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Photos: Cricket archivists shine light on historic moments from the game
Updated On Oct 11, 2020 11:25 am IST
Mainak Sinha is a sort of Gandalf the Grey in the world of online cricket archivists. The 24-year-old UPSC aspirant from Murshidabad in West Bengal, is the man you go to if you’re trying to find the ring. He is among a small group of dedicated cricket archivists who spend hours every week poring over footage and carefully cataloguing, saving and backing-up clips and then sharing them online. Cricketers themselves ask for clips they’ve heard he has in his collection. But now with the copyright laws getting rigid and well defined, Sinha and other archivists around the world often find themselves in a grey area when it comes to claiming ownership of the footage.
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Rahul Dravid celebrates his century in the first one-day international cricket match between India and the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica on May 18, 2006. Mainak Sinha,24, a UPSC aspirant from Kandi in Murshidabad, West Bengal, possesses one of the largest online cricket archives. He has footage from at least 7,500 international games, including the first one-day international cricket match ever played between Australia and England in 1971. (Arko Datta / REUTERS)
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A view of the first one-day international match between India and South Africa that was attended by a record 95,000 spectators at Eden Gardens in Calcutta, India on November 10, 1991. Mainak Sinha is among a small group of dedicated cricket archivists who spend hours every week pouring over footage, tracing its antecedents, carefully cataloguing, saving and backing-up clips and then sharing them online, to the delight of fans around the world. (Getty Images)
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Indian cricketers Irfan Pathan and Rahul Dravid celebrate the final wicket of Brad Williams during the VB Series one-day international match against Australia at the Gabba in Brisbane, Australia on January 18, 2004. Not so long ago, Sinha’s favourite cricketer Rahul Dravid had contacted him on Twitter via his manager to procure an old innings he had played against the West Indies in 2006. (Hamish Blair / Getty Images)
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Sourav Ganguly plays a stroke during the ICC Champions Trophy match between England and India at R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, Sri Lanka on September 22, 2002. The key lies in the cataloguing. Where did the clip come from, and therefore, can anyone claim ownership of it? “One needs to have a very good understanding of what can be taken down by YouTube. That is why I have survived for over six years,” Mainak Sinha told HT. (Tom Shaw / Getty Images)
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Australian cricketer Glenn McGrath plays a shot during day three of the first test against New Zealand at the Gabba in Brisbane, Australia on November 20, 2004. Many YouTube accounts have been suspended; some lost altogether, because online video archives exist in a grey area when it comes to copyright law. (Hamish Blair / Getty Images)
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English cricketer Len Hutton plays a shot during his record breaking innings of 364 against Australia during the fifth test match of the Ashes series at the Oval in London, England on August 20, 1938. It’s important that Mainak Sinha and other archivists never upload anything from recent times, when copyright laws are clearly defined and iconic games of the past because those are the ones the broadcasters tend to archive and can then prove ownership of. (Popperfoto via Getty Images)
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Indian cricketer Ajit Wadekar drives off the bowling of England’s Norman Gifford during the third test match at Madras, India on January 13, 1973. Sinha keeps to a cut-off of 2005-06 on YouTube. “No World Cup games, no IPL games—those are golden rules,” he told HT. (Popperfoto via Getty Images)
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Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin (L) holds the winners’ trophy and the highest wicket taker in the world then; Kapil Dev (R) seen with a special trophy after defeating Sri Lanka in the third test match in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on February 12, 1994. (PTI)
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Indian batsman Pankaj Roy is bowled out while playing Pakistani fast bowler Mohammad Khan during a test match in New Delhi on October 20, 1952. “More than videos of me from my young days, I enjoy seeing those I had never seen before.” “There are some videos I found through these archivists of some really good matches from a time even before I played for India,” former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar told HT. (Keystone / Getty Images)
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Australian cricketer Neil Harvey plays a shot during the second Ashes test match against England on January 1, 1959. “Legally, it is a tangle worldwide. But these archives hold great value for the viewer,” “Obviously, if I’m getting to watch a match from the 1950s or ’60s which I’ve only heard about, even if it’s a one-minute clip, for me and every cricket lover, that is of great value,” sports writer and journalist Ayaz Memon told HT. (S&G / PA Images via Getty Images)
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