Happy birthday to the @undertaker! Yes, you burned down the family home, encased my real father, Paul Bearer, in concrete, and set me on fire...a couple of times...but otherwise you're the best big brother anyone could ever hope for!
Some stories in cricket don't need a hundred Tests to matter. Swapnil Asnodkar played nine IPL games in 2008 and became a name nobody forgot.
Picture this. A boy from Porvorim, barely 5 & a half feet, walks into a Rajasthan Royals camp with cost of less than a Mumbai apartment. Shane Warne looks at him. Sees something & calls him the Goan Cannon...
The name stuck because it made no sense & perfect sense together. Goa has those old Portuguese cannons rusting near beaches. Small, Heavy, They still work.
Asnodkar opened with Graeme Smith that year. Big man, little man. Smith would block & watch. Asnodkar would slash over point, whip through midwicket, make 60 off 34 balls in his first game like he had been doing this forever...
He hadn't.
He was a Ranji grafter until Warne & Smith told him to stop worrying about his wicket. Imagine spending 6 years learning to stay in, then someone says forget all that, hit everything.
He did. Average of 34.5, Strike rate of 133.5. Average partnership of nearly 60 with Smith, highest among all teams.
In the semifinal against attack of McGrath & Mohammad Asif, Asnodkar smashed 39 in just 21 balls & Royals scored 58 runs in powerplay itself. Royals went on to won the whole thing...
Warne visited his house during a break. Ate prawns with the family. Brought Smith, Watson, even young Jadeja.. The greatest showman of this game sitting in a small Goan home, talking to a player's mother. Asnodkar still remembers that meal.
Then 2009 happened. South Africa. Bouncy pitches. Fast bowlers who had watched his tapes. Short balls at his ribs. He averaged 12 that season. Injuries came & Form went. By 2011 he was sitting out. By 2018, Goa dropped him from the state side to give youngsters a chance...
There's a photo somewhere of him & Dhoni talking. Shadab Jakati made the introduction. Dhoni wanted to know about Warne's methods. How did he make domestic players feel like equals? Asnodkar told him. That conversation probably helped Chennai Super Kings more than it helped Asnodkar...
He is into coaching now, worked with Nagaland & Goa Under-23 sides. Holds a Level 2 certificate. Tried getting back into the IPL as a coach, but that hasn’t happened yet.
But here's what counts. Every time a small town Indian player gets picked in the IPL, some of that started with Asnodkar. The template. The proof that you don't need to be from Mumbai or Delhi. You can be from anywhere.
The cannon fired for one season. The echo never really stopped.
Thanks @manishbatavia. It wasn't planned. I wanted to ensure that the player called out is the one receiving the award. But that left large gaps and so I had to make up lines on the go. That is also why I fell short with a few names.
It's fascinating that three of the most important developments in Indian science happened not in a laboratory or lecture hall, but in the most unlikely of places, on board a ship on an ocean voyage.
The first was in 1893, on a voyage from Yokohama to Vancouver, when Swami Vivekananda met Jamsetji Tata & inspired him to create an institute that merged the humanism of the east with the science and Technology of the west. That's how the Indian Institute of Science started.
In 1930, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar won a scholarship to study at Cambridge & while aboard the ship to England did the bulk of the work on the Chandrashekhar Limit for stars, for which he would later be awarded a Nobel Prize. This was, amazingly, before his 20th birthday.
And in 1921, 9 years earlier, CV Raman, returning home from Oxford on a sea voyage was dazzled by the deep blue of the Mediterranean and decided to study the scattering of Light. The 'Raman Effect' won him a Nobel Prize in 1930.
Raman was so confident of getting the Nobel Prize after missing out in 1928 and 1929 that he booked his ocean voyage tickets to Sweden months before he knew he had won.
137th birth anniversary of CV Raman today.
🚨 IT'S HISTORY GETTING CREATED FOLKS 🤯
INDIA'S ANANDKUMAR VELKUMAR IS THE WORLD SPEED SKATING CHAMPION 2025!🏆
He becomes First Ever India to win the GOLD Medal in 1000m Sprint at World C'ship 🏅
IT SHOULD BE HEADLINE OF INDIAN SPORT! 🇮🇳
My @airtelindia SIM stopped working on 27th June. Visited the Ghatkopar(E) MG Rd store twice; still no resolution. Staff is more focused on upselling than solving the issue. No updates received, and the excuse offered is ‘too many customers at the store.’ @Airtel_Presence
@airtelindia SIM stopped working on 27th June. Visited the Ghatkopar(E) MG Rd store twice & there’s still no resolution. Staff is more focused on upselling than solving the issue. No updates received & the reason offered is ‘too many customers at the store.’ @Airtel_Presence
This old man is one of the greatest Test batsmen of all time, but the child in him, the one who first fell in love with the game, never left. He fumes when a wicket is thrown away, gets teary-eyed, and dances with childlike joy when the team wins. Legend!
[THREAD]
I've grown up listening to Richie Benaud's cricket commentary. Adored the way he respect the value of pause, never trying to steal a moment, always being subtle, dignified and measured.
But this thread is about his amazing ability to read the game and tell us.
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