81 All Out - A Cricket Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

In the latest episode we chat with Paras Mhambrey on his recent stint as the bowling coach of the Indian team. We discuss India's varied bowling attack and how he managed the transition from one set of fast bowlers to the next.

Participants:

Paras Mhambrey

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

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Buy books republished by 81allout:

War Minus the Shooting by Mike Marqusee

Cricket Beyond the Bazaar by Mike Coward

The Summer Game by Gideon Haigh 

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Related:

‘We have a cluster of fast bowlers who have got exposure in white-ball cricket and are not far away (from Test call-up)’, says Paras Mhambrey - Indian Express

Data driven: How Mhambrey's work is helping Shami & Co - Sanjjeev K Samyal - Hindustan Times

‘What a bowler thinks and what he actually does are different things’ – Bharat Arun interview with 81allout

The value of data analysis and how the Indian team embraced it - 81allout podcast with Himanish Ganjoo 

'I cannot tell a bowler what to do or not do. I need to help them understand their own rhythm' - Bharat Arun interview - Karthik Krishnaswamy - The Cricket Monthly

In the latest episode we chat with Himanish Ganjoo on how data can assist cricket teams and what he learnt from his own stint as a data analyst with the Indian side.

Participants:

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Himanish Ganjoo (@hganjoo_153)

Kartikeya Date (@cricketingview)

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Buy books republished by 81allout:

War Minus the Shooting by Mike Marqusee

Cricket Beyond the Bazaar by Mike Coward

The Summer Game by Gideon Haigh 

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Related:

Himanish Ganjoo's articles - ESPNricinfo | Substack

Training the Hawkeye on Axar Patel: Angular, Anomalous - Substack

Understanding T20 - 81allout podcast with Hassan Cheema

Hitting v Batting: the choice that dictates the shape of a T20 contest - 81allout podcast

Databall - Kartikeya Date - The Cricket Monthly

We review the fifth Test between India and England in Dharamshala – where India stamped their authority with a win by an innings and 64 runs.

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Talking Points:

• A one-sided – and thoroughly expected – end to a Test series in India
• The Bazball delusion 
• England's inadequate bowling resources thoroughly exposed
• Kuldeep the genius - a wristspinner with both variety and control 
• R Ashwin caps off his 100th Test with signature spells
• The first morning - when Bumrah and Siraj made the ball talk
• The challenge against spin for Duckett, Pope, Stokes, and Bairstow 
• Did England Bazball enough or too much? And why it doesn't matter
• When Shubman Gill was at his fluent best
• The problem with England playing Anderson and hardly bowling him
• England not replacing the injured Leach and Rehan - and over-bowling Bashir

Participants:

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)

Ashoka (@ABVan)

Kartikeya Date (@cricketingview) | Substack | ESPNcricinfo page

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Buy The Summer Game by Gideon Haigh (republished by 81allout)

India (hardback) | India (paperback) | India (e-copy)

Australia (paperback, e-copy)

USA (hardback, paperback, e-copy)

UK (hardback, paperback, e-copy)

Canada (hardback, paperback, e-copy)

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Related:

•  IND Win By An Innings In Dharamsala, Finish Series 4-1 - Kartikeya Date - Cricketingview
• On Ravichandran Ashwin - India's greatest matchwinner - Kartikeya Date - Cricketingview 
• Just sit back and get ready to marvel at R Ashwin, for the 100th time - Karthik Krishnaswamy - ESPNcricinfo
• Joe Root on facing Ashwin and Lyon - Sky Cricket podcast - YouTube
• How India Bazballed England - Himanish Ganjoo - X (formerly Twitter)

Click here to support 81allout on Ko-Fi

(We will be donating all your contributions till the end of June towards Covid relief in India. We plan to match your contributions upto $800)

Our special guest this week is Jai Galagali, a cricket fan who runs a YouTube channel focused on Indian cricket history.

Jai talks about falling in love with the game in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his quest to seek out clips from the Films Division of India.

"How do we remember so much from some phase of our life and so little from many others?" Jai explores this question through the conversation.

