Television coverage changed cricket. It expanded
the audience for the game by beaming cricket into
small towns and villages. It also broadened
cricket’s social base. Children who had never
previously had the chance to watch international
cricket because they lived outside the big
cities, could now watch and learn by imitating
their heroes.
The technology of satellite television and the
world-wide reach of multi-national television
companies created a global market for cricket.
Matches in Sydney could now be watched live in
Surat. Since India had the largest viewership
for the game amongst the cricket-playing
nations and the largest market in the cricketing
world, the game’s centre of gravity shifted to
South Asia.
This shift was symbolised by the
shifting of the ICC headquarters from London to
tax-free Dubai.
One hundred and fifty years ago the first Indian
cricketers, the Parsis, had to struggle to find an
open space to play in. Today, the global
marketplace has made Indian players the
best-paid, most famous cricketers in the game, men
for whom the world is a stage. This transformation
was made up of many smaller changes: the
replacement of the gentlemanly amateur by the
paid professional, the triumph of the one-day game
as it overshadowed Test cricket in terms of
popularity, and the remarkable changes in global
commerce and technology.
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