Today, we have with us Sharda Ugra, a sports journalist for over 30 years who now writes what she wants, when she wants and where she wants. You can read her work in the Hindustan Times and her coverage of the BCCI in The Wire and The Caravan, amongst other publications.

Along with Sharda, we have Swaroop who has been with The New Indian Express for over a decade and a Red Ink Award winner. He has covered multiple Hockey World cups, Asian Games, Cricket World Cups and, very recently covered the World Chess Championships. 

Richa, Aditya & MV join them to discuss -

- BCCI Central Contracts for Women , CA's plan for women's cricket and grassroots investment

- Why are Ranji Cricketers are paid so little, and why does the BCCI want Int'l cricketers to prioritise domestic over IPL

- Saudi Money & Golf - How will they move forward with Cricket

- IPL salaries vs the World's best leagues (Swaroop's piece is linked here)

- Indian Cricketers Association - The Late Anshuman Gaekwad and current President V Chamundeswarnath, a sexual harassment accused and also an IPL Governing Council Member.

Recommendations

Sharda

1. Temples, Tombs, & Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz
2. Acquired Podcast on IPL (It's only 4.5 hours long)
3. Sky Sports Podcast with Nasser & Athers
4. Zeteo Podcast founded by Mehdi Hasan

Swaroop

1. The Business of Sport Podcast - Listen here.
2. Indian Summers by Sharda Ugra & John Wright, which he used as reference material for his Master’s thesis

Aditya - The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha

Richa - Mystery novels by Tana French

In this episode, we have Richa and MV joined by Tarutr Malhotra from Best of Cricket.

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Best of Cricket scours the internet for the best cricket stories and brings them to you straight to your Whatsapp. If that's not enough, they also publish original stories themselves and deepdives into the cricket media landscape and how the game is covered since they're looking at everything from a Bird's eye view and up close, daily. You should subscribe if you haven't already.

During the WPL, they covered all the games with reporters from all over the world talking about stories beyond the scorecard. You can find their WPL coverage here.

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On to the episode -

- MI are WPL 2025 Champions!

- We start with the final. What went right for MI & what went wrong for DC?

- Gujarat's last minute run to the playoff spot

- We’ll talk about scheduling and what should change next year- moving away from this to the home and away concept?

- ⁠Revisit the teams at the bottom of the table what went badly for them

- We discuss Retentions for each team

We finally end with Awards for the Season -

1. Moment of the Season
2. Best Young Gun 
3. ⁠Best Redemption Arc 
4. Who won the Ashes? Did Australian players do better or English players? 
5. 1 Retention and 1 Discard for each team 

Trigger Warning & Disclaimer: Gambling, Betting, and Fantasy sports involve risk. A lot of information shared here might be triggering for those who gamble or in recovery. We recorded this to bring forth the issues involved with Gambling, Betting, and Fantasy Sports. Same goes for all the links in the shownotes.

In this episode, we have MV and Aditya who are joined by Swaroop Swaminathan from The New Indian Express.

Swaroop has been with the daily for a decade and has covered two Asian Games, two Hockey WCs, the recently concluded Chess World Championship, the 2016 T20 World Cup, 2023 ODI World Cup & was there for the WTC Finals in 2023. He won the Red Ink Award on Mariappan Thagavelu who won a Gold Medal for India at the Rio Paralympics.

We go down memory lane to the origins of Fantasy Cricket with Super Selector to season long IPL fantasy to Dream 11 and now the plethora of Betting Websites openly out and about the Indian internet and all around us.

Some Notes about Fantasy Sports in India -

In FY23, 18 Crore (180 million) users were playing fantasy sports. By FY27 - it will be 50 Crore (half a billion)

40% users are between ages 25-34 - the so-called demographic dividend of India (Statista)

India fantasy sports market is projected to witness a CAGR of 20.88% during the forecast period FY2024-FY2031, growing from USD 751 million in FY2023 to USD 3423.54 million in FY2031. (Markets and Data)

Links to Swaroop's pieces

- Swaroop's piece on Fantasy Cricket from 2023 - State of Play

- Swaroop's piece on Surrogate Advertising in Cricket

- On Ban Cloud over BCCI's partners - here.

- On Illegality of betting but rampant tips on Instagram reels - here.

Other Links on Gambling/Betting

John Oliver on Daily Fantasy Sports (Youtube Link)

Guardian's flagship Football podcast - Football Weekly spoke to a Gambling Addict and reporters covering Gambling.

First person account of a Gambling Addict by James Grimes in The Guardian

Useful Links for help for Gambling Addiction

There are numerous resources on the internet to go through and understand responsible gambling. We strongly suggest you take a look.

https://www.responsiblegambling.org/

https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/

INDIA

We found that HOPE TRUST helps with Gambling addiction in India.

In this episode, we have Dave from USA who has been following the WPL along with Richa and MV.

