Title: Speeding Up Sport: Technology and the Indian Premier League
Abstract
How has technology influenced the game of cricket? What did television do to the game that
changed it from the sedate five-day test match to the flamboyant IPL? How have spectators
of cricket changed because of these technologies? This talk will explore the many ways in
which the sport of cricket went from being a game that was described as a ‘ritualised garden
party’ to the marketing behemoth that the Indian Premier League is. I will try to explore the
many ways in which technologies interact with the sport of cricket, and have pushed cricket
towards becoming the sporting entertainment complex that it is today. The IPL, I argue, has
been assembled principally through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
and is therefore essentially produced as a ‘sporting platform.’
Speaker Bio
Vidya Subramanian is an Associate Professor at the Jindal Global Law School; and teaches Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and foundational social science courses at JGU. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests lie at the intersection of technologies and societies. Her work straddles the fields of STS, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Sociology, Media Studies, and Sports Studies. This talk will draw from her doctoral work at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU that has now been published as a book by Oxford University Press.