discuss the West Indies’ annual report (it doesn’t make for pretty reading). [YouTube]

• “How The IPL Changed Their Lives”
  📽️ Kevin Pietersen & Jos Buttler talk about how the IPL affected their careers, and the importance of a league like this for cricket. [YouTube]

• “England review”
  📽️ Nasser Hussain/Michael Atherton talk to Rob Key about the ECB choice to stick with Brendon McCullum. [YouTube]

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