Tag Indian cricket

They call themselves 'the world wide leader in sports', and that's exactly how they plan for people in India. I remember the day I first saw a Ranji match on a new channel - ESPN, coming free to us. explained by brilliant Bhogle.

Over a decade hence, both ESPN & that time rival (now a partner) Star Sports still do good business in India. and in coming 8 years, untill World Cup 2015 ~ they will rule. Starting with upcoming India's tour of England, then twenty20 World Cup in South Africa & the tour of Australia for four test match & ODI triseries with Srilanka as third team.

Naturally, this ESPN-star combo needs a third channel. not only to offer Indian cricket fans the commentary in Hindi and cover all matches in big tournaments simultaneously - Star cricket - will also allow us to watch non-stop relays of several past ODIs and tests.

'Star Cricket' - an all cricket channel will be released with the India vs England series in July-August. Not very many information has come from star tv as yet, but advertisements of this new all cricket channel can be seen regularly. some relaiable resurces report that cable operators has to pay 42.48 rupees for this two sports channel combo, but 'starcricket' alone will be priced at just below Rs 30.

The thing to note - is that ESPN-star has got as many as 18 ICC events under their belt (like World Cups, Champions trophies & Twenty20 tournaments), with all the recent cricket to be played in England, Australia & South Africa. ESPN will also live telecast the Africa vs Asia cricket series to be played at Bangalore & Chennai.These two channels also has the broadcasting rights for Grand slams like French Open, Wimbledon, ATP Masters, formula 1 and many golf tournaments.

One advice I would like to offer to ESS, is that they keep their cricket programs short & compete. I love watching old thrilling matches on star sports specially, but most of the times - big test matches are broken into 2-3 episodes going over a day. for example - Ashes 2005 matches were shown just before Ashes 2006 started. yet, all matches were broken over 20 days, and I couldn't relive that English battle.

Its good channel start cricket will only focus on cricket, but one complete match should complete an episode at a time.