Growing up in England, it never really occurred to me to wonder why I

never saw cricket from India on television. Indian cricket was always in

sight; we had Bishen Singh Bedi in his mysterious headgear wheeling in for

Northamptonshire, Srinivas Venkatraghavan wrapped in sweaters at Derby,

Madan Lal playing in front of handfuls of old men in the Yorkshire leagues.

Yet the Packer ‘circus’ largely left India alone, and in England the touring

Indian side became an unglamorous pause between the glorious tours by

the West Indies and Australia. Little was I to guess that once I started working in television, India would become central to the world cricket

economy and crucial to the technological improvements in the coverage of

the game.