Cricket telecast should be left to the experts

[harishankar]

Quite frankly I'm disappointed with the fact that Nimbus sold the rights to Sahara for this England-India series. Sahara suddenly decided to cash in cynically on this and made their Sahara One channel a pay channel. So we are going back to DD National (we Indian viewers). And to top it off we're stuck with "Fair and Lovely Fourth Umpire" before and after the game and have to listen to the tripe which Charu Sharma and company churn out.

We still get the telecast through DD National but the point is that compare this production of the India Pakistan with Ten Sports. Uninterrupted telecast, great commentary team and excellent camera work.

On the production side, Nimbus has some quality problems as well and the telecast keeps getting interrupted by "Camera" breaks. Overall the video quality is poor and even the camera work is nowhere close to expert quality. They also lack enhanced features like hawkeye and super slow motion.

Quite frankly I think there should be a Law stating that only Sports Channels and regular, professional sports broadcasters can bid for the telecast rights of cricket series in the future.

We shell out so much cash to watch top channels like ESPN, Ten Sports, Star Sports and such and yet end up with a crap channel like Sahara (who wouldn't have any viewers before and after this series is over) who suddenly decide that they need to become a pay channel. They are screwing the viewers who pay hefty cash to watch their favourite sports channels which don't get the rights to important cricketing events like this. This is a travesty of justice...

Cricket is not just about viewing the game. The quality of production, commentary and the overall professionalism of the broadcaster matters a lot.

What do you think?

 

[rickyp]

well put forward, you make some good points there, especially about how people pay for pay tv channels to watch events like this. Well said

 

[harishankar]

What annoys me is that the BCCI didn't care for the cricket lovers in this country before deciding on Telecast rights. I know that cash is important, but they make so much money anyway that they could have allowed a major sports broadcaster to telecast this even if they got a little bit less.

With Ten Sports/ESPN/Star we at least are assured of a fairly good production quality and good commentary and excellent camera work by professionals who know their job. The current telecast by Nimbus is shoddy: camera work is unprofessional and the video quality is also poor - keeps getting interrupted by "camera" problems and we are left watching blank screens for long periods of time.

 

[y2j826]

thats true and is one of the reasons i dont like to watch matches when played in india. but talking about sahara its better then DD sports somehow picture qualisy is good u can say that.

 

[andrew_nixon]

We keep getting breaks in the feed here.

Presentations seems a little poor, it looks pretty much like cricket was covered 6 or 7 years ago. Also got the BCCI logo looming large in top left corner which is a little annoying.

Picture quality isn't as good as it could be. Not even in widescreen, which is a TV basic for sports coverage these days.

 

[harishankar]

Yeah, some of the problems with Nimbus are:

1. Poor quality of camera-work. The zooming in and zooming out is quite annoying and jerky. It's amazing how smooth the Ten Sports/ARY production was for the Ind-Pak series. Another example of poor production is that way replays keep eating into Live action as it happens. This team is quite shoddy.

2. Camera "breaks" as you mentioned. Yeah, breaks in feed. Absolutely annoying as hell and no reason why this should be so with the current level of technology.

3. Very little "enhancements" like hawkeye or super slo-mo and other nifty graphics usually found on most channels these days. This Nimbus broadcast, quite frankly is so-o-o 1990.

4. Commentary team. Admittedly not a bad team, but nowhere close to the expert team which professional channels like Star/ESPN or Ten Sports offers.

5. After pre and post-match analysis: admittedly I don't get the Sahara feed since they cynically decided to black out their channel to make it pay, but I promise you that DD's quality of programming as far as analysis goes is pretty pathetic. Charu Sharma is an annoying loudmouth and Kris Srikkanth and the others keep mixing English with Hindi to make cacophony. Analysis on Ten Sports was excellent during the India-Pak series with greats like Imran Khan, Nasser Hussein and Geoff Boycott providing great insights before, during and after the match.

It's not just about showing the live pictures. It's about quality of overall production as well and it's glaringly obvious that Nimbus haven't a clue how to put together a great cricket broadcast. It's decent, but in 2006 you don't expect to go back to the 1990s.

