Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Sport can change lifes

Oh yes it does!

It can create a sense of belonging and identity among a completely disparate cross section of a country/region/city/family - just observe any public place when India plays cricket (or when England plays football, or the Yankees are in action). Complete strangers get along famously, united in supporting a bunch of athletes giving their best on the playing field. People huddled around TV sets or in pubs and bars, cheering and agonising together - very few other social activities can generate such a feeling.

Sport taught me the value of teamwork. The camaraderie that comes from playing a team sport with a bunch of blokes every evening is irreplacable. The winning feeling and the lessons learnt from losing help me on a daily basis.

And yeah, if you do play sport, it helps combat obesity and shitloads of other diseases.

Freddie as captain

You always get the impression while reading Freddie interviews that what-you-read-is-what-he-really-is. He comes across as a fun-loving beer-swigging typical English bloke, difference being that he happens to be very very good at his sport.

He now has been asked to captain his side in a very tough tour, but there is not much of his team left to captain. Trescothick had to leave for personal reasons (what's with the English and personal reasons?), Vaughan's career is hanging by the thread with yet another recurrence of his knee problem, and Simon Jones goes back to his favourite place - the hospital. With Giles still in England recovering, that's 4 of England's Ashes heroes out without a ball being bowled in the Test Series.

India look overhelming favourites now on paper - but it is not a done deal yet. If Harmison and Freddie can get the ball consistently at throat level - which is a very tough ask in these conditions - I think England have a chance. That, and can their batsmen bat patiently enough and not sweep every bloody ball bowled by Kumble and Bhajji?

I have been waiting to see our batsmen face up to genuine pace at both ends, and I hope the series is interesting. I am frankly bored of India - Pakistan now!

Monday, February 27, 2006

Sky bags it in the UK

I had written earlier that Sky may well lose out on the rights to England's tour to India because of price. Turns out Sky called Nimbus' bluff, and finally managed to bag the rights for apparently 10 million GBP. It does look like Sky had to pay more than they wanted to pay, but they also secured a 4 year deal in return. According to the deal, they get exclusive rights to England tours, and have to share the feed with an Asian population-focused channel like Zee/ARY/Sony for the other tours. Nimbus would have wanted to get a lot more than 10 million GBP for the England territories, but probably got a lot more than that Sky would have offered initially if they hadn't raised the Asian channel bogey! All in all, an interesting negotiation that most probably ended with both being happy and sad at the same time.

The happiest are the English Sky subscribers who were petrfied that they will have to buy some vague channel (Zee/Sony/ARY) they only knew existed, just for this series. Sky seems to have got 4 of their commentators (including my favourite - Nasser Hussain) - so the stage is all set for viewers in the UK to watch their favourite team lose to India:-)

Friday, February 24, 2006

Stars to look out for

Check this video of the U-19 World Cup finals out (thanks to Manish of Sightscreen) . It is so very refreshing to be able to watch youngsters untainted/not blinded by stardom and international pressures doing what they do best. Piyush Chawla and Anwar Ali Khan caught everyone's attention, and this video clip illustrates why.
These two guys will surely play a huge part in the next few years. I can't wait to see Chawla in action against England - maybe his chance will come in the ODIs. He is also handy with the bat and is a terrific prospect for an Indian team that will have to live without Kumble very soon.
This World Cup U-19 finals really reinforced the old order - India is still capable of generating great spinners, and Pakistan has a conveyor belt of pacemen and swing bowlers. India have taken the 'youth' route and blooded U-19 performers consistently (Pathan, Kaif, Raina and now Chawla) - will Pakistan do the same with Anwar Ali Khan and the left-armer Jamshaid (who was obviously inspired by Mr. Akram)?

Category: Cricket

Monday, February 20, 2006

BCCI TV deal and UK after-effects

Nimbus has bagged the global media rights for Indian cricket for the next 4 years (till Mar 2010) for an unbelievable sum of 612 million $. This article neatly gives us all the gory details.

This deal clearly shows market forces at work (well, mostly). A bidding war was engineered by the BCCI with 'transparency' the buzz word - ensuring that all bidders had to up their bids in the fear that they could very easily screw up their entire business model for the country if they lost! The fear of losing was perhaps just as important as the price of winning. I expected Zee to win the bid, but now that Nimbus has the rights, expect them to sell it piece-by-piece to Zee to start with, and perhaps launch their own channel down the line. In fact, HarishThawani has gone on record saying that all options are open.

