Some occupations are most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of them is old print magazines. Earlier this year once the most influential and wildly popular & most iconic sports magazines of India ‘Cricket Samrat’ was closed down. It had been a staple diet for Hindi readers of the sport for the last 42 years.

You might not have heard of it if you’re not a Hindi reader or quite young for that matter.  But for a cricket-loving kid of the eighties, the importance of Cricket Samrat magazine was at another level. And in an era when cable TV hadn’t arrived, it was our only sports channel. 

Imagine someone who doesn’t even have access to the cricket world otherwise. The magazine played an important role in spreading the good stories of cricket.

Cricket Samrat our most awaited monthly affair

In the absence of the internet, it was one go-to place to get hold of thorough statistics of the game. Who has scored how many centuries, which team is leading in test matches? Cricket Samrat made us informed and more curious about the game.

It proved to be an unparalleled source of cricket knowledge for the youth of small towns. They learned many game rules, its etiquette, and techniques of this complicated British game. It fuelled the passion and sowed the seeds of the small town dreams that hit Indian cricket in 2000. 

 

The magazine was just one awesome package moreover when there were no online portals like Star Sports & ESPNCricinfo. The magazine also had better quality paper, posters & other pictures as compared to any other print mags of that time. It had the pull-out posters for our room walls, it was all that and more.

The magazine started as Khel Samrat, covering all sports at the time of the Olympics in Montreal in 1976. With the long cricket seasons in November 1978, it was changed to Cricket Samrat. 

I remember the mania when Kapil Dev brought the 1983 World Cup. Also when Sachin Tendulkar delivered that intense knock at Sharjah in 1998 when India defeated Australia in the final.

Once it was the best-selling magazine, but it declined with the arrival of the internet.  The lock-down paralyzed the publishers, and the magazine was discontinued. Surprisingly they didn’t change with time and stuck to the traditional media. And never bothered to make a transition to the digital version.