 

[icyman]

check this out please
http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15659&page=1&pp=15

 

[harishankar]

Interesting thread - that link.

Actually I don't have a problem with DD showing live feeds so long as the production and broadcast is done by a professional sports channel. DD just gets the feeds and piggybacks on somebody else's work. But since it's mandatory, fine. No issues with that.

What I have an issue is with that the production company Nimbus in this instance chose to sell the rights to an absolutely crappy, third-rate, wannabe Bollywood entertainment network Sahara, who don't know the first thing about sports broadcast and who cynically make it a pay channel to cash in on the cricket fever. They don't do any work but merely buy the rights and then look to make as much money as possible?

What suffers? Professionalism, commitment and vision...

 

[icyman]

Forget the Broadcasting part.
I don't think that the production from Nimbus is international standard.

Presentations seems a little poor, it looks pretty much like cricket was covered 6 or 7 years ago. Also got the BCCI logo looming large in top left corner which is a little annoying.

The BCCI has gone for making money.
I don't understand what does their logo in the feed signify.
They do not have their own sports channel to say that we are going to show the BCCI logo.

TV graphics and commentary team is very much shoddy.
You can't have ppl who have just played one test for their nation (Arun Lal) commentating.

Andrew you mention of cricket being as if it were shown 6-7 years ago,I can assure you that the quality of production at that time was even better .
Ex: Channel 9

 

[afridi118]

well good point i paid like 150 and 100$ to watch pak ind and pak eng

and if ary hadnt sold rights to dishnetwork i would be getting tht channel free

 

[Ste]

Anyone hear when it came on the screen "A Nimbus Sport Production for BCCI" and you could hear quietly in the background Atherton being asked to say it outloud and saying "You want me to say it?" before saying it.

Not sure what you mean by camera breaks but here in the UK the coverage has gone down once on both days with Cook's wicket being missed on the first day.

I read about ESPNSTAR, Zee Sports etc. that all these channels wanted to buy the rights from Nimbus for 4 years but Nimbus will only sell the rights for Indian TV on a per series basis.

RE: The Logo

From http://www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&id=11979

"The contract terms say that the BCCI logo must be displayed on the global feed as well as features like Vizrt Graphics, Ball Speed Monitoring, Snickometer, Telestrator, Hawkeye, Zoomer and Dartfish."

Has anyone seen Hawkeye? Ive seen a 3D view used for showing spiders but cant recall seeing Hawkeye! What is Dartfish, anyone know? The have Ultramotion which is good I suppose though.

 

[viral1991]

From http://www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&id=11979

"The contract terms say that the BCCI logo must be displayed on the global feed as well as features like Vizrt Graphics, Ball Speed Monitoring, Snickometer, Telestrator, Hawkeye, Zoomer and Dartfish."

Has anyone seen Hawkeye? Ive seen a 3D view used for showing spiders but cant recall seeing Hawkeye! What is Dartfish, anyone know? The have Ultramotion which is good I suppose though.

I dont recall seeing dartfish in this channel! And I dont know anything about the Vizrt graphics & the telestrator. The other things are pretty much there.

And I think that the 3d spiders are also hawkeye, but that lbw hawkeye is definitely not there. :onpc

 

[Ste]

I dont recall seeing dartfish in this channel! And I dont know anything about the Vizrt graphics & the telestrator. The other things are pretty much there.

And I think that the 3d spiders are also hawkeye, but that lbw hawkeye is definitely not there. :onpc

Yes its ait of a waste of time having hawkeye just for spiders as they could just be shown on a normal graphic.

What is dartfish?

The Vizrt graphics are just the main TV score and scorecard etc. graphics that are on screen and the telestrator is where commentators can draw on the screen to indicate field placing etc (although I cant recall seeing that either).

 

[Bala]

Dartfish is a technology that traces the trajectory of the ball right from the release. I did not find it interesting or useful. Oh well, I speak from an audience point of view. The Indo - Pak series had that technology.

 

[icyman]

Even though they are showing it on a per series basis this means that the production would remain the same thereby there would be no dartfish and the stupid presentations would continue.