Deep Backward Point

The blog completes 6 months this week. Thank you all for reading. Six months is a long time– if the blog were an infant, at six months she would start sitting up, teething and perhaps solid food. She would also demonstrate the beginnings of real-person-like behavior. I think that accurately describes my blog.

The blog is at 121 posts, which is a much faster pace than I had originally anticipated. I also post a lot less articles with a statistical bent than I had originally planned.

Thanks

First of all, a big thanks to anyone who read anything here. A really big thanks to the large number of people who have sent traffic my way:

• Jarrod Kimber (follower #5 on twitter) and Sana Kazmi (follow #4) for being the first people to send traffic my way, when I… umm… pointed out a software glitch in the ICC document generation tools…
• Subash Jayaraman, Samir Chopra, Shrikant Subramanian and Gaurav Sethi for hosting me on a two episodes of the Boredwaani podcast [episode 1] [episode 2].
• Faran Ghuman, an early and regular retweeter (follower #11) of what I wrote. Made me feel more witty than I actually am. During Pakistan matches, Faran’s twitter stream is the pulse of the game.
• Ducking Beamers for regularly linking to DBP and provoking thought.
• Thank you Sachin.

The Most Popular Posts:

Here are the most popular posts of the first 6 months:

1. How Lalit Modi and the BCCI (Almost) Killed Willow TV
2. Los Angeles Gangs Take Up Cricket
3. #ShankarFacts: The Secret Life of Adrian Shankar
4. The 2nd-Most Awesome Thing Ever Said About Javed Miandad
5. The Day I Was Dhoni
6. How to Read the Redacted ICC Pakistan Spot-Fixing Report
7. The History of One Day Cricket: Part I

What I Got Right

Here are the posts I am most proud of:

• The Day I Was Dhoni
• We’re Arrogant
• How Lalit Modi and the BCCI (Almost) Killed Willow TV
• The History of One Day Cricket: Part I

What I Got Wrong

I oversold the Willow story. When barely a dozen people read your blog a day, you don’t take yourself too seriously. My reporting was accurate, but I sensationalized the headline. Never again.

Also, the first half of this is the worst piece I wrote: The Case Against Minnows in the World Cup. Let’s never mention it again.

Twitter

If it isn’t clear yet, Twitter has turned out to be a huge part of Deep Backward Point– much bigger than I had originally imagined. The conversations, links, re-tweets and rebuttals are the fuel that fire the columns on this site. If you read this blog, and don’t follow me on Twitter, you’re missing part of the story.