Vinay Rao It is an Under-19 match on a Hyderabad ground. A lean eighteen-year-old runs in and bowls his best ball. The batsman facing him is a grown man: broad-shouldered, heavy-forearmed, with a full beard. He is twenty-three. He swats the ball over midwicket without effort. Then he does it again. By the end of…
Vinay Rao Here’s a question that sounds simple but isn’t: should the richest, best-run sports body in India have to follow the same rules as every other one? That’s what the Supreme Court asked BCCI on 8 September 2026. Not “you’re guilty of something.” Just: explain yourself. Why shouldn’t you and every state cricket association…
Vinay Rao A complaint against the BCCI and others, a High Court appeal, and now a fresh Ombudsman order dated 9th September 2026 — the paper trail in Complaint No. 22 of 2026 has grown quickly over the past month. Laid out in sequence, it tells a fairly clear story about how the matter has…
Vinay Rao Every player Hyderabad has sent to Ranji and beyond came through one door — the league. It survived being disrupted once already; the courts had to step in to save it from the people running it, and it earned its credibility back the hard way, weekend after weekend. This season, the league isn’t…
Vinay Rao HCA’s new season calendar arrived with real credibility behind it — a defined Super League stage, open trials across districts, practice matches for every category, and the imprint of serious cricketing names attached to this phase of the association’s work. On paper, it’s the most structured selection system Hyderabad cricket has had in…
Vinay Rao I was rather delighted when the Editor of OrangeNews9 asked me to share my experiences as a citizen and responsible journalist, and reflect on how I view Independent India’s eight-decade journey, even though I am relatively young and in my mid-forties. Yet, I saw it as an opportunity to take a break from…
Who really rewired the 50-over game Vinay Rao In 1977, a media mogul who had never played first-class cricket sat down with a stopwatch and a problem. Kerry Packer wanted the broadcast rights to Australian cricket, the board wouldn’t sell, and so he decided to simply build a rival version of the sport instead. He…
Vinay Rao Another Sunday, another round of legal notices flying across the Hyderabad Cricket Association’s (HCA) Apex Council. But this week’s paperwork appears far more consequential than the usual factional sparring. It raises a larger question: how far can an Association continue testing the limits of a Court that has already spelt out, in black…
Vinay Rao A letter lands like any other government notice—until you read the questions. A majority of the affiliated cricket clubs of the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) have reportedly received notices from the Income Tax Department’s Investigation Wing. The notices seek bank statements, including those from previous years. More significantly, they ask club secretaries to…
Vinay Rao The IPL was never just a tournament. For a generation of players from second-tier cities and rural India, it opened a door that hadn’t existed before — a contest for eleven roster slots that grew into an economy of thousands, through state leagues and city leagues that became genuine pathways to the top….
