Special Reports
Jagmohan Thaken In India, 69 percent population lives in villages, where most of the populace is associated with agriculture and allied activities, but snatching the agricultural land by the governments in the name of urban and industrial development leaves these Ruralites in the lurch with a stigma of landless, unsettled, and unemployed. However, the Governments…
Veteran Umpire Ramaswamy Breaks Silence: “Blame the Club Secretaries” MS Shanker After weeks of speaking to former Hyderabad cricketers—disillusioned, dejected but not defeated—I took a detour. On the advice of some wise old players and my former colleague Jagannath Das, I turned my attention to those who watch the game from the other side of…
N Nagarajan I write this as someone who completed secondary education in a century-old school in Delhi, where both Tamil and non-Tamil students studied together. From Classes 1 to 3, Tamil was the medium of instruction, while English was taught as a language. English wasn’t our home language, but we gradually picked it up, thanks…
MS Shanker It began with a phone call. An innocuous ring on a Monday evening. Within ten days, KN Radhakrishna (name changed), a 60-something retired resident of Mehdipatnam, Hyderabad, saw his entire life’s savings—over ₹1.36 crore—vanish into the digital ether. Not to a robber with a weapon, not to an elaborate Ponzi scheme, but to…
So, MS Dhoni wants to trademark “Mr Cool”. Yes, you read that right. Our man from Ranchi has moved the papers in Kolkata to officially own the tag that millions of cricket fans unofficially stamped on him long ago. As someone who’s shared dressing rooms with hotheads and heartbreakers, I’ll say this upfront—Dhoni has every…
MS Shanker If anyone believed that public outrage, investigative exposés, or even central agency scrutiny would clean up the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), last Sunday’s Annual General Body Meeting (AGM) proved otherwise. What unfolded on June 29 was nothing short of a farcical power-sharing exercise, where tainted officials, past manipulators, and compromised figures re-emerged in…
Girja Shankar Dixit Premjit Lal remains one of the most luminous names in Indian tennis history. In his prime, he was not just a formidable presence on the court but also a symbol of dedication, resilience, and grace. His journey through the sport left an indelible legacy—one that continues to inspire players and admirers decades…
MS Shanker Last Sunday’s Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) AGM wasn’t a meeting—it was a reunion of rogues, a mafia-style roll call of those who have turned cricket administration into a looting syndicate. The date may have read 29 June 2025, but the stink in the hall smelled like it had been festering for decades. If…
Preamble Hijacked: Undoing the Politics of the 42nd Amendment The words “Secular” and “Socialist” were not part of the original Constitution adopted on 26 January 1950. These were inserted later through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment during the Emergency in 1976—an authoritarian period under Indira Gandhi’s rule. Today, there is a growing chorus among jurists, constitutional…
Inside the Supervisory Committee Chaos: When Petty Power Games Derailed Reform MS Shanker The tragicomedy unfolding within the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) continues to offer a lesson—not in cricket administration—but in how not to run a public institution. At the heart of this slow-motion disaster lies a web of WhatsApp messages, passive-aggressive emails, backroom groupism,…
