Khalid Hossain

Bob Woolmer, the late South African coach renowned for his cricketing insights and innovation, once said, “Football is a game of space, whereas cricket is a game of time,” in his book ‘The Art and Science of Cricket’, shedding light on the trials and tribulations a cricketer goes through on the battlefield.

If history has imparted any wisdom, it’s to never count out the West Indies cricket team, even after a year as calamitous as 2023. Failing to advance to the main round of the ODI World Cup in India was a colossal debacle, even for a team that have long concentrated their efforts on Twenty20 cricket.

The clock is ticking as the gap between the Tigers and lower-ranked teams narrows, while the gap with superior sides widens.

The sporting world in the past decade has witnessed a paradigm shift when it comes to the women’s circuit. In between came the coronavirus pandemic but the uprising proceeded nonetheless.

The changing of the guard in men’s tennis has long been on an asymptotic course, getting closer and closer to the inevitable but not quite materialising.

Let’s revisit the cream of the crop from a stellar year.

As the much-anticipated World Cup clash between India and Pakistan unfolds in Ahmedabad today, cricket fans, regardless of their allegiances, are poised to savour every sumptuous bit of action.   

Just before revealing the name of Bangladesh’s new ODI captain for the upcoming Asia Cup and World Cup, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan Papon on Friday told the fortunate reporters present at his residence, “If you ask anyone, they will tell you who it is going to be. It was an obvious choice.”

Shakib once again highlighted his place in the upper echelons of cricketing superstars.

Argentina’s seven-goal demolition of visitors Curacao on Tuesday saw the return of Giovani Lo Celso who demonstrated why the three-time world champions badly missed the on-loan Villarreal midfielder during their Qatar World Cup campaign last year despite eventually having gone on to bag the ultimate prize in the sport.

It seems that culturally we are inclined, as if somewhat programmed, to do the bare minimum in providing deserving attention and a wide-scale media coverage when it comes to women’s sport in the country despite the fact that women athletes have had been giving their all, working just as hard as their male counterparts, day in day out over the years.

The advent of the T20 format and the corresponding boom of franchise-based leagues across the world has kept fans entertained, but no other tournament has provided what country’s Alternate Premier League (APL) brought to the table. 

Utterly unforgettable was the delivery of sports in 2022, a year jam-packed with major events – a few of which were postponed since 2020 by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Prior to the Qatar World Cup, Lionel Andres Messi had all but conquered everything for his country and the clubs he represented – prestigious titles, individual awards, accolades from teammates, opponents, and critics alike.

It seems that Lionel Messi’s quest for the elusive World Cup title is going to be a much tougher task than expected and, quite surprisingly,

The world has long run out of superlatives to describe Lionel Messi in a new light. “Don’t describe him, just watch him,” one of Messi’s mentors Pep Guardiola had said.

Sports and politics had long been interlocked in such a way that the intention to view sports from an apolitical lens becomes, like it or not, a political stance.

“Fantastic atmosphere, great goals, incredible excitement, surprises, small teams beating big teams,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said yesterday. 56 of the 64 matches have so far played out but, prior to it,

A football World Cup offers a spectrum of gifts -- superstars lighting up the centre stage, rising stars becoming household names, nerve-wracking encounters between powerhouses, stunning upsets,

If one match in the 2022 World Cup so far had to be nominated to represent what football offers in the present era, Sunday night’s encounter between Spain and Germany stands out as the obvious candidate despite yielding just a draw.