Hard for journalists today to probe serious issues in cricket - Pradeep Magazine interview

81 All Out - A Cricket Podcast

We talk to the veteran journalist and author - Pradeep Magazine.

We discuss the major themes of his books - Not Quite Cricket and Not Just Cricket – and talk about the lessons from the match-fixing epidemic in the late 1990s and how the player-journalist relationship has altered over time. Journalists of the 1990s had enough access to the inner circle to get an inkling of the shadiness, says Magazine, but journalists of today are sadly in the dark.

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Talking Points:

• A chance-meeting with a bookie in 1997 that opened up the world of fixing
• Writing about match-fixing before the big story broke
• Interviewing Sachin Tendulkar about match-fixing in 1997
• Kapil Dev accusing his players of being distracted by money in 1983
• Magazine's relationship with Kapil Dev over time - from fan to critique
• The two sides of Mohammad Azharuddin and how it was hard to separate both
• The problem for investigative journalists today cut off from the inner circle
• A new book that casts light on the corruption that could engulf the game
• The nexus of politics and cricket - and propaganda taking over the game

Participants:

Pradeep Magazine (@pradeepmagazine)

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

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Related:

• Pradeep Magazine's books - Not Quite Cricket and Not Just Cricket
• Neeraj Kumar's book - A Cop in Cricket
• A T20 tournament that wasn't - how fixers fabricated the UvaT20 League - Guardian
• It is far more than a game, this cricket - Conversation between Pradeep Magazine and Rahul Bhattacharya - Kolkata Literary Meet - YouTube
• With sports becoming so commercialized, sports journalism has become more challenging: Pradeep Magazine - Times of India