As fans erupt into ecstasy revelling in the big-hitting in the ongoing IPL, it’s a good time to remember Gilbert Jessop. With his crouching predatory stance, Jessop was perhaps the hardest hitter of all times. Arunabha Sengupta pays tribute to the legendary cricketer on his 138th birthday.

Statistics may not tell the whole story, but do trace the footprints left by the cricketers across time. Having analysed the batsmen, Arunabha Sengupta now looks at how bowlers performed over the decades in Tests.

John Traicos, who celebrates his 65th birthday today, may have had his career interrupted for two decades, two years and 222 days. However, he had a remarkable journey etched with unique distinctions. Arunabha Sengupta hails the off-spinner who represented two African countries.

In the sixth part of the statistics across eras series, Arunabha Sengupta looks at the perception that helmets affected the revenue of pace bowlers since they came into play from 1978.

With the rich and famous, icons and movie stars, blaring music and dancing girls hogging the scene, the IPL demonstrates the current and historical focus of cricket administrators of India. Arunabha Sengupta discusses how in such an environment favouring shorter and shorter versions of the game, Sachin Tendulkar’s monumental achievements in Test cricket appear even more colossal.

On May 14, 1927, a Reverend was called away from his church pulpit and asked to broadcast cricket live on BBC.  Arunabha Sengupta recounts the birth of ball-by-ball cricket commentary in England.

T20 is a close cousin of One-Day Internationals. Though debates rage on whether it is a poor or an impure one! But, does excelling in one form of the game mean doing well in the other as well? Arunabha Sengupta looks at the last five years of the two formats and tries to deduce how figures in one format tells us how batsmen fare in another.

In the first part of the statistics across eras series, Arunabha Sengupta had claimed run scoring had become standardised by the 1920s and remained more or less constant after that. In this episode he looks in greater detail, team by team, at every decade between 1920 and 2000, and finds that contrary to popular perception, batting did not get increasingly easier.

“In a player revolution unprecedented in sport, the world's top 34 Test cricketers have secretly signed contracts to become freelance mercenaries.” Thus ran the earth-shaking story by the late Ian Wooldridge in the Daily Mail of  May 9, 1977. Thirty five years after Wooldridge’s scoop, Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the fateful day that announced a crack in the foundations of the cricket world.

The Dhoni-Sehwag rift may have been true or blown out of proportion by the media. However, far from being unique, discords such as this have been commonplace in the history of the game. Arunabha Sengupta looks at some of the most famous feuds of cricket. This episode deals with the thunder bared bitterness between Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds