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Cricket woes? Try AIR on 1044 KHz

By Priya Ganapati in Mumbai
March 12, 2004 19:51 IST

Worried about where will you be able to catch the action of the India-Pakistan cricket match on Saturday, especially with the fracas between Ten Sports, Doordarshan and the cable operators yet to be solved?

Consider an unlikely possibility: The good old radio.

There are quite a few channels on radio that will offer cricket news, updates and even some commentary.

Here's the options that you can pick from:

All India Radio

Doordarshan may be embroiled in a battle with Ten Sports but All India Radio has got the signal for broadcasting the match over radio. All India Radio will have live commentary from the field on its channel.

For those who want to tune in, on the day of the one-day match, the programme begins at 0930 IST and ends at 1805 IST on All India Radio's Savaditha 'A' channel that can be found at 1044 KHZ or 287.3 m.

Private channels

Apart from All India Radio, a number of private channels too are offering cricket news. Private radio channels are, however, not allowed to broadcast news and current affairs. So they have worked their way around the problem and come up with innovative cricket programming. They will be offering regular updates from the field, contests, chat shows and trivia.

BBC World Service radio

BBC will have analysis and commentary around the matches both in English and other language services and will be joined by expert commentators from both India and Pakistan.

With BBC Radio's exclusive UK rights to the series, Radio Five Live will be providing regular updates and reports including a three-hour special live report from the first one-day match at Karachi.

BBC Asian Network will also have live commentary of the opening one-day international between the arch rivals. The three Test matches will be broadcast live on Five Live Sports Extra, with extensive reports on the Asian Network and Five Live with the remaining four one-day internationals being reported on both stations.

Radio City

Beginning March 14, 2004, Radio City 91 FM, India's leading radio station, will start airing the programme specials. The cricket fever spread over 40 days across the Radio City stations in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Lucknow.

Called 'Cricket Ki Jung' the programme schedule includes updates, informative capsules, trivia, match forecasts, messaging contests apart from little known facts about Pakistan.

There will be score updates three times an hour through the day on the day of the matches.

Radio Mirchi

Radio Mirchi has a tie-up with BBC for cricket inputs. It will also send a team to Pakistan for coverage of the series. There will be pitch reports and analysis. They have even created a character called 'Cavas' who will offer his own take on the series. Programmes are spread throughout the day.

Radio Mirchi is available on 91.9 FM in Ahmedabad, 98.3 FM in Chennai, Delhi, Indore, Kolkata, Pune and Mumbai.

Win 94.5 FM

Win has a countdown show, 'India Se Takkar'; a daily contest which tests the listener's knowledge of India's records, achievements and winning moments versus the rest of the cricketing world. It also has a programme, 'Googly Ya Bouncer', a weekday feature that gets one lucky listener to answer three questions. There is an innovation called Radio Cricket that gets two teams to play radio cricket with the host. This is apart from regular cricket updates.

Go 92.5 FM

Go is a division of Mumbai-based newspaper, Mid-Day. Mid-Day's correspondents are going to be positioned in Pakistan for the event and Go will leverage this. It plans to have Sanjay Manjrekar, Krish Srikkanth, Kapil Dev, Mohinder Amarnath and Harsha Bhogle talking about the series. There will also be two contests based on the series.

Red FM

Red has a programme where listeners can send their wishes to the team via the radio station. It has also formed a partnership with Hindustan Times in which 'Best of Luck' cards were put up at major hangouts in the capital. It has a programme, 'Junoon', which has daily SMS polls and history capsules are also part of the Red deal.

Priya Ganapati in Mumbai

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