Here in the UK, the cat has truly been set among the pigeons, with Sky's so-called monopoly for overseas England tours under serious threat. It looks very likely that Zee/Sony/Ary will bag the rights. Thankfully the BBC Radio deal seems to be proceeding smoothly, with TMS agreeing to pay 1.7 million $ (1 mill GBP) for the series. Thawani has stated that they will grant highlights to either Channel 4 or Five, thereby satisfying the terrestrial lobby. If Sky do lose out, this will be the first time in many years that they are not telecasting a major live cricket series. Unless Sky dig deeper into their substantial pockets and cough up the moolah, my money is on Zee picking up the rights in the UK by paying some incremental money over and above the India rights.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Nasser Hussain is fantastic

In my opinion, Hussain is one of the two best commentators in World Cricket.

Hussain understands modern day cricket, thinks and speaks like a captain, and puts the viewer into the captain's mind and tells us what the players out there are going through mentally and physically. We do not want 'star' commentators who tell us that the ball is racing away to the boundary in 10 different ways - we can see the damn thing for ourselves. Nasser adds value, to my viewing anyway.

Today's break-time show on Ten was case in point. His views on bowling coaches was terrific. Everyone and his dog says cricket teams need bowling coaches. But Nasser explained in 2 minutes what a bowling coach can do - with a 'for instance'. Having seen Troy Cooley work, he said that Cooley's role is to track how many overs each fast bowler bowls in internationals AND county cricket. He monitors their body weights, their off-season work, their fitness, their run ups and works out a program to make sure that youngsters coming through (like Freddie, Harmison some years back) peak at the right time for the Tests and important ODIs. His point was that India has RP Singh, Pathan and Sreesanth - all 20-21 years old and promising - but they can so easily go off the boil like Nehra, Zaheer and Balaji did in precisely 6 months.

For India to be winning consistently, Nasser made the point that come Nagpur 1st March, if England win the toss and bat, India want these three bowlers fresh and raring to go, not tired and sluggish due to workload in Pakistan and improper recovery in the gap between series!

Now that put things into perspective for me like no one else had. You do not need 1000 word articles and countless interviews by ex-cricketers extolling the virtues of fast bowling coaches - simple, clear and articulate thinking is what is needed. Hussain provides that to the cricket viewer.

Oh, and Ian Healy is the other one who does this to me - and entertains while at it.

Category: Cricket

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

World class sports stadiums

Breathtaking stuff here - a Businessweek slideshow of some of the best stadiums in the world. I personally loved the Allianz Arena, the Cardinals stadium in Arizona and the Beijing Swimming Center. Of course, Dubai being Dubai - anything is possible, including snow and ice in the middle of the desert! Amazing stuff.

Unfortunately I haven't been to any of these stadiums - more entries in the to-do-before-I-die list!

The best stadium I have seen so far is the Cardiff Millennium Stadium. Amazing design, easy to access, awesome atmosphere inside (a Wales home rugby game is an experience) and bang in the city center. The MCG is just awesome and imposing - but I haven't seen a game there, so I can't rate it. 100,000 people on Grand Finals Day or Boxing Day is something I don't want to miss.

Category: Sports

Friday, February 10, 2006

The National Lottery in the UK

The UK has a great way of funding "good causes". The National Lottery run by the Government (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) has raised over 50 billion GBP (!!!) since its conception. The way this works is that people buy tickets, a draw is made, and winners get windfall money announced on TV and other media.

Everything is above board, and the funds raised by the lottery is used to fund "good causes". The Government has set up a list of independent distributors, who grant funds to organizations who satisfy a bunch of criteria. They have granted a staggering 18 billion GBP to causes in sport, art, heritage, voluntary organizations, charities etc. Stunning, isin't it?

The England Cricket Board is a recent recepient - it was sanctioned 10.7 million GBP over the next 3 years to fund grassroot development in schools, clubs and within local communities across all backgrounds. Sport England is the distributing body for sport, and they were satisfied that the ECB met the criteria laid down, and would use the funds for grassroot cricket development.

Sport is a serious matter in the UK, seen more as a great way to keep the nation healthy and develop valuable life skills of teamwork and stuff like that. The Government and the public give it the repect it deserves and treats it just as they would public health, education and defence. Good stuff!

