✍️ Jo Harman-McGowan on whether the post-2005 Ashes cricket paywall has helped or hindered English cricket.
“The music, the graphics, the commentary team, the public’s love of it – it had become really rather special. It was a bit of a cult. The coverage in 2005 was probably universally appreciated more than any other at that stage, so much so that even Kerry Packer in Australia was saying, ‘How come they’re doing it better than we’re doing it?’ When you give something such a deep dive, and you’re going so well with it, and you feel like you’ve got so much left to do, it’s difficult to stomach that the rights have moved on.”
🔒 Sukhman Singh has an incredibly detailed behind-the-scenes look at the Jio broadcasting system that powers the IPL.
“[JioStar’s Prashant] Khanna spent 10 days with Fox Sports in New Orleans around the Super Bowl. He studied the scale of that operation, gaining a grasp of what Fox had built for a one-off game. “That operation was over one day,” he says. “We do the same operation over 60 to 65 days of the IPL.”
🚨 Tarutr Malhotra relives RCB’s miraculous title defence, which owed as much to good players as it did to constant innovation & adaptation.
“Greek mythology likes to teach morals by torturing its protagonists. Most famous of all is probably Sisyphus. The Corinthian King was wilier than the Gods, and kept cheating death by outsmarting them. When the Gods finally got him to the underworld, they gave him a punishment that he couldn’t think his way out of; he was condemned to roll a massive boulder up an endless hill for all eternity.
Endless misery with no respite. It’s a feeling RCB fans were familiar with.”
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“The birth of a sporting dynasty”
Our team went beyond the headlines on the final; 📊 Tarun Pratap on how RCB bounced GT’s batters out of the game, & 📊 Tarun Pratap/Aarush Adil Khan on the most important chase in Virat Kohli’s IPL career.
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“The Highest Ambition”
✍️ Giles Wilcock on Cyril ‘Snuffy’ Browne, who laid the groundwork for West Indies to get it’s first black captain (though he wouldn’t achieve it himself). -
“Give fans a place to enjoy”
✍️ Sharda Ugra argues that cricket has to start thinking about the average fan’s experience in stadia. -
“The IPL’s shadow economy”
✍️ Santadeep Dey investigates how bad actors take advantage of tech illiterate Indian fans during the IPL. -
“Tendulkar, Kallis, Murali, Perry voted greatest”
✍️ ESPN have their full list of the best internationals in the 21st century.
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“Livingstone Joins”
📽️ Stick to Cricket host Liam Livingstone to discuss the ENG summer, & his fallout with the Rob Key-led ECB. [YouTube]