Talking Points:

• Discovering the inner child and love for cricket
• Seeing Chandra, Vishy, Prasanna and so many larger-than-life figures for the first time
• Watching cricket highlights in the cinema theaters in the 1970s
• Viswanath and the poetic essence of cricket
• The history of the Films Division and documenting a young nation's evolving cultural, political and social landscape
• Zul Vellani - the master of the universal Indian accent
• The difficulty of procuring archives from the Film Division of India
• The cancellation of his YouTube channel and Shashi Tharoor's role in its revival
• A personal trauma that propelled Jai towards his passion project
• Interviewing CD Gopinath about India's first Test victory

Participants:

Jai Galagali (@jaigalagali)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Related:

Jai Galagali's YouTube channel

India v West Indies, Bangalore, 1974 - YouTube

Vinoo Mankad: interviews - YouTube

Kapil Dev's first Test century - India v West Indies, 1979 - YouTube

Subhash Gupte original bowling action - YouTube

India v England, Golden Jubilee Test, 1980 - YouTube

Vijay Hazare radio autobiography - YouTube - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Now playing: vintage Indian cricket reels on YouTube - Kanishkaa Balachandran - The Hindu 

The things we remember, the things we forget - 81allout podcast

From mustache to Mushtaq - 81allout podcast

What we talk about when we talk about cricket - 81allout podcast

Click here to support 81allout on Ko-Fi

Our special guest this week is Hassan Cheema, the strategy manager at Islamabad United – the Pakistan Super League champions in 2016 and 2018.

Hassan talks about the rapidly evolving T20 format and gives us a peek into what franchises are doing to stay ahead of the curve. Having observed some of the top T20 players first-hand, Hassan brings forth the complexities of the game and the challenges involved in managing a team.

Talking Points:

• How West Indies revolutionized the approach to T20s
• The overwhelming importance of the toss
• Measures used to judge a T20 batsman
• The flexible batting order and how best to use an anchor
• Unlearning the lessons from red ball cricket
• Retiring out batsmen and tactical drops
• What constitutes a good over in T20?
• Tactics v execution: the tightrope walk
• How one builds a player's trust and the need to go beyond cricket
• The unquantifiable value of some fielders
• The grammar of T20 and what TV can do better

Participants:

Hassan Cheema (@mediagag)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Related:

The flexible team - Tim Wigmore - ESPNcricinfo

How to watch a T20 game - Sidharth Monga - ESPNcricinfo

Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution - Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde - Amazon.com

'If you go searching for wickets in T20, you're playing into the batsman's hand' - Samuel Badree interview - ESPNcricinfo

T20 openers are more conservative than they need to be - Kartikeya Date - ESPNcricinfo

Is a single in T20 the same as a dot ball in ODIs? - Kartikeya Date - ESPNcricinfo

Click here to support 81allout on Ko-Fi

Our special guest this week is Prem Panicker, a veteran journalist who has been writing on cricket for over 25 years. Prem was one of the founding journalists at Rediff.com and a pioneer with regard to online commentary and internet radio.

Talking Points:

• Falling in love with cricket in the late 1960s and '70s
• The granular detail with which one remembers games from one's childhood
• Listening to the radio and enacting the action based on the commentary
• The arrival of television to India and the magic it brought forth
• Entering the world of journalism
• The brave new world of the Internet - and the leap of faith it entailed
• Figuring out the internet while writing on cricket during the 1996 World Cup
• How Indian cricketers embraced the new reality of online coverage
• The BCCI's contradictory stance with respect to online portals like Rediff
• JY Lele and his famous quote that predicted India would lose 3-0 in Australia
• The match-fixing saga and falling out of love with cricket
• The lure of blogging and the flexibility it offered
• Twitter as a second-screen in the cricket viewing experience

Participants:

Prem Panicker (@prempanicker)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Related:

Prem Panicker's blog - Smoke Signals

Prem Panicker's column archive - Rediff.com

The Prem Panicker files - The Seen and the Unseen podcast with Amit Varma

Money in cricket - Prem Panicker and Gideon Haigh on The Seen and the Unseen podcast with Amit Varma

Prem Panicker interview from 2011  - Couch Talks

Lele unplugged - Faisal Shariff - Rediff.com

The day naivety, not football itself, died - Jonathan Wilson on Brazil's loss to Italy in 1982 - The Guardian

Radio Frequency - Srikanth Natarajan - 81allout.com

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Lead image from here.

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In our latest episode we talk to Amol Muzumdar, a legend for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy and a bona fide domestic great. Muzumdar's illustrious career spanned two decades and he finished with 9,205 runs in the Ranji Trophy - which stands as the second-highest aggregate of all time.

Muzumdar scored 30 first-class hundreds and was the backbone of the Mumbai Ranji Trophy side through much of the 1990s and 2000s. He won seven Ranji Trophy championships with Mumbai and captained them to the title in 2006-07, when they rallied after a poor start and upstaged the rest of the competition.

