Less than 24 hours ahead of the pink-ball Test, we had our own game in the studio. Clearly, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has captured public attention and India’s performance in Perth was evidence that the series could go down to the wire. Three of our reporters are already in Australia and the coverage has been extremely well received. The engagement and quality are out there for people to see. Interest in the series is expected to peak in Melbourne and Sydney. With World Test Championship (WTC) qualification still a very real possibility for both teams, every Test match is relevant. Boxing Day is expected to see a record turnout at the MCG, with the crowd touching 100,000. Christmas and New Year holidays in India means the TV and online audience will be at its highest.
All of this serves as the backdrop. While coverage has so far centred the teams and the players, the question is: what about the fans? Why does a supporter spend lakhs travelling to Australia to watch a Boxing Day Test? Why is it part of ritual? While all of us say the fan is central to this, do we really cover the fan or understand how they are well and truly part of the ecosystem? Why is it that money saved for a honeymoon is spent travelling to Sydney to watch a New Year Test?
None of this is really narrated because reporters are always busy covering practice and press conferences and, of course, the game itself. There is always a pattern and it is tough to break the mould. If I ask Debasis Sen or Subhayan Chakraborty or Rohit Juglan to document fandom and do a deep dive, they would miss a practice session or a press conference and that won’t really work. After all, we can’t miss hard news. Again, the requirements of the Hindi, Bangla and English streams are very different. While English is all about analysis and hardcore news reporting, Hindi is more conversational. Bangla, on the other hand, is about galpo bola or storytelling. Each has its own demands, and the three in Australia already have their plates full.
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That’s where the decision came from. Fans need to be celebrated and their journeys documented. The Border-Gavaskar Trophy is not just about the match at the MCG. It is also about watching Test cricket in Australia around Boxing Day and New Year being considered part of a ritual. It is about sports tourism and understanding the ecosystem better. There is always a story beyond the stadium, and understanding it is as important as the tale unfolding across the 22 yards. All of this said to me that we needed more people in Australia to understand and document the series better. We need to be in the stands to understand fan behaviour. We need to tell stories and do justice to the opportunity the series has presented us with.
And hence, our three reporters will now be joined by six more to make it a nine-member team Down Under for the Boxing Day and New Year Tests. It hasn’t happened in Indian media before, and we will go beyond the stadium and explore new ground. Prantik Mazumdar, Sharmistha Gooptu, Agnijit Sen, Trisha Ghosal and Gargi Raut will join me as we travel to Australia to see if we can break new ground in sports coverage. It is an experiment, but one that could indeed create a template for the future. Or so we would like to believe.
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