Straight Drive

#StraightDrive: The players are fully formed adults, forged by years of domestic grind and public scrutiny. They are not clay to be moulded but marble already set. A coach can polish, perhaps, but he cannot recast the statue.

#StraightDrive The 2 white-ball giants convert whatever they have been feeling — exclusion, ambiguity, or marginalisation — into a fierce reaffirmation of their value

#StraightDrive It wasn’t just a convincing Indian win — it was an anthropological exhibit on how victory behaves after a bruising stretch of doubt

#StraightDrive Forty wickets and 594 runs in a match of such brevity tell their own staccato tale — one of miscalculation, misjudgment and misplaced confidence

#StraightDrive In this T20 series in Australia, if there was a single name that rose above the drizzle, it was Washington Sundar

#StraightDrive: A quiet craftsman who was once denied his dream returned years later to script another — guiding India's women to glory, and finding in their triumph the peace that eluded his own career

#StraightDrive: From Shafali's resurgence to Deepti's calm mastery, Harmanpreet's leadership shines on a night that will be remembered forever

It is more than a contest of bat and ball — it is a meeting of belief and balance, of purpose and poise

#StraightDrive: Alongside Harmanpreet Kaur, Jemimah Rodrigues built an alliance not of power, but of patience — 167 runs woven from trust and time

He looked at the world with a colourful lens; his stories wandered from the dunes of Jaisalmer to a casual observation during an inter-advertising agency cricket match

Special to The Tribune: If this indeed is their last dance, Sydney won’t just host a match — it will host emotion, writes Shishir Hattangadi

Born from the British colonial legacy, where cricket was a tool of empire, the Caribbean made it its own

#StraightDrive: India went about the chase clinically, as if determined to show that class is not about noise but execution

#StraightDrive: Sunday's India-Pakistan clash may decide who wins points on the field

#StraightDrive: PCB takes missed handshake like an international conspiracy

#StraightDrive: Pakistan demanding Andy Pycroft’s dismissal was not an argument of reason but of theatre, the sort of play-acting that turns administrators into actors in a comedy too long in rehearsal

Special to The Tribune: The missing handshake was no more and no less than a muted protest, unspoken yet unmistakable, writes Shishir Hattangadi

Special to the Tribune: When no handshakes were exchanged. It was a gesture, or its absence, that said more than any scoreboard ever could, writes Shishir Hattangadi

Special to the Tribune: Ex-Mumbai captain Shishir Hattangadi writes on the big cricket clash in Dubai

To be bowled out so quickly against a top team was a collapse without fight or resistance

SpecialToTheTribune: The structure, in theory, creates clarity, yet the recent selection calls highlight a puzzling break in this chain, writes Shishir Hattangadi

#StraightDrive:Shreyas, Jaiswal not included

In cricket, hindsight rewrites foresight—but the questions behind the choices never fully disappear

#StraightDrive: England’s cricket was a dare, and India’s a duel

Siraj’s searing spell gives India hope after morning dreams turned to ruin