One of the great triumphs of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is the way disparate nationalities come together in a common cause.
Uncapped Indian youngsters get to preen off knowledge imported from places like the West Indies, Australia and South Africa in the IPL melting pot.
It is not just the dugouts that are cosmopolitan, though.
The league’s UAE schedule, for example, will be a television production emanating in the Middle East, choreographed from Singapore and involving a Belgian who happily admits to being a cricket novice.
As the curtain goes up on IPL 2014 today when Mumbai Indians face Kolkata Knight Riders at the Zayed Cricket Stadium, it is fair to assume the audience tuning into the broadcast will be vast.
There were over 200 million video views of the IPL on YouTube last year, and an aggregate TV audience in excess of two billion, according to official figures.
The people who paid money for the right to broadcast the league have hopes for something similar this time around.
“We want to make IPL the world’s largest sporting event on a digital platform this year,” said Sanjay Gupta, the chief operating officer of Star India, who have taken over online rights from YouTube this season.
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High expectations
The Abu Dhabi-based company overseeing the TV production today knows it has high expectations to meet, whether it be from the paymasters, the armchair fan or the office worker surreptitiously viewing online.
They are well-prepared, though.
The team from Live, Abu Dhabi Media’s production company, will have the largest of their fleet of nine outside-broadcast (OB) trucks on site today – a beast named “Al Jawzaa.”
“With this OB, we can guarantee to give the same standard as IPL provides the viewers in India,” said Peter Van Dam, the senior planning manager for Live productions.
Van Dam, who is from Belgium, is hardly a cricket aficionado, and neither are his crew – but they are outside broadcast specialists.
On Saturday, for example, they will have six other OB trucks on location elsewhere, at Arabian Gulf League football, jiu-jitsu and a camel race at Al Hosn. The Al Jawzaa truck was used to produce the broadcast of the UFC Fight Night card at du Arena last week.
“It is all controlled by a company in Singapore, who are the main link between us and the client,” Van Dam said of the IPL assignment. “They give us a technical rulebook and we implement it within our system.
“It is an interaction between three different companies, whereas usually we only take our people.
“I am from Belgium, so I know nothing about cricket. But a few months ago, we did the Under 19 World Cup in Sharjah, and we have done a few cricket games in the past.
“Till now, cricket has not been our core business, but we want to expand and cricket is becoming bigger and bigger.”
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IPL bigger than internationals
When Pakistan played Sri Lanka here recently, there were between 12 and 14 cameras in place for the matches.
The IPL matches in the UAE have up to 30, including five super-slow-motion cameras, two for hyper-motion, a stump microphone at either end, as well as the spider-cam, the 100kg load tethered to stadium floodlights by an elevated wire cable.
At today’s cricket, Live will provide technical support in the form of 20 staffers. Of the 29 cameras in use, they have provided 24, with the other five coming from India.
There will be 20 additional sources connected to their OB, such as graphics, the HawkEye replay system, nine slow-motion servers and two editing suits. There are also 26 microphones.
Even the new-build grounds in Abu Dhabi and Dubai have had to be tweaked to live up to the demands of the IPL’s TV production.
For example, the triangular-shaped room usually used as the broadcast centre at Zayed Stadium is far too small to accommodate the IPL system. According to the IPL’s TV venue guide for the stadium: “This is because the IPL coverage is significantly more technically complex even than international TV cricket coverage.
“The additional equipment and crew typically occupy around 40 per cent more space than an international match would, therefore it will be necessary to seek an alternative room for this purpose.”
Instead, a storeroom – substantially bigger in size and more conveniently located – has been converted to make it suitable for use as a broadcast control room.
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New tricks
Given that it was inaugurated just five years ago, Dubai’s International Cricket Stadium is about as technologically advanced as anywhere in the sport.
But the IPL’s complexities have forced even Dubai to learn new tricks. The electronic ticketing system that will be employed at all grounds is new for cricket in the UAE, and LED advertising boards will be used at the boundary’s edge for the first time.
“The ground is geared to something like this,” said Maqbul Dudhia, the general manager of sports business at Dubai Sports City. “It is the most recent build [of the UAE grounds], so it takes into account the requirements of international cricket as recent as can be.
“From a technical standpoint, this is not really anything new. There is a lot of electronic equipment coming in, in terms of boundary scoreboards.”
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Sharjah’s facelift
Since it was announced that the IPL was coming to the UAE, Sharjah Cricket Stadium has undergone its second – and by far most substantial – renovation in recent years. A section of seats has been removed from the stands nearest the net area to make room for the plinth for dancers.
Two new replay screens have been imported specially for the tournament.
“It is really exciting, but challenging, too,” said Mazhar Khan, the Emirates Cricket Board administrator.
“To reach the levels which IPL requires is a process we are learning. We are nearly there, everything is falling into place, and now it just needs a ball to be delivered.
“There is so much to learn out of this. I am sure with what is happening, we can take a leaf out of it and implement such things in our future events here.
“I think it will be a very different Sharjah Stadium for our public.”
pradley@thenational.ae
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