Big hits and big money make for dark future

Watching cricket on Indian television, with the incessant stream of adverts, tries one’s patience, says Simon Barnes in The Times.

It rather tries one's patience. Not because they kept losing the satellite feed, or anything comic like that. The problem was the advertisements.

On Indian television, any moment when they give you an actual program is bitterly resented by the station and is regarded as a wasted opportunity. So, naturally, there were adverts between every over. You were never off duty, always being nagged at, harried, pestered, or flirted at by lovely girls with rupees in their eyes.