Good, Bad & Ugly ft Bayern Munich, Ishant Sharma, Liverpool's Invincibles and DRS

The Good

Football finally introduces trials a concussion substitute

The Bad 

Liverpool and the broken Invincible dream

Ishant Sharma Episode leaves NCA process under scanner

Ishant Sharma missing the second Test against New Zealand after a recurrence of his right ankle injury is not only a news that bothered the Indian cricket fans massively, but it also cast doubt about the procedure at the National Cricket Academy and their process. Ever since Rahul Dravid, one of Indian cricket’s most venerated figures, took charge as the chairman, things are expected to be on order but it has been anything but that. Ishant, after sustaining the injury during a Ranji Trophy game against Vidarbha in January, was advised a six-week rest but he was rushed for the Kiwi tour for reasons only known to NCA physio and the Indian team management. Fearing bad PR, everyone in the BCCI is tight lipped about it, but a BCCI official revealed that the same ligament injury on his right ankle has flared up once again, leaving the pacer to miss the Christchurch Test and in all probability the first few games of the Indian Premier League, where he plies his trade for Delhi Capitals. It's a massive management failure by NCA physio Ashish Kaushik, especially in the backdrop of what happened to Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Wriddhiman Saha in the near past. Can they really pull up their socks and be accountable for the stuff they are responsible for?

Chastising Virat Kohli - Not so cool

The kind of form that Virat Kohli is in, it is easy to presume his mental state because being in form has been the only constant. Averaging just 9.50 across two Test matches, followed by a rather subdued ODI series, he is at the brink of a low in his career that couldn’t come close to him since that fateful England series in 2014. However, it only goes on to show that he is human and that is exactly why the kind of criticism that has been dished out to the man, who has given many glorious wins for the country, is shambolic to say the least. Kohli, for what it is worth, had never been out of form as such, which gave him an aura of invincibility but those failures, where his mental struggle and anxiety is out in the open, the “cricket fans” failed to fathom the very truism of the sport. They have failed to fathom that it is the product of playing cricket day in and day out that he has hardly any time for himself, with the charging needing some time. It is after all a few innings and a player of Kohli's stature is always a knock away from regaining his touch again. Dishing out the choicest of words is not just the show of perspective but it was a microcosm of impatient times we live in. Getting rid of such a mindset would do a world of good to make India a sporting nation in the truest sense.

The decision to add Decision Review System for the semifinals and finals was a decision welcomed with open arms but what was actually dished out, it was anything but good. The third umpires for both the games - Gujarat vs Saurashtra in Rajkot and Bengal vs Karnataka in Kolkata - have slow-motion camera and a pitch map along with spin vision to give their verdict, but their inadequacies left the system half-baked. In the Kolkata game, in one of those occurrences, Abhimanyu Mithun’s ball was moving in and would have surely missed the left stump, but the third umpire gave it out because the impact was on. The spin vision was of no help, because it leaves more than 50 percent of work to interpretation and the pitch map being as inaccurate as ever. If it is not aided by RTS or Ultra Edge at the minimum, the DRS has no sense of purpose too - something that the BCCI should have understood. By dishing out “Limited DRS”, as they like to call it, it leaves more confusion and the situation in Kolkata today was one such incident from the many that happened over the last two days in Rajkot and Kolkata.