Author: Ashok Namboodiri

Tabraiz Shamsi’s legal face-off with Cricket South Africa may well be remembered as a quiet but important inflection point in the slow rebalancing of power between players and boards in global cricket. At the heart of the dispute was a deceptively simple question: how much control does a board legitimately retain over a player who is not centrally contracted and has fulfilled his domestic obligations? Shamsi, a seasoned international cricketer but not bound by a central contract, had been picked in the SA20 auction and later withdrew, with the league accepting his decision and moving on. When he subsequently signed…

My new year resolution is to spend at least 30 minutes every day at the gym. And so here I am on the treadmill and thinking profound thoughts about the future of Test cricket. The sight of the ungainly shots played by the Englishmen in that two day abomination of a Test match in Melbourne in front of a hundred thousand fans has scared me. Will the joy of watching a well fought session in the lazy afternoon sun at the Eden or Oval never return? Are we witnessing the swan song for an institution that has lasted 150 years?…

2026 promises to be the sports fan’s finger-licking good treat. And no, this is no reference to the Big Bash League. On a serious note, if you thought 2025 was replete with all-round action, then 2026 will take it to a crescendo. Imagine this — three cricket World Cups, one Commonwealth Games, one Asian Games, a FIFA World Cup and a plethora of tournaments across various disciplines of Olympic sport all in the space of twelve months. January will see the under-19 50-over World Cup kick off in Zimbabwe and Namibia and I can’t wait to see Vaibhav Suryavanshi and…

Indian sports will perhaps remember 2025 as a year of transtion and transformaiton. Not just in cricket where with the retirement of stalwarts lie Ravi Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli from Test cricket, we now have a 25-year-old in Shubman Gill taking over and scoring more than 700 runs in his first series as captain. The women’s team won the ICC ODI World Cup and the nation now tunes in to their matches with the same enthusiasm. Athlectics, squash, chess, archery, kho kho and hcokey have all seen traction and with India clinching the rights to host the Commonwealth…

The 2023 American movie ‘Air’ was centered around Nike betting everything on one transcendent athlete, giving him creative and financial power, and building a brand around personality rather than just performance. While the film centered around Micahel Jordan, this is the exact framework that later enabled LeBron James’s lifetime Nike deal and cultural stature. What Air subtly acknowledges is this: Jordan was the first. LeBron is the proof that the model worked again. A few months ago, my physical training Coach Nav said “What inspires me about LeBron James is how he uses every platform with purpose. On his podcast,…

As I laze around in the Bangalore winter sun, I asked myself how the Indian Premier League will continue to grow going forward given that the media rights have now been disaggregated in a 2 x 2 matrix – domestic vs international and linear vs digital. At the end of 18 years, the IPL has been a phenomenal case study in brand building, reaching an enterprise value of $18.5 billion. More importantly, the brand has proven to remain resilient to controversy, locational shifts and conflict of interest. Even more importantly, the quality of the cricket has continued on an upward…

What we are watching at Melbourne is not an anomaly. It is a continuation. The reckless shot-making, the ungainly hooks, the almost casual abandonment of technique in the current Ashes Test are not merely a product of England smelling victory on Day 2 of a Test match. They are the logical outcome of a deeper malaise – one that has crept across continents, formats, and philosophies. It is ironical that over 100,000 fans have turned up at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to witness what is a travesty of the institution called Test cricket. We have seen this charade before. Not…

For decades, broadcasters have been viewed primarily as amplifiers of elite sport, bringing live games into living rooms, aggregating audiences, and monetising reach. But the more farsighted broadcasters, particularly in a market like India, have long recognised a deeper responsibility: sport can survive as entertainment only if it thrives as culture. And culture, by definition, must be built from the grassroots upward. Nearly a decade ago, during a consumer research exercise commissioned by Star Sports, a revealing insight emerged. Parents were asked what would motivate them to actively encourage their children to play sport and even consider a career in…

A few weeks ago, I was watching some random cricket highlights on YouTube and came across Rishabh Pant toppling over while playing that one-handed pull or swat over mid-wicket. I knew I had seen something like this before and that got me going. As I randomly searched multiple videos, I realised that back in his day none other than Rohan Kanhai would do the same — move across the stumps and sweep the ball while losing balance, often falling away after contact. Only thing is that he would do this against genuine fast bowling and this was in fact born…

Modern cricket stadiums are increasingly being judged not only by the quality of their pitches or the size of their crowds, but by something far less visible and far more consequential: how intelligently they manage water. In an era of climate volatility and urban water stress, stadium sustainability has shifted from a feel-good add-on to a core measure of governance. Globally, the direction of travel is clear. The best-run venues no longer ask how much water cricket consumes, but what kind of water is being used, and how much of it is recycled, harvested, or substituted away from potable supply.…