Dear Readers,

Back in the day newspaper offices would have a landline phone that wouldn’t stop ringing all through the day, more so when there was an error on our page. Occasionally the readers would call, looking for a writer to express their gratitude for making their morning pleasant. The landlines may be disappearing fast but that shouldn’t cut-off the communication lines.

On The Indian Express sports desk, we love reader engagement and thus this weekly newsletter. Me and others on the team will be writing to you regularly now, reminding of the stories you might have missed during the week and dropping hints about the content in the pipeline.

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Upon us is the truly surreal season. It is like a 100m dash with a long half-time. And frozen in their respective lanes at the 50m mark for close to four months, are the eight franchises. This Sunday, they will once again come to life.

Reading Shamik Chakrabarty’s ‘Where we left off’ could be a perfect revision before the restart.

Bunched tightly together, the teams are led by men eyeing riches, fame, endorsements, influence and the big 10-team auction next year. A few have on their minds the vacant India T20 captaincy throne. Leading a team to the IPL title can make them feature in those ‘Who after Kohli’ debates. But mind you, Rohit Sharma’s status as heir apparent wouldn’t be impacted by Mumbai Indians performance in their last 7 games. Though, a 6th title might force the BCCI to pass the 50-overs captaincy to him right away.

Sriram Veera has wonderfully analysed this point in his piece — Virat Kohli-Rohit Sharma split captaincy can make things difficult for next coach

Two young IPL captains KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant are contenders to take the spot behind Rohit in the India white-ball captaincy queue. There’s also Dhoni, on a higher plane than the rest. If he wins this for CSK, a billion fans will want the WorldT20 mentor to be the next Team India coach.

Sandeep Dwivedi gives the untold story of India’s one-of-a-kind WordT20 mentor.

That broadly sums up the week gone by.

Stay tuned for exclusive web features like weekly blogs, a quirky quiz, a dash of nostalgia and the usual bouquet of Express-kind of stories.

Do write back, the landline on the sports desk still keeps ringing but you can drop in a mail too.

Sandeep Dwivedi
National Sports Editor
The Indian Express