Author: Ashok Namboodiri

The Salt Lake Stadium segment of Messi’s “GOAT Tour” in Kolkata descended into chaos when thousands of fans, many of whom paid significant ticket prices, were unable to see even a brief appearance by the football icon. This frustration quickly escalated into violent protests: chairs and bottles were thrown, barricades were breached, and fans invaded the pitch. Police had to intervene, and the organisers were detained amid public and political fallout. I have been researching recurring incidents of poor crowd management at sports, movie, and political rallies over the last few months in India – Chinnaswamy, Karur, New Delhi Railway…

From a broadcaster’s standpoint, cricket formats are not cultural artefacts; they are monetisation engines. Tests, ODIs and T20s each deliver revenue very differently, shaped by pricing power, inventory volume, advertiser demand and, increasingly, risk. And while One Day Internationals currently remain the most lucrative format on television, early signs suggest that advantage is beginning to erode. Test cricket remains the most emotionally valuable, yet a commercially fragile format. A single Test offers enormous inventory – close to 600 live ad spots, but limited pricing power, with average spot rates hovering around ₹1 lakh. Live match revenue therefore sits near ₹18…

Some cricketers give you numbers. A few give you narratives. Only a rare handful give you mythology. Yuvraj Singh lived in that final category… a cricketer who didn’t merely play the game but bent it into cinematic frames, each one bigger, brighter, louder than the last. On his birthday, it’s worth remembering that Yuvi was never just an India star; he was an event. A phenomenon. A character who walked straight out of a screenplay and onto a cricket field where logic often surrendered to his aura. For all the elegance of Indian left-handers through history, none merged grace…

The IPL was deliberately engineered as a low-risk, high-leverage franchise model in a way that the NFL or EPL are not. Two design choices sit at the heart of this: (1) the way stadium costs sit largely outside franchise balance sheets and (2) a hard, centrally enforced salary cap that stops player wages from eating the league alive. Put simply, the IPL socialises the heavy, long-term costs at the BCCI/state-association level, while privatising a big chunk of the upside at franchise level. That’s a very different equation to a Premier League club drowning in wage bills or an NFL team…

The latest Brand Finance report has delivered the first jolt to the IPL’s booming valuation curve in years — a 20% drop in ecosystem value from $12.0 billion in 2024 to $9.6 billion. For critics, this might look like the bubble wobbling. For investors, especially those circling global sports IP, this is exactly the kind of inflection point from which fortunes are made. Let’s be clear: this is not a demand crisis. Nor is it a decay in relevance. The primary drivers of the dip are exogenous — geopolitical instability causing suspension of matches, and the uncertainty induced by the…

The storyline being pushed right now is one of panic: a broadcaster staring at massive losses, hit by regulatory hurdles on online gaming ads, facing an uncertain future with potential bans on pan masala advertising. That version makes it easy to believe JioStar wants out of cricket. But scratch beneath the surface, and the picture flips. This isn’t retreat. This is a strategic play to reset the economics of global cricket — on JioStar’s terms. The market reality is blunt: there is no saviour waiting to swoop in with a cheque book. Amazon and Netflix don’t see cricket rights as…

There’s a special kind of electricity that sweeps through a cricket ground when a specialist batter decides, or is coaxed to have a trundle. It’s not quite fear, nor expectation. It’s something more… mischievous. When Marnus Labuschagne started loosening up his arms in Brisbane, the Gabba crowd knew what was coming: not searing pace or fizzing turn, but pure entertainment. He was like the character Circuit in the movie Munna Bhai MBBS saying “Bhai tension nahi lene ka” …Every delivery was met with roaring anticipation. Part-time bowling is cricket’s closest equivalent to the schoolteacher doing stand-up comedy. You don’t expect…

The World Cup has always been more than just football. It is a celebration of culture, a showcase of national pride, and a gathering of humanity at its most exuberant. Yet the unveiling of the 2026 World Cup draw on Saturday, alongside the awarding of FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize to Donald J. Trump, offers a stark reflection of how modern sport is increasingly shaped by political spectacle. The 2026 tournament, spanning the United States, Canada, and Mexico, will be the biggest in history: 48 nations, 12 groups of four teams each, and a globally calibrated schedule designed for maximum prime-time…

(Jadeja, Bumrah, Iyer, PC-X) Indian cricket has enjoyed many blessed coincidences — the prodigious 1983 generation, the once-in-a-lifetime Sachin-Dravid-Ganguly-Laxman core, the rise of fearless IPL-honed match-winners. But December 6 offers the most symbolic of alignments. Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah and Shreyas Iyer — three very different cricketers in style, role and public perception — were born on this day. Together, they represent the enduring transformation of Indian cricket over the last decade. On the face of it, they are…

There was a time when losing a match meant a sigh, a shrug, and perhaps a heated debate over tea. Today, it means a flood of abuse. Athletes are threatened over dropped catches, coaches are mocked for tactical choices, and selectors are vilified as villains undermining the nation. The mutation of sporting criticism into unfiltered cruelty isn’t a story about sport alone … it is a stark reflection of who we are becoming as a society. In India, where sport is stitched deeply into national identity, the lines between passion and poison have blurred. Mohammed Shami was abused for his…