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Tag: Glenn McGrath

  • Star India to promote Tendulkar-Warne promoted T-20 series?

    Star India to promote Tendulkar-Warne promoted T-20 series?

    MUMBAI: The game of cricket is all set to get bigger and better. Cricketing demigods Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne have reportedly teamed up with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to establish a new Twenty20 cricket league for former international players renowned for their contribution to the sport.

     

    As per media reports, the Tendulkar – Warne joint innovation called Cricket All Stars League is set to roll as early as September 2015 in the US and in all likelihood  will air on Star India’s sports venture Star Sports. India’s leading broadcast network also holds the broadcasting rights of Indian cricket and other ICC tournaments. 

     

    Cricket All Stars League will have veterans from across the globe and the tournament will be organised by keeping cricket regulatory boards like International Cricket Council (ICC), Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Cricket Australia (CA) and Wales Cricket Board (WCB) in the loop.

     

    The league envisages 15 matches being played over a period of four years. Tendulkar and Warne have reportedly made an offer of between $25,000 per match to retired players like Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff and Jacques Kallis.

     

    Unlike the Indian Premier League (IPL), where there are eight teams participating, Cricket All Stars League will have 28 players equally divided into two teams.

     

    A senior media planning and buying executive, who closely deals with sports tells Indiantelevision.com, “If Sachin and Warne come together and start a league involving legends like Ponting, Flintoff, Dravid, it is obvious that it will get viewership. Now if it is happening in New York as reports are suggesting then the timings can emerge as an issue. Overall, it is very early to predict a future but if Sachin himself plays and gets his close buddies like Sourav, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble in, Indian cricket lovers’ admiration for him will grow further as no one ever expected to see the legends playing again. If Indian legends get involved in it and Star airs it, I see a flurry of advertisers, who will be ready to pay anything.”

     

    A cricket expert was of the opinion that the innovation can popularize cricket in the United States and unless it forces a player to leave national commitments in order to participate in the league, it is a good move. 

     

    “The coming together of legends is always big. Two names Sachin and Warne successfully grabbed attention of so many people. Now add Ponting, Flintoff, Kumble, Lee and see the prodigy and magnitude. Shane Warne’s post earlier this year hinted that a joint venture from them was coming but the success will be determined by the participation. If a noble cause is associated with it, I see legends participating but I doubt that a two-time world champion captain Ricky Ponting will be a part of something only for money. So we should wait before drawing conclusions. Retired players’ participation for financial purposes can put a question mark on their legacy and hence it remains to be seen how many agree to participate. However, if Sachin himself decides to play, I don’t see any of these arguments coming in.”

     

    As reported by Cricket.com.au, Cricket Australia and the International Cricket Council denied any knowledge of the proposal for the Cricket All Stars League. However, a CA spokesman suggested it could be a positive way to promote and grow the game in new or emerging markets – as long as it didn’t poach contracted international players.

     

    Brett Lee’s manager Neil Maxwell confirmed that Tendulkar and Warne had approached his client and that Lee would be seeking clearance from Cricket Australia to play in the league. “I can’t see anything wrong with it, it’s a group of retired blokes playing a game of cricket,” Maxwell told Fox Sports.

     

    With sports broadcasting on the rise in India, a property such as this, if done right, has the potential to garner enormous attention and emerge as a prime broadcasting asset for broadcasters, advertisers and cricket fanatics alike.

  • MRF signs five-year agreement with BCCI

    MRF signs five-year agreement with BCCI

    MUMBAI: India’s premier pace bowling foundation, The MRF Pace Foundation has entered into a historic agreement with The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The MoU includes a tie-up between India’s premier pace foundation and the BCCI for the next five years.

     

    The MRF Pace Foundation over the years has contributed to the success of fast bowlers from around the world. In terms of facilities, infrastructure and training talent, the MRF Pace Foundation has a lot to offer the Indian bowlers.

     

    BCCI will send current and upcoming pace bowlers to the academy to train under the director of the Pace Foundation, the legendary Glenn McGrath. The bowlers will be split into elite and probable’s categories and the training will be imparted in batches. 

     

    Elite category includes all those pace bowlers who have been selected by the BCCI to play official matches at different levels. There will be a maximum of 10 trainees per camp and the duration of the same will be two weeks. The selected pace bowlers can attend the camp during all three visits of Glenn McGrath in a year between – January to February; June to July and August to September. The first such training camp has begun on 1 September 2014.

     

    Speaking on the occasion MRF chairman and managing director K M Mammen said, “For the last 27 years, the MRF Pace Foundation has worked with a single minded focus of producing pace bowlers for India. Everything we have done at the Pace Foundation, in terms of the tie-ups we have entered into, the infrastructure we have invested in, the staff we have trained, has been planned with this single objective in mind. We are extremely proud of what we have achieved so far. 17 of our trainees have played for the country, taking over 2,000 international wickets. Today, we are proud to announce the official partnership between the BCCI and MRF Pace Foundation to train pace bowlers for India. This new agreement will help us work together even more effectively to produce great results.”

     

    Probables category includes upcoming pace bowlers, as identified and shortlisted by the national selectors. There will be a total of 20 probables, all of whom will undergo training for a period of 30 days. These 20 trainees will be split into two groups (ten each) and attend the camp in May to June and July to August.

    BCCI interim president Shivlal Yadav commented, “This is a great moment. The association between the BCCI and the MRF Pace Foundation will hugely benefit Indian cricket in the long run.”

