Television’s impact on cricket.
The sports craze on television is increasing day-by-day. The game of cricket has an immense fan base all around the world and it is the second most-watched sport around the world with 2.5 billion fans.
Recently, according to a survey, the most-watched ICC tournament of all time was the 2019 World Cup with 1.6 billion viewers tuning in. The major credit for making cricket everyone’s favorite sport goes to television.
Beginning of cricket telecast in television
Nowadays, cricket is watchable live on TV and smartphones. But in the olden days, the only possible way to watch cricket was through television.
Few points related to the history of how cricket came to television.
- First Live Test coverage was started by BBC at Lord’s in 1938 and featured the London Test against Australia.
- India’s first live cricket was telecast by Doordarshan in 1966, covering the match between West Indies and Prime Ministers XI.
- Joga Rao, who worked as a journalist before was the Hindi commentator and Devraj Puri was the English commentator for that match.
- In 1968, the BBC covered a match and broadcast it live for the first time in color.
The beginning of the 21st century saw the arrival of many new online streaming channels. Now, anyone can watch cricket from anywhere across the world easily.
Cricket was boosted by television.
In our country, cricket is an everyday conversation. It has become a part of our life and some people are connected emotionally to it. From the early ’90s to the present times, the craze for cricket among fans on TV has increased immensely.
Final Views
The dramatic changes in broadcasting channels helped viewers to watch all formats of cricket anytime. Types of streams to watch cricket are terrestrial TV, Pay TV and online.
Finally, television is a boon to cricket and helps viewers watch it on a large scale.
