ABSTRACT
The changing relationship between cricket and satellite television in the
context of the Indian sub-continent has been a subject of considerable
scholarly inquiry. That one nourishes the other is well known. However,
what is relatively little known is the degree to which this interdependence has
grown in recent times. So much so that cricket tournaments, or rather
designated TV tournaments, are being planned with alacrity by the Board of
Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Television rights for these overseas
tournaments/matches spread over the next 4 years had initially generated $219.5 million for the BCCI.1 On the other hand, satellite channels too have
started planning cricket programming around these tournaments, program-
ming expected to generate millions in advertising revenue.2 While the
organization of such big-money events well encapsulates the symbiotic rela-
tionship between cricket and satellite television within a burgeoning Indian
economy, other local/regional dimensions of this relationship are often no
less fascinating. Tele-visual hype generated on the occasion of a regional
cricket body election in July 2006 in West Bengal, especially by the multiple 24-hour Bengali news channels, drew attention to the local variant of the
story involving big-money television and even bigger-money sport. This
chapter, on the basis of two distinct case studies – the implications of the tri-
nation 1-day series played in Malaysia in September 2006 involving Aus-
tralia, West Indies and India, and Television coverage of the Cricket Asso-
ciation of Bengal Elections in July 2006 – will comment on the complex and
ever-changing relationship between cricket and television in India. At the
same time it will attempt to question the rationale behind this growing interdependence and probe what this means for the Indian nation at large.
