Vedam Jaishankar is an cricket correspondent with a career spanning three decades during which he travelled 5o six continents while covering cricket.[1] [2] After a stint with the Deccan Herald, he moved to The Indian Express where he was the principal cricket correspondent for many years. He is the author of a popular book, Rahul Dravid, a biography.[3]
Cricket has been an abiding passion with him and he has played school college and club cricket with a number of well known cricketers. He coached for a few years in the Brijesh Patel Cricket Academy before the demands of journalism made him give up coaching.
He has occasionally done Television and Radio commentary of the game. Jaishankar was the office bearer of the Sports Writers Association of Bangalore and its parent body Sports Journalist Federation of India. He received the for excellence in Sports Journalism from the Karnataka State Government and the for outstanding contribution to Journalism. He also served in the Board of Control for Cricket in India's Accreditation Committee in two World Cup tournaments.[4]
After working with Deccan Herald, he had a long stint with The New Indian Express as its main cricket writer. Later, Jaishankar worked briefly as the founder managing editor of Bangalore Bias,[5] an English language afternoon paper in Bangalore[6] which stopped publication after a few years. He also worked for Times of India.[7] He authored three books, the best-seller, Rahul Dravid, a Biography,[8] Casting A Spell - The Story of Karnataka Cricket[9] and, 'Courage, conviction, controversy and cricket'.[10] [11] The Dravid biography was also officially translated into four languages. A veteran of several World Cups, he last covered the 2003 edition in South Africa, for Vijay Times that he helped launch. Jaishankar writes for SPIN, a British cricket magazine besides a number of Indian publications. He writes in many Indian publications.[12] He also teaches sports journalism.