We speak about

• The Gardener Show at GG, they are at the bottom of the table but are things looking up?
• UPW are the first and only team to successfully defend a total and win a Super Over game, are they too dependent on individual performances? Can they just have one great day and win the whole thing?
• RCB collapse at home, 4 consecutive losses including 1 from a winning position against UP-W, is their bowling to blame?
• Mumbai Indians seem to be cruising for the most part, almost inevitably so, but can they win without NSB?
• DC have a formula, keep the batting team to under par scores and then get there with some Shafali Verma bashing. Do they have what it takes to wrestle out a win when Plan A doesn’t work?
• Young Indian players like Kashvee Gautam, Kranti Goud, Tanuja Kanwar and Minnu Mani’s bowling performances and all rounders Amanjot Kaur and Kanika Ahuja. From the batters it’s been Shweta Sehrawat

• Check in on the redemption arcs: Shafali Verma, Arundhati Reddy, Sneh Rana, Shikha Pandey & of course Jess Jonassen

We found time to discuss the Best Smile, Captain of the Halloween XI, Socks Recommendations & somehow not on the record, but this is a great place to put it - Richa uses Cricinfo in Incognito mode.

We cover the unhealthy Ind-Pak obsession among Indian TV coverage and fans, the jingoism and absurdity, unfairness around the CT. Also, why exactly did Vikrant Gupta travel to Lahore? And more discussion about DP World Dressing Room.

We first talk about the new Netflix documentary on Ind-Pak cricket. Then the discussion moves onto previewing the CT (what exactly is the CT meant to be?) and then the (d)evolution of cricket anthems and advertising.

Richa & MV sit down to discuss the 5 teams in the WPL, the absurdity of Indian selectors which is the reason that we discuss so many redemption arcs, Jon Lewis’ luck (finally?), why are MI so good, can DC finally win the WPL, why spinners might not rule the roost, 4 venues means new fans and why RCB women are the toast of Bengaluru town & last year’s win matters so much more.

We reviewed the teams in the following order -

1. Gujarat Giants

2. Mumbai Indians

3. UP Warriorz

4. Delhi Capitals

5. Royal Challengers Bengaluru

This is one of those painfully researched episodes because we really want to make the WPL interesting for us to watch.

In this episode we discuss the new guidelines for pupils of the BCCI Residential Hostel under the aegis of Principal Shri Gautam Gambhir.

We did a snake-style draft between the 3 of us (MV, Nishant & friend of the pod – Saurabh) to find out the Top 15 Most Memorable (largely painful) ODI knocks played against India.

Order of Picks –

Nishant (N)

Saurabh (S)

MV (M)

Here are the 15 –

1.

Douglas Marillier’s 56* at Faridabad (N)

2.

Chris Cairns’ 102* in the ICC Knockout final 2000 at Nairobi (S)

3.

Aravinda De Silva’s 66 off 47 in 1996 WC Semi final in Calcutta (M)

4.

Travis Head’s 137(120) in the Khada Hoon Aaj Bhi Wahin 2023 Finals at Modium (M)

5.

Fakhar Zaman’s 117 in the Champions Trophy final in 2017 (S)

6.

Shakib Al-Hasan’s 49 off 31 in Sachin’s 100th 100 game (N)

7.

Shahid Afridi’s 102 (46) at Green Park. Casual. (N)

8.

17 Y.O Tamim Iqbal’s 51 off 53 at Port of Spain to change ODI WC’s forever (S)

9.

Sanath Jayasuriya’s 79 off 76 at Delhi in the 1996 WC to signify ‘dehshat’ & ‘khauff’ for a generation (M)

10.

Ricardo Powell’s 124(93) in the Coca Cola Singapore Challenge Finals (M)

11.

Marlon Samuels 108* (75) in the series decider in 2002 of a 7 match ODI series (S)

12.

Saeed Anwar’s 194. ‘Nuff Said.(N)

13.

Mark Waugh’s 126(135) at Wankhede in the 1996 WC (N)

14.

Gibbs’ 116 (retd hurt) in the Champions Trophy Semi Finals (S)

15.

Ijaz Ahmed’s 139* (84) at Lahore in 1997 (M)

Honourable Mentions

-

Ponting’s 140 in 2003 WC final

-

Strauss’ 158 in 2011 WC

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Sanath’s 189

-

Smith’s hundred in the 2015 WC semi

-

Dilshan’s 160 in the 415 chase at Rajkot

-

Mahela’s 103 in the 2011 WC final

-

Inzi’s 122(102) at Karachi in the Pundits of Pakistan series

Stuff you can go back to –

OG Pace is Pace Yaar gang (Ahmer, Osman, Hasan Cheema, Shoaib Naveed, Imran, Assad etc) celebrating the 2017 CT finals win - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WJ2zKwuvgA