Producer Abhigyan Jha, who has written films like Krishna Cottage and created shows like Movers & Shakers, Jay Hind!, Qubool Hai 2.0, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, and Janani – AI Ki Kahani, to name some, shared that even during their team meetings and creative discussions, cricket is discussed.

He said, “If you have a Champions Trophy, or World Cup, or, say, the India-Australia series, we talk about it. Cricket becomes a talking point in meetings, not necessarily IPL. The initial phase of IPL, like the first few matches and then the last few matches. But in between, it depends on the season, because season to season differs.”

He also confessed that at one point he wanted to become a cricketer and was even taking cricket coaching when he moved to Mumbai (then Bombay). He said, “It is a different matter that I wanted to be a cricketer. So I have a humongous attachment to the game. Yeah. So that is a different thing altogether.”

But he shared that if he were to advise BCCI, he would be telling them about the pitches. He said, “I should not be advising them because they are doing it better than television people, and now that I am not a cricketer, I am not qualified to teach them. But my gut feeling is that IPL would be better if we had better pitches.”

“We have a pitch problem. That’s why sometimes we fail suddenly so terribly when we go outside India, just because the pitches are much better there. So if you go to Australia, we struggle a lot because our bowlers do well and our batsmen struggle. Because the batsmen are being raised on a steady diet of bad bowling and the bowlers can’t bowl well because the pitches are shit. So I think with the money that they have, they can make great pitches. If they make great pitches, the matches will be even more fantastic, and automatically there will be more cliffhangers, and the ratings of IPL will be far higher,” he concluded.