INDIA's richest and most powerful sporting body - the BCCI - declares a revenue loss and it doesn't make news. More than that, there must be something fundamentally wrong with its managment of finances to end up in the red. The cricket board at its recent AGM declared a loss of revenue amounting to Rs 1.3 billion while the surplus for the year shown in the balance sheet was Rs 540…
IS THERE a case for the Government to step in to clear the ugly mess that India's Commonwealth Games aspirations have turned into? Have we bitten off more than we can chew? The growing reality that a serious execution risk is attached to the Games is now dawning upon us. As one drives around the city of Delhi, one does so with great trepidation for the condition of the roads is…
WE LAUNCH a new WWE show on our channel this week. WWE Superstars has been on in the States for a couple of months now, and it's taken some time for us to complete the agreement with WWE to bring it to India, but now it's finally on.
A few years ago, this piece of news would be irrelevant to me. I still don't count myself as a real WWE fan. Yet the more you look…
IN WHAT is fast becoming a controversy of the year, Boxer Vijender Singh’s recent decision to break ties with IOS, the Sports Agent/Management firm he signed with in 2005 for a period of ten years (until 2015), has sparked a debate over poaching, enforceability of contracts, exploitation, restraint of trade, and most importantly, questions the very foundation over whether…
IT IS is a great idea. But great ideas often come with inherent execution risk. Hotstepper VJM or Vijay Mallya, buoyed by the recent successes in cricket - Royal Challengers, and Formula 1 - Force India, is contemplating a consolidation of all his sporting assets under the aegis of UB Sports to finally unlock value through a public float.
The beleaguered liquor and…
WHEN the hardboiled Douglas Jardine found a furiously fast bowler in coal miner Harold Larwood, he unleashed an instrument to create cricket's first big crisis - Bodyline.The tactic to keep Donald Bradman from scoring runs shook the very foundations of cricket.
Larwood was the first genuinely fast and fearsome bowler who arrived on the world stage with a 100 kilowatt…
I'M ALWAYS looking for things that cheer me up about the Indian sports broadcasting business, and I keep finding evidence of my greying or disappearing hair.
Both were true this week as I flicked between the live cricket on Neo (the inter corporate games), the football on Zee Sports (the Nehru Cup) and our own cricket in Sri Lanka (SL v NZ).
All…
THE LATEST twist in IPL’s evolution has turned the entire League on its head. By eliminating IMG from playing any further part in what has evolved from a fairy tale beginning for a young league into a juggernaut that has put international cricket on the back-burner and chewed on its competitor leagues, the BCCI/IPL have taken things a good deal further, and, ceteris…
IS CRICKET becoming a leitmotif for rivalries? A battleground, a playground or a gridiron. Are Hindi film industry and Indian business battles going to be mirrored in the Indian Premier League? Well, it appears so. I watched Salman Khan, one of Hindi film industry's most bankable stars in recent times (though right now he needs an adrenalin booster shot for his career is sagging)…
SO, the Deodhar Trophy has been given a quiet burial by the BCCI. Yes, lucre is the lubricant in this age of commerce. Instead we have something called the Corporate Trophy featuring 12 teams to be spiked to 16 next year. Is this the beginning of the end of the zonal system in Indian cricket is the larger question that is thrown into stark relief?
Will the Deodhar…