Something's happening here
Your support is setting us for a great summer
It’s fair to say that when Gideon and Sam set up this independent media publishing venture there was only a vague idea of how it would work.
Gideon had left The Australian, I was set to follow and Sam wanted to make sure he and The Grade Cricketer kept writing.
In the time since we’ve been making it up as we go, but thanks to you we are finding our feet and thank you for your indulgence in that time. We’ve broken stories, we gave you an exclusive read of Gideon’s book My Brother Jaz, we’ve indulged ourselves with stories on punk music, plane spotting and the passing of my greengrocer.
Mostly we reckon we gave you really good cricket content at a rate that’s suprised even us.
On Friday October 25 the little counter in the corner of our Substack feed clicked over to 1000 paid subscribers. This was a significant landmark on our journey to making this thing work.
You cannot know how happy we are with support you have shown for our work and how critical that support is.
Cricket creates community and that’s what you are helping us do here.
To see so many of you come on board, particularly at the rate you have over this last few weeks, brings joy to our heart.
We love doing this and love it that you seem to enjoy it to.
Paid subscriptions will get us on the road for all five of the Border Gavaskar Trophy Test matches this summer.
Listeners to our podcasts while we were in India and England last year know how much we enjoy being out there.
We’ve been operating on the smell of an oily cricket bat until now, but have to get serious. Gideon’s got a cat to feed, I’m going to need a new pair of undies for the summer, and Sam’s told us he will not be staying in the student rooms at Aquinas College so we are going to have to find him something more befitting his expectations.
You probably know by now that we are reluctantly moving to a model on November 1 where ONLY paid subscribers get ALL of our content. It’s Craig Serjeant Day! And if you’d like to learn more on that subject, start here…..
Unpaid subscribers will still get some, but not the daily reporting from the game.
Those who are paid subscribers will not be affected and will continue to pay at the same rate.
From November 1 the monthly rate will rise to $20. Let me emphasise that if you are on the current lower rate that does not change.
Even if you only subscribe for the two months of the Border Gavaskar Trophy it is $40 for what promises to be a comprehensive and exhaustive effort from us.
Covering cricket is an expensive task.
Subscribing also means we can keep the wolf from the door without accepting money from the pernicious betting agencies that supports almost every sports media outlet in the country.
The Cricket Et Al podcast remains will still be free (talk is cheap).
If you are not on board we urge you to do so, we need more petrol in the tank if we’re going to get this vehicle touring the continent in the summer.
Here’s some testimony from some who have already subscribed.
Pete, Gideon and Sam
Happy to support. There appears to be no constraints to your writing, no editorial policies to be adhered to and no dumb and provocative headlines, as often seems to be the case with regular newspaper columnists. The quality and frequency of your reports is well worth the subscription. Good luck with it.
Whilst I am not a huge fan of the game, I would always read Gideon and Peters articles in the Oz being so well written, erudite and humorous. So now it's more the et al I have subscribed for and in support of course of real journalism, which remains at risk. Great work gents.