Why Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka is so watchable even when they aren't playing
And what do you think of Prithvi Shaw becoming a Shastri lookalike?
Look. We understand. This year has been nuts. Hospital orderlies have to go to work wearing more protective gear than gladiators. Regular people have become epidemiologists on social media. Many sportswriters became couch potatoes through the course of the pandemic. And to fill that gap, some cricketers became sports reporters. In the early months, Tamim Iqbal was prolific, interviewing the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Kane Williamson on his various channels. Later, R Ashwin made waves with interviews of Kumar Sangakkara, Anil Kumble, Muttiah Muralitharan and, more recently, Rashid Khan. You know what? We get it. You've proved you can do our jobs. Point made. But the cricket has started now. And we need our jobs back. Get the hell back in your own lane.
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were going to have a three-Test series starting in October, but that's no longer going to happen. Why? Largely it's because Sri Lanka's health authorities insisted on a 14-day quarantine, and the BCB felt that was too much to ask of players ahead of a World Test Championship series (there were legitimate concerns about maintaining fitness).
As cricket's reckoning with race issues continues, former Yorkshire offspinner Azeem Rafiq revealed this month that he had been driven to the brink of suicide by his experience of racism while playing for Yorkshire. Although the county has since appointed a committee to investigate his allegations, Rafiq nevertheless had to endure an attack from the chairman of ECB Yorkshire South Premier League, Roger Pugh, who wrote that Rafiq was "discourteous and disrespectful" and that essentially he had reaped what he sowed. Why disrespectful behaviour could possibly deserve something as heinous as racism goes unexplored in Pugh's writings. Presumably he's the kind of person who sees someone get robbed in broad daylight and decides the victim had it coming if they thought that shirt and those trousers went together.
In other years we've made fun of Sri Lanka Cricket's repeated failures to start a local franchise T20 tournament. The board has cited various reasons for these failures: clashes with other tournaments, economic slowdowns, security issues. (Although SLC is trying to present itself here as a man slipping on multiple unforeseen banana skins, a more accurate analogy might be someone repeatedly tripping on their own shoelaces, which they have themselves accidentally tied together.)
Back at the IPL, Prithvi Shaw, age 20, has seemingly been undergoing a transformation. Fans have noticed that with hair growing on his upper lip and thinning at the temples, he is increasingly looking like India supremo Ravi Shastri. Is this a blatant attempt to ingratiate himself with the India coach, with playing opportunities on the line? It makes some sense. If there's anyone who might fall for this type of unsubtle flattery, it's Shastri. Maybe Ambati Rayudu, Sanju Samson or Axar Patel - other players hoping for more India game time - should put on booming voices, adopt boasting as their primary form of communication, and start comparing everything around them to bullets.
Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. @afidelf