For someone who hadn’t watched Test cricket ever, the India-Australia Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) was a revelation. Boy, what a spectacle it was!

Coming from India, cricket runs in my blood. From playing cricket for my school team to having many memories of watching cricket with my family and friends, discussing wins and losses, match strategies and more!

However, for some reason, I had stayed away from test cricket — often thinking of it as boring given it lasts a good five days.

This Summer of Cricket proved me wrong!

So, what did I enjoy?

Eventisation

I loved how cricket in Australia is a festive event, names such as Boxing Day Test, Pink Test, or Pink Ball Test got me all curious and Googling.

Boxing Day test as the name suggests is a test match that starts on Boxing Day.

Pink test on the other hand has pink branding all around from the audience to the players in pink kits to commemorate the work done by the Glenn McGrath Foundation to raise awareness for breast cancer.

Pink Ball test is a test match played with a pink ball usually starts in the afternoon and runs till night. The ball is pink for better visibility.

Might I say, it almost felt like an Indian wedding with a theme for every test match.

In-match Commentary and Analysis

While in-match commentary has been around for decades, offering viewers a live interpretation of the game, Fox Cricket commentary was thorough and entertaining. From cricket stalwarts such as Adam Gilchrist, Ravi Shastry, Mark Vaugh to broadcasters such as Mark Howard, Harsha Bhogle to Isa Guha sharing friendly banter and reminiscing the past kept me engaged throughout.

With interesting stats about Indian and Australian teams, bowling speed analysis, batsman’s favourite areas around the field to make runs, and bowler and batsman stance analyses while delivering shots kept me engaged.

I also loved how things have evolved around the Third Umpire — with a DRS timer, video analysis and Snicko to gauge vibrations used to decide the fate of the batsman. And if the broadcasters are in a good mood, you might even hear a few things from the stump mic.

Audience

Last but not least, the audience participation both online and in the stadium was stupendous. More than 90k people poured into the Melbourne Cricket Ground everyday making it a total attendance of 351,104 over five days and several millions watched the live broadcast on TV raising the viewership to a record-breaking 8.6 million people!

From a sea of blue jerseys to stands full of yellow ones doing human waves, the atmosphere was eclectic — this was entertainment at a new level.

Here’s to many more!

Howwzat?