     

    BCCI honourary secretary Sanjay Patel went on to add, “The BCCI is pleased to initiate this partnership with the MRF Pace Foundation, an institution where several outstanding pace bowlers have honed their skills over the past three decades. These individuals have done the country proud with their achievements in all forms of the game. We are confident that this partnership between the BCCI and the MRF Pace Foundation will help produce many more quick bowlers, who will bring glory to India, in the years to come.”

     

    MRF Pace Foundation director Glenn McGrath said, “It has been a wonderful couple of years for me at the MRF Pace Foundation. I now eagerly look forward to working with India’s best at the foundation. Our facilities compare favourably with the best in the world and I am eagerly looking forward to this challenge.”

    Some of the bowlers selected to train at the MRF Pace Foundation include Varun Aaron, Rahul Shukla, Ishwar Pandey, Ashok Dinda, Veer Pratap Singh, Deepak Chahar, Nathu Singh, Ankit Rajput, Anureet Singh, Shardul Thakur and CV Milind.

  • ‘With IPL you have the power of 10’ : Kunal Dasgupta – Set India CEO

    ‘With IPL you have the power of 10’ : Kunal Dasgupta – Set India CEO

    The Indian Premier League (IPL) has got off to a solid start. The ratings have been positive and crowds have thronged the stadiums. For Sony the IPL marks their return to cricket. Set India CEO Kunal Dasgupta offers Thomas Abraham and Ashwin Pinto his views on what he expects IPL to do for the game, telecast channel Max, as well as the importance of sustaining the brand.

    Excerpts:

    As a broadcaster what do you expect?
    T20 is a made for television format. When India played a T20 match against Australia at the Wankhede stadium, ratings touched 20. I am looking for a rating of 4 or 5, which is possible, given that ICL, which has retired players, got 2.5. This is a good base for us to take off from.

    The format will mean that besides country against country, one will also view it as being team versus team. This is what exists in other sports like soccer, hockey, and baseball.

    IPL is being pushed as being the ultimate in reality television. In that case how do you get that competitive environment?
    The prize money (Rs 48 million goes to the winner) will ensure this. This is much more than you get for playing for the country and so the players will go all out. The matches will be hard fought. Here all the teams are evenly balanced and so you do not know the result. It will be unpredictable and matches will go down the wire. All teams have a good mix of batsmen, bowlers and youth.

    What are you hoping for in the first year as the telecast partner?
    Ideally I would want the IPL to be a successful brand that has a long term play. After June, I will continue to do promotions to keep the team brands alive. This was one of the conditions on which we bid.

    We will do shows around the IPL. You could see teams (franchises) practicing and discussing strategies for the next season.
    ‘The trick for us is not getting ratings for the first season. The challenge is to sustain the excitement after that‘

    But wouldn’t an ideal situation be for a franchise to build a brand without the big names who might be on national duty?
    This might happen. Apart from April-May, you cannot have another period where all the stars are available. What will happen is that once the league is built the new players who are playing will become the core. You can then have matches in different parts of the world to popularise the game there using these new players.

    The trick for us is not getting ratings for the first season. This will happen as a matter of course because of the way the IPL has been hyped. The challenge is to sustain the excitement after that and it is here where we will have to take a leaf out of the book of the EPL. Teams have marketed themselves and have thus become iconic brands.

     

    So Mallya for instance, will use the Royal Challenger brand name to go out there and create opportunities for exhibition matches. They can do charity work in Bangalore and build a fan base. Each franchise will have its own website where clips will be available. They can create merchandise.

    Sony will pitch in through magazine shows. Otherwise it will just be a flash in the pan. As we come closer to the next season you will see transfers and there will be speculation.

    New heroes will be born. It is possible that the likes of current heroes like Glenn McGrath, Kumble, and Saurav will not play beyond two seasons. Once that happens, then the brand will live outside the big names.

    One of the aims is to broaden the viewer base is to get in more children, women, But for that you have to create marketing that speaks to those demographics. What is Sony planning?
    One of the major attractions will be the presence of big Bollywood stars. Akshay Kumar will perform for Delhi. SRK will perform for Kolkata You will see proper Bollywood entertainment.

    We have even tweaked the timings of some of the matches to accommodate our entertainment specials. One match was supposed to start at 4 pm but we have pushed it back to 5:30 pm. We will even have stand up comedy for Extraaa Innings. On air we have gone in for fresh faces. We did not want Mandira (Bedi) for this. She is more suited for ODI cricket. I want 20-year-olds in T20. We also did not want Kapil Dev, Gavaskar. We wanted anchors who represent today’s kids. With the ICC World Cup we broke the mould and brought in females. Now we are breaking the mould back

    What is the distribution upside from IPL?
    This is a question mark. We are supposed to have a dip but we will retain the same level. There is no minimum guarantee now. Had Ten Sports still been present it would have been difficult to determine the value of IPL. Our team is happy as they are closing deals for the year and it is one of the distribution cornerstones.

    At $ 59 million in Year 1 and an average of $ 61 million over five years, IPL was literally sold at floor price. Wasn’t that a great deal?
    It was. Most of the payout ($ 612 million) is from the next five years. ESPN’s bid was $150 million for the first five years. They had put in conditions that the top players should be there. We did not put in any conditions.

    Anyway, the way it has turned out, all the top players are taking part.