This has been one long season of sporting spectacles that must certainly have been enthralling to the fans and even those uninitiated to the world of sports. Starting with the much-talked-about IPL, probably the brightest of the franchisee T20 events in the world and involving some of the best-known players in the world of cricket, the season saw the T20 World Championship start off in the USA, and even as this premier T20 tournament warmed up to the sharper battles ahead, Europe opened up to the quadrennial Euro 2024, considered the next biggest event after the World Cup. It does not end there, for once these events end one by one, the stage will be set for the biggest of them all, the Olympics, to unfold in Paris a little over a month from now! Indeed, this must be one of those rare occasions for sports lovers with a seemingly never-ending stream of sporting spectacles to keep them joyfully occupied.
To be sure, the IPL 2024 set the tone for the World Championship that followed. This time, this major T20 event provided not just the thrills of sixes and fours but, for the first time, set a new benchmark for hitting the maximum over the boundary line! With 1260 sixes and 2174 fours in 74 matches, it was a feast of a special kind. Imagine one player, Abhishek Sharma, who played for Sunrisers Hyderabad alone, accounting for 42 sixes, the highest by a player! All in all, the IPL seemed like just the dress rehearsal for the World Championship. As it also happened, with the event........