Speeding Up Sport: Technology and the Indian Premier League

Cricket has been the single most popular sport in India. In a technologically unmediated age, the game was played in the five-day test format. In 2007 though, the sport evolved itself into the Indian Premier League, an association that transformed it from mere a sport to an entertainment spectacle, raising its viewership, TRPs and popularity of the game, to hitherto unimaginable heights. The IPL consequently became India's first sporting platform. This book posits that the growth of the IPL (and of the popularity of cricket in contemporary India) has also been dependent on the parallel evolution of information and technology systems. The implications of technology have affected the way in which it can now be viewed by audiences on the television set at home; new technologies have affected umpiring decisions; new software are critically tied to generating digital audiences for the sport (it can be viewed on one's smartphone and e-devices); and in general, information and communication technology (ICT) has brought major interface between cricket players, administrators, brand managers, PR agencies and the audience. Developing ICTs as a real-time technological mediation has made the IPL dependent on the internet, television broadcast, Twitter, facebook and mobile phones. This book studies this impact; it studies not only how the sport has evolved in a post liberal India, but also how technology has affected the way it is viewed and spectated upon thereby altering the cultural and social milieu of the nation.