September, 2007
New India's New Heroes
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On the face of it, Wanderers 2007 is Lords 1983 all over again. As Mahendra Singh Dhoni lifted the ICC world 20 20 trophy, the beaming smile brought back memories of another dynamic champion. The similarities between Dhoni and Kapil Dev are uncanny. Both cricketers from small town cricketing outposts, one the Haryana Hurricane, the other the Ranchi Rockstar. Both blessed with oodles of raw talent, power and athleticism: neither of them really caring much for the history of the game, or the reputation of the opposition. Both trend-setters: until Kapil Dev burst on the scene, Indian fast bowling was considered less than military medium. Until Dhoni arrived as a hard hitting wicket-keeper-batsman, Indian glovemen, with the possible exception of Farookh Engineer, were hardly flamboyant frontiersmen. Both are style icons of their generation: Kapil's trademark moustache and wide smile lit up the ad world in the 1980s (so what if....
Sting in the Tale
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A few weeks ago, I received an SMS: "Dear sir, I am from Patna. I have more than 40 stings with me. Meet me once, you will not be disappointed. Trust me, together we will create a tehelka (pun possibly intended)!" I chose not to respond in the firm belief that this was one tehelka I did not want to part of. After all, 40 sting operations at one go sounded a bit unreal. I have little doubt though that someone, somewhere would have responded to the man from Patna. In this open season for outsourcing sting journalism, there must be a buyer who found the offer attractive. As perhaps did the editorial team of the news channel that aired the now infamous Uma Khurana sting, where a schoolteacher was alleged to be a willing accomplice to a prostitution racket till it was discovered that the schoolgirl who was being....
More about Rajdeep Sardesai
Rajdeep Sardesai is the Editor-in-Chief, IBN18 Network, that includes CNN-IBN, IBN 7 and IBN Lokmat. He comes with 22 years of journalistic experience during which he has covered some of the biggest stories in India and the world. Prior to setting up the IBN network, he was the Managing Editor of both NDTV 24X7 and NDTV India and was responsible for overseeing the news policy for both the channels. He has also worked with The Times of India for six years and was the city editor of its Mumbai edition at the age of 26. During the last 22 years, he has covered major national and international stories, specialising in national politics. He has won numerous other awards for journalistic excellence, including the prestigious Padma Shri for journalism in 2008, the International Broadcasters Award for coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots and the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for 2007. He has won the Asian Television Award for best talk show for the Big Fight on two occasions and his current flagship show on CNN-IBN, India at 9, has been awarded the best news show at the Asian awards for the last two years. He has been News Anchor of the year at the Indian Television Academy for seven of the last eight years and won more than 50 awards in this period. He has also been the President of the Editors Guild of India, the only television journalist to hold the post and was chosen a Global leader for tomorrow by the world economic forum in 2000. An alumni of St Xavier's College, Mumbai, he has done his Masters and LLB from Oxford University and has also played first class cricket for the Oxford University team. He has contributed to several books and writes a fortnightly column that appears in seven newspapers.
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