Rajdeep Sardesai

February , 2008

Friday , February 22, 2008

Cricket's Big Bazaar


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My father was obviously born in the wrong generation. For his first test for the country in 1961, he got a cheque of Rs 150. When he was part of the historic 1971 win in West Indies and England, he got the princely sum of Rs 750 per match. Contrast that with a Robin Uthappa, who without a single international century, is already a crorepati many times over. Or an Ishant Sharma, who after his first international tour, is already lining up mega-contracts.My own favourite story of cricket from another generation is related by the legendary Bishen Singh Bedi. In 1956, India defeated New Zealand in four days in a test match. The team, which was paid Rs 50 per day at the time, did not receive an allowance for the fifth day. When one of the players dared to ask a cricket official for an....


Friday , February 08, 2008

The Legacy of Goonda Raj


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Long before there was 'monkey' (sorry, 'maa ki'), there was "bhaiya". The 1979 Ranji game between Mumbai and Delhi at the Wankhede stadium witnessed the repeated chants of "bhaiya" every time Madan Lal ran in to bowl. Ironically, a year or two later, as Madan Lal bowled India to a famous win on the same ground against England, the abuse turned to celebration. In a sense, the contrast was typical Mumbai: warm, embracing and cosmopolitan at one level, but unforgiving, narrow-minded, and parochial at another. Mumbai has always been a Jekyll and Hyde city with a fleeting memory span. Madan Lal realized it three decades ago. Now, Amitabh Bachchan is being confronted with the grim reality: a much-loved legendary global superstar one day, targeted as a migrant from Uttar Pradesh the next. That Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray has chosen to reveal the darker side of Mumbai....


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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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