11th hour challenge for Ten

NEW DELHI: When you switch on Doordarshan in the morning, and see Sehwag tear apart McGrath or Pathan beat Hayden (!), spare a thought for all the men (and women) who have actually made it possible.
Ten Sports, who eventually got the rights to produce the live telecast had virtually no time to get their act together. Or to be more precise, to get their crew and equipment together. It was an impossible task, their head of production, Steve Norris told TOI.
"I''ve seen a few challenges in my life, this beats all of them," he said. "While the country was sleeping last night, our team was working through the night to ensure that the first ball is beamed live across the world."
The television channel had barely four days to organise everything thanks to the series of controversies and court cases that BCCI found itself embroiled in. But it still had to wait till Tuesday to get the all clear from the Supreme Court.
"Somehow we have managed to get close to 52 crew members from across the world (including about 25 from India itself) and 14 tons of equipment from Singapore, England and Australia," Ten''s managing director Sharmista Rijhwani said. "We just couldn''t compromise on the quality for this high profile series."
"Our head of programming (Peter Hutton) hasn''t slept for almost 48 hours, coordinating and making every small bit fall into place," she said.
"Getting visas for all the members and clearing all the equipment from the customs was the biggest problem we had to surmount," Norris added.
Incidentally, the channel will be using 27 cameras for the telecast. Michael Atherton, Sanjay Manjrekar, Michael Slater, Dean Jones and Laxman Sivaramakirshnan will be on the commentary panel. Ravi Shastri will join the team after the second Test.