What chances this can be implemented in India? Very bleak, I must say. Political pressures, moral breast-beating about corruption of social values, scams, siphoning of funds to hoax causes - ugh, the list is endless. Not that these things are not happening in the UK, but the sheer extent of the damage that can be done in India with an idea like this is scary!

Categories: UK, sport, Government

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

No more texting CRI to 1234

Mobile users in India are used to texting CRI to any four digit number you fancy to get instantaneous cricket scores - a very convenient way to keep track of the game in the middle of a boring afternoon Quality Training session! Texting is unobtrusive, simple and cheap. No wonder every telco, media company, cricket portal, and aggregator has a service like this in India. SMS revenues go through the roof when India is playing - and even though SMS prices in India are very low, sheer volumes generated good revenues for everyone concerned. Everyone that is, except the cricket authorities!

Well, the Pakistan Cricket Board thought otherwise, and apparently had farmed out "exclusive" SMS rights for their matches to a company called Vectracom. However thanks to the afore-mentioned players already offering these services in India, Vectracom could not monetize the rights they paid for in India. They moved court, and the Madras High Court has ordered a bunch of companies in India to stop offering these services.

Where does one draw the line on what the cricket board controls? Will they now prevent TV channels from reporting live scores? NDTV, Aaj Tak and everyone else has tickers running with live scores when the match is in progress. Does that infringe upon the rights of the broadcast rights holder (Ten Sports in this case)? The SMS guys claim that are similar to news channels and are just disseminating news, and are not infringing upon any rights. Truth be told, they get their scores from third-party providers like Cricinfo - who publish scores on the Web and is hence public domain.

Obviously the cricket board and Vectracom are unhappy because these services generate real revenue, unlike the tickers on NDTV which can't be directly translated to rupee value. However, such technology is impossible to legislate and pragmatism should be the name of the game. The PCB was perhaps naive in offering these rights on a global basis to Vectracom - after all, how can Vectracom or the PCB or whoever else control what gets published on the Internet/sent across mobile phones/put on TV/read on newspapers across the world? Very flimsy legal ground on this one, methinks. If one of these companies offering SMS turns around and says that they are picking up the scores from TV/Internet (public domain) and relaying it with their own value adds to their customers, what rights do the PCB have to prevent that from happening?

What is the way out? It is clear that the PCB and other cricket authorities want to make money out of this. The best way to do that is to appoint a service provider who can provide such official services 'legally' to all interested players and consumers. This has to be publicised in advance so everyone is aware. All interested telcos can then take the feed from them for a fee, and relay the same to their respective consumers. Of course they cannot completely prevent Mom and Pop Telco in Timbucktoo from doing their own thing, but they can potentially cover the major players and convert this into a win-win situation. Pricing has to be right, and content has to be compelling. If the 'official' content is good and not easy to replicate (read star cricketer comments, live comments from the ground, player reactions etc) - a majority of the consumers will demand and pay for that content - as long as it is priced the same as before. You charge premium rates, and the consumer will go for a free/cheaper alternative.

New technology throws open new revenue opportunities, but along with that comes fresh challenges. This is just evolving - the big bang will happen when there is real serious money to be made through mobile phones for sports authorities. Fun lies ahead!

Update:
The Madras High Court has lifted the stay for the ODI series, but has told Vectracom and Marksman Services that they may still be compensated after the series is done and dusted. So text away guys!

Categories: Mobile, sport business, technology, cricket

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Bedaginarasi baare

Got up today humming this song - and wanted to listen to it. In another time and age, would have had to search for the damn cassette, hope that it would play etc etc. Thanks to the good old Net, a quick Google search got me here. A click - and SP starts singing.

Beautiful. Song.

Note to self: Must buy iPod.

Category: Kannada, music

2 wheels are good, 4 wheels are better

Everyone knows Valentino Rossi - even in India where coverage of MotoGP is very limited, the one person who is known in the sport is Rossi. He has pretty much won everything in his sport many times over. So what does the champ do? Switch sports - he is now test-driving to get into the Ferrari F1 team - no less! Even though he has not made any overt statements to the world at large, he is making some pretty bold statements behind the steering wheel of the 2005 Ferrari. He was apparently quicker than 7 other seasoned drivers in a test drive in Spain.

Man, he must be immensely talented to be able to be that good (we are talking World Champion level) in two different sports. Imagine the media publicity if he does make it to Ferrari sometime soon - an Italian, a World Champ in another sport, a famous man already - he will be prefect for Ferrari and F1.

Category: Formula 1