It is commonplace amongst Indian commentators to trace the beginning of a particular kind of cricket mania to June 25th, 1983. I tend to agree, but only partially. My preferred date is March 3rd, 1985, when India played Australia at the MCG in the final Group A match of the Benson & Hedges World Championship of Cricket, held to commemorate the Victorian Cricket Association's Centenary. For that was the day that Indian cricket viewers first watched the live telecast of a cricket game from Australia (and since my memory isn't perfect, the first by Channel 9). And that was the day that cricket presented itself as a perfectly packaged televised spectacle, with plenty of glitter and gloss, 100 overs long, with a definite result at the end of it.
Those of us settling down on that rather chilly morning (Delhi winters sometimes packed a late punch) had little inkling of what was in store. It began innocently enough as Kapil sprinted to bowl the first delivery to Graeme Wood. As he did so, a scraping, knocking sound issued from our television sets, followed by the unmistakable sound of bat on ball. What had happened? It took us a few seconds to figure out that this was the famous "stump microphone" that we had read about. A few minutes later Robbie Kerr was gone, bowled Kapil Dev, and the sound his stumps made as they rattled was a sweet one indeed. Cricket had gone from being a game played far away on the ground to one that had a sudden, dynamic, physical immediacy. We were at the ground, in the midst of the action.
We watched the endless replays, the clarity of the images, the varied and multiple angles that covered the dismissals, and the clever graphics (prompted by Geoff Lawson's duck). We had not realized that all of this could be possibly associated with a cricket game. When India had won the World Cup in 1983, it had made cricketing success in one form of the game possible. What this Australian telecast did was make cricket into a form of entertainment that could be enjoyed by a much wider demographic; it made the far away spectacle of a game played by men in whites into a living-room tamasha of brightly attired athletic performers, displaying a perfectly tuned entertainer's sensibility. And of course, all of this on the magnificent stage of the cavernous MCG.
There were purely cricketing reasons too that day. India's 'quicks' smashed through the Aussie top-order, leaving them tottering at 4-17. Was it really possible that Indian opening bowlers could do this, in such brilliant clarity, to an opposing side? Especially one like the Australians (never mind that the Australian team that year was not particularly strong, it still held a certain fascination for Indian fans). A partial recovery saw the Aussies to 160. But with a mixture of Srikkanth-freneticism and Shastri-phlegmatism India strolled to that target. They had beaten Australia in Australia, on Australian television. The telecast magnified all of this. Our cricketers, in slo-mo, in close-up, viewed from various angles, praised to the high heavens by all these seemingly knowledgeable international cricketers whose names we had only read about, turned into demigods.
A week later, India beat Pakistan by the same comfortable margin in the final. The razzle-dazzle of the awards ceremony, the victory lap on the Audi, put the final touches to the pictures drawn for us that week. From now on, the game would always be linked with the televised spectacle, and Indian fans knew what they wanted to see on the tube.
Posted by: Pushkar Maitra at September 21, 2008 11:30 AM
Wow - this takes me back a long time. I think all of us of a certain age cohort in India have wonderful memories of this tournament. I think this was the first time a cricket match was telecast live from Australia. Thanks Samir - it really felt on reading your post that I was back 23 years.
Posted by: Dharmendra Pant at September 21, 2008 12:13 PM
I agree that television play a huge role to popularise cricket in India but it was 25th june 1983 which gave us confidence and a new hope. After the world cup triumph, the thinking of every Indian about cricket has slightly changed. At the same time live telecast of matches have played importent role in the mind set of Indians. Earlier, we listen to Sushil Doshi and others and could only imagine of fours n sixes but now we can watch every bit of this fabulous game.
Posted by: Mohan at September 21, 2008 1:12 PM
Brilliant! It was a gradual progression of coverage in that tournament. For the first match against Pakistan we had to rely on Radio Pakistan for commentary. After we beat Pakistan in the first match, AIR covered the next match against England. We won that match too and DD got in for the next match.
Posted by: Mohan at September 21, 2008 1:22 PM
Brilliant! It was a gradual progression of coverage in that tournament. For the first match against Pakistan we had to rely on Radio Pakistan for commentary. After we beat Pakistan in the first match, AIR covered the next match against England. We won that match too and DD got in for the next match.
Posted by: Navin at September 21, 2008 1:53 PM
The first telecast I remember as I was child ( I was six then) was Gavaskar's 236* in Madras(Chennai). If I remember correctly he was presented with a Fiat for overtaking Bradman's 29 tons. Then this tournament was the first tournament which I saw live on Colour TV( We bought Colour Tv just a few days back). I never knew this was the first telecast from Australia but we really enjoyed the telecast. But Doordasrshan of old always had some problem with feeds and sometimes we had to be content with a placard saying " SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION". The following year India toured again and the tri-series was shown live on TV for matches featuring India. Nowadays ESPN gives its own graphics and audio though they are good but are no match in comparison to Channel 9. Which we enjoy when India is not on tour to Australia.
