Ravi Shastri emphasizes media & tech evolution in cricket

"Media and technology are like helmets in a cricket kit," former India captain and coach Ravi Shastri said on Friday, urging players to "embrace" both, as without them, the sport wouldn't have evolved the way it did in the last 40-45 years.

Shastri said while there were only two mediums -- radio and Doordarshan (TV)—during his playing days, the game has come a long way after India won the 1983 World Cup.

"India has won a lot of tournaments in the last 40 years since we first won it in 1983. We made people dream," the 62-year-old Shastri said during a panel discussion on 'Intersection of Sports, Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Media' at the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) here.

"But you need the support. It's like you had pads in your kit bag, you had a cricket bat in your kit bag, and media is part of the kit bag. Media and technology are like a helmet in your cricket bag; you jolly well embrace it." Shastri said technology, especially, is an essential element of sport now, and players need to know how to use it to build themselves.

"So you jolly well embrace technology. AI (artificial intelligence) is coming into play now big time. It's for your benefit. It's for the team's benefit, and it's for the growth of the game at the end of it all," he said.

Shastri said the brand association earlier was only restricted to logos and doing advertisements, but all that has changed with several broadcast platforms coming up.

"I have seen this game evolve; each one of the players here has been a part of it to see where the game has gone in the last 40-45 years... Without these platforms, the game wouldn't have evolved the way it has," he said.

"In my time it was radio and Doordarshan. The relationship with brands was only (about) ads; it was (about) logos." "There was no brand association; there was no social media. There was no podcast, but this is where it is going, and it is only getting bigger," he added.

Shastri said the varied platforms have increased the visibility of a player, which was not the case before.

"We are a country of 1.5 billion people. We are young; 70 percent of the people are below the age of 30. Sport is something that drives you, and if you think it didn't drive them, it woke them up during Covid (pandemic).

"It brought smiles to their faces when India played, wherever they played, whatever sport, whether it was cricket, football, hockey, or whatever. When you performed, you got even bigger smiles.

"Even when you were in lockdown or quarantine or whatever. But why could they see it? Because of the platforms that exist," he said.

Shastri also stressed the benefits of the technology enjoyed by modern-day players.

"What technology has done for the sport is unbelievable. Today, a player can go back and watch himself 100 times. There'll be enough replays showing what he's done right and what he's done wrong," he said.

"There's technology to go even more into detail, to tell you more about your opponent, about yourself, about your strengths, and your weaknesses to then take on opposition wherever it exists and kill them."