Indian cricket lovers turn to Pakistan to watch their hero

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Indian cricket lovers turn to Pakistan to watch their hero

Glenda Kwek
March 2, 2011 - 7:04PM


Indian cricket lovers in Punjab deprived of watching their country's progress in the World Cup have turned to an unlikely source - bitter rivals Pakistan.

An ongoing dispute between a Punjab-based cable network and official broadcaster ESPN Star Sports has meant none of the World Cup games are allowed to be screened on local television, The Times of India reported today.

On Monday, Delhi's High Court ruled in favour of ESPN Software India, giving the operator a permanent injunction against any illegal broadcasting of its feed.

Advertisement: Story continues below But Punjab providers keen to give their fans a chance to watch local hero Harbhajan Singh in action defied the ban and took Pakistan TV's (PTV) feed of matches, the Times reported. The paper reported that the first game against India and Bangladesh was broadcast using a combination of feeds from a Bangladeshi channel and PTV.

In other parts of the cricket-mad country, cable networks also lost their access to ESPN's feed over a dispute about subscription charges. But viewers there were more fortunate - they could watch the matches on public broadcaster Doordarshan.

But fans were still unhappy, complaining that Doordarshan only screened games featuring India and did not supply expert commentary of the kind offered by ESPN, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported.

One fan, Gaurav Sanghwan, told IANS his family was "very disappointed".

"We had waited for four years for this World Cup."

Another fan, pharmaceutical worker Nishant Jain, said last week his family "cannot waste our time waiting for the court's decision" and he, like Sanghwan, would be applying for DTH (direct-to-home) satellite television instead.

Meanwhile, those unable to afford DTH were instead treated to live games from Bangladeshi and Pakistani channels, featuring, unsurprisingly, the Bangladesh and Pakistan cricket teams.

"It was a pleasant surprise to watch the Pakistan team in action. Yesterday too, the local cable operators had shown some Bangladeshi channel that beamed their team's match," Indian student Anurag Dua told news agency the Press Trust of India.

Spinner Harbhajan Singh, one of India's key players during this tournament, is also renowned for his conduct off the field. In early 2008, he was at the centre of the controversy in the "Bollyline" Test against Australia when he was accused of calling Andrew Symonds a monkey. He was cleared by International Cricket Council of that accusation. Later that year he slapped Sree Sreesanth during the Indian Premier League, which brought his teammate to tears.

The Punjab cable network is due to face ESPN in a telecommunications tribunal tomorrow.

Indian cricket lovers turn to Pakistan to watch their hero