Waleed Hussain

Lord’s —The Home of Cricket. A place of tradition, cucumber sandwiches, and polite murmurs of “well played, old chap.” Yesterday? It looked like someone had spiked the pitch with revenge, LSD, and a dodgy batch of swing-friendly weather. Sixteen wickets fell. Sixteen. On Day One. In a Test match. At the spiritual home of the five-day snoozefest. I haven’t seen this many collapses since my last attempt at baking a soufflé. New Zealand won the toss and, with the wisdom of a man who’s seen too...

In the grand theatre of Indian cricket selection, where committees move with the urgency of a sloth on sleeping pills, we have a genuine phenomenon on our hands: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. Fifteen years old. Yes, fifteen. The boy is still closer in age to a school science project than to a driving license, yet he bats like he’s got a personal grudge against bowlers and gravity itself. But fear not, dear cricket fans. Our wise selectors are on the case. They’re thinking. They’re deliberating....

What a time to be alive in the grand theatre of Indian Premier League drama. In a world plagued by actual problems, the cricket fraternity has decided that the real crisis of our era is Virat Kohli refusing to shake Travis Head’s hand after SRH demolished RCB by 55 runs. Yes, dear reader, the sport that proudly calls itself the “gentleman’s game” is once again clutching its pearls over etiquette while conveniently ignoring that the field itself often resembles a verbal war zone. How utterly...