IPL | Siraj’s work with head coach Nehra is working wonders: Solanki
The Hindu
Mohammed Siraj impresses with Gujarat Titans after being released by RCB, Vikram Solanki praises Ashish Nehra's impact.
Over the years, the sight of Mohammed Siraj in a Royal Challengers Bengaluru shirt had become an IPL staple. His release by the franchise, therefore, understandably made the headlines and divided fan opinion. Now donning the dark blues of Gujarat Titans, Siraj has shown signs of settling in, with a statement spell against his former side to boot.
Vikram Solanki, GT’s Director of Cricket, believes that working under Titans head coach Ashish Nehra has helped the Hyderabad pacer find his groove again.
“Siraj has been exceptional since he’s joined us. He obviously has a very good relationship with Ashish, and you’re seeing the fruits of his hard work and the work he’s doing with Ashish,” he said.
“A coach’s job is to instil confidence in players, and Ashish has done that in abundance. You’ve seen that with other players that have been part of the team, and I think that’s exactly what is transpiring with Siraj.”
For all the talk of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s prowess with the willow, teams have been able to counter its unevolving strategy with fair ease. While the home team comes into the clash with GT on the back of a hat-trick of defeats, Vikram is wary that SRH, with its batting might, can turn its bad form around in a jiffy.
“You can sometimes fall into the trap of what’s gone on previously. We’re mindful of Sunrisers being a very capable and strong team with match winners throughout their line-up. We’ll respect that,” he stated.

When a wintering bird doubles back to its breeding grounds to attend to the visceral business of procreation, it becomes essentially “unreachable” for the human friends it has made in its wintering grounds. It is impossible to keep tabs on the bird. One only knows its vast breeding range, which could straddle countries. It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack than trace this bird. Birder Jithesh Babu is engaged in an exercise of this kind: he is trying to trace the address of a curlew sandpiper (he made friends with, on April 18, 2025 at Kelambakkam backwaters). Jithesh would likely succeed in this effort; he is not playing blind man’s buff. The curlew sandpiper (found in its breeding plumage and likely to be around in its wintering grounds for some more time) is wearing a tag. A bird with a tag usually has a recorded history to fall back on. In a couple of days, Jithesh is likely know where exactly the Curlew sandpiper would go. The tagged Curlew sandpiper having crossed his 150-600 mm telephoto lens, he has a photo of the creature, which he has sent to Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) along with a request for information about it. And Jithesh knows what exactly to expect. Around the same time four years ago — April 21, 2021 — he found a tagged flimingo at Pallikaranai marshland and he wrote to BNHS seeking information, and in response, Tuhina Katti, a scientist with the Wetlands Programme, BNHS, wrote back to him: “From the combination on the tag, it appears to be ‘AAP’. This individual was tagged in Panje, Navi Mumbai (on the outskirts of Mumbai) on 24 September 2018. It was resighted in Chennai in August 2020 and since then it has been resighted in Sholinganallur on a couple more occasions. It is interesting that the bird was still present there in April.” Jithesh remarks: “As this happened at the height of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the response took some time. Usually, it is prompt with a turnaround time of just two days.”

Due to various reasons, many medical colleges across India have failed to appoint faculty according to the number of students, as per the NMC norms. Colleges are allegedly running classes through ghost faculty in post-graduate medical courses like anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, forensic medicine, pharmacology, and microbiology, where the number of students is less.