BoC's Playbook for the IPL

Covering the IPL is a unique beast. There are 74 games in 64 days across 13 different cities. For context, the Indian national team played 41 games across formats in 2025.

Even the biggest outlets don’t send reporters to every single IPL match, nor do they always have features for every single game. So, what can a single newsletter do that could realistically add value for the audience?

Our IPL Editorial Strategy

I do have one major advantage. By looking at every piece of text, audio and video that comes out on a daily basis, I know exactly what everyone is doing & I know exactly what they are not doing. It’s how the Beyond the Headlines series started, which I’ve gotten such positive feedback on.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve been thinking about the obvious follow up question; what other story types could be done that the mainstream outlets are ignoring? To answer that, I had to come up with some editorial guidelines for how Best of Cricket can realistically cover the IPL;

1. Publish new information. Enough outlets will talk about what happened, and some will even give you their opinions. But, I want to focus on stories that talk about why and how it happened. I want to introduce new information to the public domain to deepen our collective understanding of cricket.

2. Get nerdy. The mainstream outlets cater to the millions of casual viewers who want superficial coverage. I’m going to cater to thousands of hardcore cricket fans who want 2,500-word deep dives into niche topics.

3. Depth over breadth. Most outlets and newsletters try to cover everything all at once. I don’t have the knowledge, the time, or the full-time employees to do that. So, we’re going to focus on doing 2-3 beats brilliantly rather than 10 beats adequately.

What are we going to publish?

BoC’s editorial strategy for the IPL is simple; publish unique stories, publish in-depth stories, and focus on our strengths. So, what are BoC’s strengths, and how will that translate to the stories we will publish?

• Strength 1: Our BtH coverage has been going well, but we can’t do it for 74 games. And it’s impossible to guess which games will be important beforehand. So, I had to simplify.

  • Our BtH coverage will follow one team; RCB. We will cover both teams’ performances across all 14 RCB games, and we won’t play favourites. If RCB suck, we’ll be very clear about how and why they suck!

• Strength 2: My editorial preferences for long-form coverage seem to be very different than everyone else’s, and you lot seem to really like it. And, with an 8-week long tournament, there is time for our legion of part-time writers to identify, research, and write at least one fantastic deep dive each.

  • Our long-form coverage will be unique and varied. I’ve already started talking to people about stories about the sociology of college cricket fandom, about the failures of cricket highlights, about building mathematical models to accurately analyse different batting styles, and more!

• Strength (?) 3: I like doing dumb experiments without thinking it through. And there’s a lot of open space for dumb experiments in the IPL. Specifically, there’s a lot of open space for dumb team-specific experiments.

  • I’m going to try to do an RCB1 pod. It won’t just be reactions and discussions (though we could have those too). I want to do podcasts where we try to answer questions; not just profiling the guests, but picking their brains about different aspects of the team on and off the pitch!

In short, we’re going to do the BtH match coverage for all 14 RCB games, and we’re going to try and publish at least one long form piece per week for the entire tournament. And, we’re going to try to do a unique podcast as well.

Get Involved

I need help with…everything. Writing, editing, operations, marketing, video production, video hosting (!), guest booking, data, graphics, and probably a bunch of other problems that I haven’t even thought of yet!

And, to be clear, I want to be able to pay people to help out2. Whether you want to come on board to write stories, help with the podcast, help with graphics, or more, I want to be able to pay a fair rate. Get in touch with me on WhatsApp or at malhotratarutr@gmail.com if there’s anything you think you could do!

And, if you can’t help out with the coverage, you can share this newsletter with everyone you know, and give me feedback about the coverage. What you like, what you hate, what you think can be improved. It helps immensely!

Now, we just gotta hope RCB don’t play so badly that they’re out of the IPL by the midway mark 😅