[Arjun]

It's been a long time since I last posted, so we've missed out on the soap opera behind the supposed return of Maharashtra's Sairaj Bahutule to Mumbai. First he said he's coming back, the Maharashtra blokes, with whom he's on contract, were fuming, while Mumbai officials said they have no problem. Then he said he's staying with Maharashtra, so it was now the turn of the Mumbai officials to get irked. Well, the Maharashtra cricket board is paying Sairaj a hefty package and he is bound by a contract, so that's the power of a legal document. As for Mumbai, their frontliners are either ageing (Nilesh Kulkarni and Amol Mazumdar) or on national duty (Tendulkar, Jaffer, maybe Powar), so their under-performing youngsters (Abhishek, Wilkin, Usman Malvi, A'vishkar Salvi, Marathe, Kukreja and the rest) have to step up.

There's an excellent article on the Railways team on the CricInfo India front page. Clearly, this is one versatile team that's been living in conditions not fit for a top cricket side, for a team that's challenged the big guns of the North and West.