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1 week ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Neeladri Bhattacharjee |Ayon Sengupta |Shayan Acharya |Kavita Menon
Shillong has two things quintessential to it: football and music. For most of the year, the streets here are adorned with either banners of music festivals or players of the local club, Shillong Lajong, competing in the I-League. The capital city has been touted as the rock capital of India, having hosted concerts by artistes like the Scorpions and Steven Wilson to nurtured home-grown bands like Soulmate, Afflatus, and Aberrant.
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4 weeks ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Ayon Sengupta |Lavanya Narayanan |Sunil Gavaskar |Jonathan Selvaraj
In 2004, Kirsty Coventry swam her way to three Olympic medals in Athens, including a gold in the 200m backstroke. For Zimbabwe, it was a sporting revelation — before that, the country’s only Olympic medal had come from the women’s hockey team at the ‘boycotted’ Moscow Games in 1980. About 20 years later, Coventry returned to Athens to win again.
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4 weeks ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Jonathan Selvaraj |Ayon Sengupta
Pradeep Senthil Kumar admits he got a bit of a shock when he started his first year at the University of Nebraska. Born and raised in Chennai, the 21-year-old was barely prepared for the biting winter cold in the American Midwest. “It rarely goes below 70°F here (approximately 20°C). It was really cold. When I came for the first time last winter, it was something like 21°F (-6°C), and it only got colder. I genuinely didn’t know how to handle that. I was sick for a whole month,” he says.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Pranay Rajiv |S. Dipak Ragav |Ayon Sengupta |Ryan Fernando
Captain: Ruturaj Gaikwad Coach: Stephen Fleming Home Venue: M.A. Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai Best Finishes: Champions (2010, 2011, 2018, 2021, 2023) Last Season: Fifth Key Stats 1. Spin-Friendly Fortress 7.13 – The economy rate for spinners at Chepauk, the lowest among IPL venues with over 15 matches. Chennai’s home ground continues to favour spinners, making Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, and Noor Ahmad crucial assets. CSK’s well-rounded spin attack is built to thrive in these conditions. 2.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Suresh Menon |Ryan Fernando |S. Dipak Ragav |Ayon Sengupta
For a while in Oxford, my son lived in rooms overlooking the Iffley Road track where Roger Banister broke the four-minute barrier for the mile. We marvelled at the history. It became, unsurprisingly, the Roger Bannister running track. That record came in May 1954, as Bannister, aided by pacemakers, ran in 3:59.4, a set of numbers as famous in athletics as 19 for 90 is in cricket or 3.14 in geometry.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Ryan Fernando |S. Dipak Ragav |Ayon Sengupta
For years, I have crafted personalised nutrition plans for elite athletes, including top cricketers like Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Robin Uthappa, Yuvraj Singh, and Harbhajan Singh. I have studied every detail — metabolism, micronutrient needs, gut health, hydration strategies, and recovery cycles. My approach has always been driven by human expertise, intuition, and experience — things no machine could replicate. Or so I thought.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Vivek Krishnan |Rajdeep Saha |S. Dipak Ragav |Ayon Sengupta
The Diary could never have imagined itself covering cricket. Yet, here it was, about to report on a sixth consecutive match of the Women’s Premier League within the span of a week. To say the experience had been overwhelming would be an understatement. So, before making its final walk to the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium for this assignment, the Diary decided to explore the sights Bengaluru had to offer. The first stop was a roadside shop on Indiranagar’s 100 Feet Road, selling vintage film cameras.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Mohandas Menon |Ayon Sengupta |Jonathan Selvaraj
50The number of innings Shubman Gill needed to aggregate 2500 runs in his ODI career. He thus becomes the quickest among 204 players who have managed to cross the 2500-run mark in ODI cricket. He achieved this milestone during his 112 against England in Ahmedabad on 12 February 2025. Quickest to reach 2500 career runs in ODIsInnsMBatter (For)RunsAve.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Suresh Menon |Ayon Sengupta |Jonathan Selvaraj |Amitabha Das Sharma
Football is working class ballet, says the philosopher Simon Critchley, fully conscious of the contradiction in a game played by millionaires and followed by the working class too. Yet ballet it is, or as he puts it in another place, it is a matrix of moving nodes endlessly shifting but all the while trying to retain its form.Critchley is an English philosopher who teaches in New York. He is a serious fan of Liverpool Club who says this“may be the governing passion of my life.
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1 month ago | 
sportstar.thehindu.com | Ayon Sengupta |Sunil Gavaskar |Jonathan Selvaraj |Amitabha Das Sharma
Success is a funny thing. One day, you’re just another person wandering around, and the next, people start acting as if you’ve arrived straight from Mount Olympus. It’s surreal how quickly ordinary life can turn into a quasi-religious spectacle. The problem with pedestals is that they tend to come with a free side of delusion — a little voice whispering: Yes, you are different. Yes, you are special. Athletes, artists, politicians — the ones who get all the applause — are especially susceptible.