Talking points:

• The importance of playing league cricket in England
  
• How helmets transformed batting techniques - and resulted in more players getting hit on the head
  
• Today's players preferring power-hitting techniques to an artistic approach
  
• The delicate balance with coaching - what to tell a player and when to pass on advice
  
• How players can be so vulnerable to advice, and change the techniques that have been working for them
  
• The case of Gautam Gambhir and Mayank Agarwal making tweaks to their batting technique
  
• The concern over lack of quality spinners in Indian domestic cricket – and its knock-on effect on batting techniques against spin
  
• How DRS has been a game-changer with regard to playing against spin
  
• Pujara's unique approach to spinners and why it works
  

Participants:

Amol Muzumdar (@amolmuzumdar11)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)

Related:

Amol Muzumdar's chat with R Ashwin - YouTube video

Amol Muzumdar interview - Sportsnasha.com - YouTube

Amol Muzumdar interview with Cyrus Broacha - Cyrus Says podcast

Ask Me Anything with Amol Muzumdar - NewsBytes - YouTube video

'When you step into the ground, it doesn't matter what team you are playing for' - Amol Muzumdar interview - ESPNcricinfo

Might they have played for India? - V Ramnarayan - ESPNcricinfo

Defence as the best form of defence - Sriram Veera on Sitanshu Kotak - ESPNcricinfo

Is the DRS a good thing? - Kartikeya Date - ESPNcricinfo

Are umpires giving more lbws now than they did before DRS? - Karthik Krishnaswamy - ESPNcricinfo

Cheteshwar Pujara interview - Subash Jayaraman - Couchtalks podcast

Abhinav Mukund interview - 81allout podcast

Buy War Minus the Shooting in:

India (e-copy only)

USA (paperback and e-copy)

UK (paperback and e-copy)

Australia (paperback and e-copy)

Canada (paperback and e-copy)

Germany (paperback and e-copy)

For the rest – please check your country-specific Amazon pages.

In the latest episode we revisit War Minus the Shooting, Mike Marqusee's book on his journey through the subcontinent at the 1996 World Cup.

Participants:

Sharda Ugra; Fidel Fernando (@afidelf); Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee); Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)

Related: War Minus the Cliches - Rob Steen's review; Why Cricket? - Mike Marqusee; Mike Marqusee's website with many of his writings; Madras Machinations - Benjamin Golby on Mike Marqusee's novel - The Cricket Monthly; 'You Little Beauty' - 81allout podcast on the 1996 World Cup

Books discussed: War Minus the Shooting; Anyone But England; Slow Turn; Pundits From Pakistan; Beyond a Boundary

We discuss the fourth Test between India and England in Ahmedabad.

Talking Points:

• India's terrific achievement across eight Tests
• A triumph of depth for the Indian team
• Axar's 27 wickets and his perfect debut series
• Why Ashwin's value to the side is double that of their best batsman
• Mohammad Siraj - the classic Indian fast bowler
• Rahane, Pujara and the problems of mortality
• Rohit Sharma's ability to tune his game as per the conditions and situation
• Rishabh Pant, Washington Sundar and the value of time against pace
• Washington's possible future as a top-order batsman
• Looking ahead to the World Test Championship fina

Click here to support 81allout on Ko-Fi

Participants:

Kartikeya Date (@cricketingview)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Ashoka (@ABVan)

Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)

Related:

A two-day shootout: India v England, 4th Test review - 81allout podcast

A tale of two series - Kartikeya Date

The full range of Rohit Sharma - Karthik Krishnaswamy - ESPNcricinfo

Munaf Patel: A fast bowler and the slow life - Sriram Veera - Indian Express

Ravi Shastri sees glimpses of himself in Washington Sundar - Outlook India

What Rishabh Pant did in the last two months, no one would do that in a lifetime: Ravi Shastri - NDTV.com

Our special guest this week is Nishant Arora who, over two decades, has worked in multiple capacities within cricket – as a TV journalist, a player agent, a media manager with the BCCI, and a digital producer with ICC. We speak to Nishant about his career that has spanned over two decades and delight in some of his anecdotes from behind the scenes. 

Talking Points:

• Playing junior cricket with Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh
• Big-hitting Yuvraj losing SG balls at the world's most elevated cricket stadium
• Yuvraj scoring 358 in a match when the opponents scored 357
• Harbhajan Singh's emotional day after taking India's first hat-trick in Kolkata
• The challenge for Nishant to separate his journalism and friendships
• The rare Dhoni interview in Islamabad
• Visiting Virender Sehwag's house and getting him to talk about his 155 in Chennai
• The challenges of interviewing Sourav Ganguly
• When Yuvraj's cancer was kept top secret
• The breakdown in the player-journalist relationship
• Why Ashish Nehra must be appointed the lawyer for bow

Click here to support 81allout on Ko-Fi

Participants:

Nishant Arora (@NJA21)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Related:

The Test of my Life: From Cricket to Cancer and Back - Yuvraj Singh, Amazon.com

Anatomy of a classic - Chandrahas Choudhury and Nishant Arora - ESPNcricinfo

When Singh was king - Karthik Krishnaswamy - The Cricket Monthly

Nehraji unfiltered - Breakfast with Champions - Gaurav Kapoor