Posted by: Jason Radley at September 21, 2008 2:20 PM
In Britain, the first live games from Australia that I remember were broacast on the BBC from England's 1986-87 Ashes tour. It felt so exotic!
Posted by: Jaideep at September 21, 2008 4:18 PM
Good article. First telecast from Pakistan in 1978 - famous for Zaheer Abbas's run scoring. England - 1983 World Cup semi final India vs England. There was 1982 Wimbledon finals in the previous year telecast live. Live telecast from other countries like West Indies, New Zealand came much later. Gavaskar was presented with Maruti 800 in Madras in 1983.
Posted by: Swaminath at September 22, 2008 4:29 AM
Nice and nostalgic article.
The WCC 1985 was a spectacular victory for India. They didnt put a foot wrong in the tournament. And to watch all that action in Australia, under floodlights, stump microphones and white balls took me to a whole new world.
Sadanand Viswhvanath's work behind the stumps against England, Srikkanth's batting, the commentary by channel nine commentators etc was captivating. It started a love affair with watching cricket in general, and watching cricket in Australia especially.
Posted by: Ashish at September 22, 2008 5:36 AM
I remember that telecast vividly. Until then, the cricket telecasts in India were shown from only one end of the pitch, i.e, after seeing one over from one end with the batsman facing the camera, we would then have to bear another over seeing only his back (and the wicketkeeper's too). I remember seeing the channel nine coverage and wondering for the first few overs whether they were using only one end of the pitch for bowling, as the camera angle kept switching and we were always watching with the batsman facing us. Just shows how far channel 9 was in those days compared to DD.
Posted by: Agni at September 22, 2008 6:15 AM
Just like previous poster Pushkar M,I had turned clock back 23 years, still remember vividly when we woke up early in the morning around 530 AM picking milk packets from the front gate,actually never saw the milkman before that day ( we never woke up so early as on that day--I was still in school ,12 or 13 yr lad)commentators (keith stackpole i think) giving away the batting stats of L Sivaramakrishnan when Siva was taking wickets with his gentle full tosses......
Thanks Samir......
Posted by: Rahul at October 19, 2008 11:57 AM
I remember it, as it was the first Live Telecast on TV from Australia.Me and my dad used to wake early in the morning to watch it.The sound of the ball hitting the stumps and the sound it would make, beautiful outfields (and so big stadiums)would be enhanced when seen on TV.I was 8 years old then and I think that was the first telecast of any sports that I saw on TV. Later that year India toured Australia again for Test and Tri-series and it was telecast again. Compare that to the telecast of DD in those days and u would think of what I mean.
Samir Chopra lives in Brooklyn and teaches Computer Science and Philosophy at the City University of New York; his academic interests include the philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence and the politics of technology. In his third undergraduate year, he captained Mathematics in the departmental cricket competition (and lost to Chemistry in the first round). Samir played C-grade cricket in Sydney and makes guest appearances for his old club when possible (and desirable). Samir runs the blog Eye on Cricket and the cricket page at The Faster Times.
Paul Ford is a co-founder of the New Zealand cricket supporters' cult, the Beige Brigade. He was once described by a current New Zealand cricketer as "looking spastic" even mucking about with an Excalibur and a tennis ball in the backyard. Paul bowls right-armed Nathan Astlesque "nudes", his batting would make Ewen Chatfield look elegant, and he is a committed fielder. He sometimes grows a beard to hide his double chin and inhabits a periphery of cricket that Cricinfo is proud to be glimpsing through this blog.
Stephen Gelb grew up in Cape Town, a short walk from the beautiful Newlands ground. Always a better student of the game than player, his passion for cricket survived eight years as a student in Canada, where he learned to love baseball too. He lives in Johannesburg doing economic research at The EDGE Institute and teaching at Wits University.
Mike Holmans, a database consultant by profession, has spent thirty summers (and a few winters) going to the cricket. Brought up in one and working in the other, his dearest wish is for a season to end with Yorkshire winning the county championship by beating runners-up Middlesex by one wicket with five minutes to go. If it’s also a summer when England win the Ashes, so much the better.
Born in Colombo, educated at Oxford and now living in Brisbane - Michael Jeh (Fox) is a cricket lover with a global perspective on the game. An Oxford Blue who played first-class cricket, he is a Playing Member of the MCC and still plays grade cricket. His views on cricket might best be described as those of a "modern traditionalist". Michael now works closely with elite athletes in his job as a manager at Griffith University in Queensland.
Saad Shafqat takes special pride that his cricket-watching life began during the three-month interval between Javed Miandad's debut Test in Lahore and Imran Khan's 12-wicket haul at Sydney. Although a practicing neurologist based in Karachi, cricket has never been far from his activities. He has co-authored Javed Miandad’s autobiography Cutting Edge and has been a contributor to Cricinfo since 2005. His regular column Reverse Swing appears fortnightly in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English daily.
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