Couch Talk

In this episode, Freelance cameraman from Bangalore, Hari Surendhra, who has covered cricket for 15 years talks about his profession, how he got in to it, the grind of setting up the cameras before a cricket match, the effect on family life from all the traveling, memorable cricket matches he has covered amongst other things.

In this episode, Australian writer Gideon Haigh talks about the Decision Review System (DRS) that has been a major talking point in the ongoing Ashes series, the ethics of walking, Australia’s confused approach to this Test series (replacing the coach, surprise debut, omissions etc.) and discusses the ways Big Bash League might be affecting the Australian batsmanship.

In this episode, Englishman Oliver Broom talks about his odyssey of cycling to Brisbane, Australia from London to watch the 2010-11 Ashes. He talks about the planning, the struggle – physical and mental, the kindness of strangers, playing cricket in places cricket is unknown and all other experiences.

In this episode, the head coach of Bangladesh National Cricket Team Shane Jurgensen, talks about his career path that brought him to Bangladesh, his team’s challenges, the Mohammed Ashraful spot fixing issue, Mushfiqur Rahim’s sudden resignation from captaincy, and what the future holds for Bangladesh Cricket.

In this episode, cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle talks about the preparation that commentators do before matches, the quality of on air TV commentary, and also about the lack of discussion about spot fixing scandal on air as the issue surfaced.

In this episode, Ebba Qureshi, wife of Pakistani Cricket Azhar Mahmood, talks about the important role the wives play in the lives of the modern day professional cricketer, how she met him, about putting her career on hold to support her husband’s, the various issues that the families have to handle as the cricketer criss-crosses the world in the name of cricket and an incident that happened at the Wankhede Stadium during IPL6.

In this episode, Rohan Chandran who was one of the first people to be involved with the coverage of cricket on the internet 20 years ago. He talks about the various things that he, and his various friends, had to do back then to access cricket and how it gave birth to Cricinfo and opines on what Cricinfo is today.

In this episode, Pakistani writer Saad Shafqat describes the scenario by which he came to co-write Javed Miandad’s autobiography “Cutting Edge”, the rise of Miandad from middle-class Karachi to be Pakistan’s best batsman, his inveterate competitiveness and his relationship with Imran Khan etc.

In this episode, Kadambari Murali (Former Editor-in-chief of Sports Illustrated India) talks about the recent spot fixing controversy in the IPL, the 2011 SI India cover story investigation in to fixing and bookies in India, the vulnerability of players, the bookie structure and what the BCCI must do to curb the problem of corruption in Indian cricket.

In this episode, former Tamil Nadu cricketer and current coach of R Ashwin, Sunil Subramaniam, talks about his playing career and the reasons why he never got a chance to play for India, spin bowling mechanics, what he saw in Ashwin as a youngster, the effects of T20 on bowling skills, amongst other things.