Good morning!
I was all ready to launch into a whole PR spiel about my article that analyses the media’s coverage of the Women’s World Cup. I genuinely think it’s one of the best pieces I’ve ever written before, and I even invented a new metric to measure the quality of an article – “Article Score!”
It felt like fate that Jarrod Kimber, Robin Uthappa & Deepak Goyal just launched a new cricket media venture on the same day, because they saw the same problems in the cricket media.
How did the media cover the Women’s World Cup?
But, there’s a more important story. “The Mustafissure,” as Sushant Singh’s fantastic analysis in Cricket Et Al today calls it. If you didn’t check social media this weekend; the BCCI asked an IPL team to “voluntarily” release a player they had planned their new bowling attack around.
From a moral standpoint – are you blaming an entire nation’s population for a few idiots who killed someone based on their religion? What happens when you re-direct that gaze inwards – there were attacks against Christians in India this Christmas? Not to mention India’s systemic marginalisation of Muslims under the BJP.
From an administration standpoint – What gives the BCCI the right to tell IPL teams how to build their teams? Did you not expect Bangladesh to retaliate – as they have done by asking to play their T20 WC games outside India? (Also, BAN’s point about safety of players might have been overblown – until the BCCI declared all Bangladeshis enemies of the state by banning Rahman). At what point does the ICC even acknowledge that the BCCI is entirely run by politicians – let alone take action against them for breaching the political-sporting line?
This is beyond stupid. An own goal. A hit wicket. Whatever you want to call it. It breaches every rule of sporting spirit, every rule of geo-political governance, every rule of human decency. What is the point? To distract people of Eastern India from the BJP’s hopeless socio-economic policies during state elections by villainising an entire country that should be a close ally?
This is a chance for the cricket media to step up, and analyse a topic that goes beyond the pitch. To show off their writing chops, and make a dent in the international consciousness. Although, after analysing their work on the Women’s World Cup, I can predict two things – Substack will probably do it better (a la Singh’s article), and the media will stick to press releases on administrative stories.
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🏏 Cricket Roundup: Spinless AUS, the coaches behind IND’s prodigies, & Taufel on cricket’s rules.
📚 Best Features: Is the mainstream media better than Substack, the subtle racism in AUS cricket, & trends across Tests in 2025.
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“How did the media cover the Women’s World Cup?”
📊 Tarutr Malhotra analyses 1,349 articles from 114 writers in 20 publications to answer 3 questions; how did the media cover the Women’s WC, were they better than amateurs on Substack, & what are the gaps in coverage? -
“To be a brown man in a white game”
✍️ Bharat Sundaresan on his experiences as a brown journalist in Australia, inspired by Usman Khawaja’s retirement press conference. -
“A year in fast-forward”
📊 S Rajesh has detailed stats on the trends in Test cricket in 2025. -
“The Greatest Individual Performance in a Test Series”
✍️ Cricket with Mingus breaks down the numbers to determine the greatest Test performance across a series (minimum 3 games).
🗞️ Quick News: The “Mustafissure”, WPL previews, & Martyn’s miraculous recovery.
📺 A/V: Bravo on WI abandoning him, & Kimber/Uthappa/Goyal launch a new cricket media venture.
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“Do West Indies Care?”
📽️ Beard Before Wicket host Dwayne Bravo to talk about his career, playing under Brian Lara and with Sachin Tendulkar, why he feels West Indies abandoned him, and his future Bollywood plans. [YouTube] -
“Cricket Media: Past, present, future”
📽️ Jarrod Kimber, Robin Uthappa & Deepak Goyal launch their new media venture, Comm Box, with a chat about their favourite cricket stories growing up, their favourite books, games and more, and how they plan to change the face of the cricket media. [YouTube]
That’s it for today!
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