We started planning our coverage of the England tour in Australia in January 2025. Budgets, travel plans, hotels and, more importantly, whether it was even feasible for a three-year-old organisation to think of sending a eight-member team for two months to the UK. England is expensive, and money was always an important consideration. The truth is it sounded impossible to start with. But then, we started breaking things down, worked our way through the maze, and realised that if we have to do quality coverage of a very different nature, we need a sizeable team in England. If we are to be different, and bring every news item to our readers and viewers real time, this was our best option.
Once the plans were made, it all came down to implementation. To reach out to brands and sponsors and investors, and ask them for support. And the truth is, most of them agreed. So when some media houses suggest that there aren’t any sponsors, it is actually a failure of their own marketing departments than anything else. There is support out there, you need to get it done.
Our idea is simple. To do as much on ground, and in real time as possible. In a media agnostic age, you need to turn things around fast for the consumer. People need to know and want to know. Buoyed by the success of the Olympics and Paralympics coverage in 2024, we went further in Australia during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. It worked superbly. There had to be continuity, and that’s what we will try out in the UK.
During the Olympics and Paralympics, we worked 18-19-hour days and the team back in India turned things around brilliantly for our readers and viewers to see and consume. There was appreciation from every quarter and that helped a lot. Most athletes loved it. We got messages every single day asking for the videos, links to pieces and photographs that we had taken of the athletes. One of them said that a photo taken by us had been blown up in his village and used on posters. Links to our stories were sent back to athletes’ villages and people watched the shows together in solidarity. It was just incredible.
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As I look back at Paris, it seems a miracle come true. Australia was the same. We did pull it off. The team did. And it will define us going forward. That’s where the England plan was born. Give young people the opportunity. Most of them have not covered a cricket tour of the UK. Rohit Juglan, Subhayan Chakraborty, Gargi Raut, Rohan Chowdhury – for each of them, it will be a first. While Debasis Sen has been on many tours here, Trisha Ghosal had come with me in 2022. For Sharmistha Gooptu and I, we have spent our summers here every year for two decades.
As founder, I am proud of this team and the work we do. I hope the experience of the next two months will enrich each one of them as journalists and help them break new ground. If that happens, it will be vindication of the very best kind.
To more coverage and more stories. Thank you all for the feedback and the support.
Also Read: RevSportz will break new ground with our coverage from England