News Broadcasting
BBC appoints Dumeetha Luthra as Colombo correspondent
MUMBAI: BBC has appointed Dumeetha Luthra as its new Sri Lanka correspondent.
Luthra has already joined her new post in the Sri Lankan capital. Prior to that she was the news correspondent in Baghdad.
Luthra began her career in BBC in 1995 as a producer. She was based in London till 2000. Following that she was set up in Croatia and as a producer covered the fall of Milosevic, the conflict in Macedonia and other Balkan events.
After 11 September 2001, she went to Afghanistan and was working there until December 2002. In 2003 at the time of the Iraq war, Luthra was in Northern Iraq to cover the story for BBC News. After a brief stay in London she returned to Basra to report on the present turmoil in the country and then went on to Baghdad for a stint there, informs an official communiqué.
The highpoints of Luthra’s journalistic career include the coverage of the fall of Kabul in Afghanistan in November 2001 along with the celebrated journalist John Simpson (BBC World Affairs Unit editor). The fall of Kirkuk in April 2003 and days later the fall of Tikrit. She spent five months in Basra covering the Iraq story from a different perspective, providing a real day to day picture outside of the daily bombings from Baghdad, informs the release.
According to BBC South Asia bureau editor Paul Danahar, “Dumeetha comes to one of the most important assignments in South Asia. She brings to the post the right mix of experience and enthusiasm essential to report on the wide-ranging stories from Sri Lanka. BBC’s reporting from Sri Lanka has been highly respected in the past, I am sure Dumeetha will reinforce that credibility.”
Speaking about her latest appointment, Luthra, an economics graduate said, “I’m really looking forward to working in Sri Lanka. I’ve travelled so much in the past few years so Sri Lanka will provide a great opportunity to really discover stories in a fascinating and beautiful country.”
News Broadcasting
Book Cricket gets a digital century on News18 amid T20 fever
Nostalgic classroom game revamped in English, Hindi plus Telugu on web and app.
MUMBAI: When the T20 World Cup fever hits fever pitch, News18 decides to flip the script straight back to the classroom. The digital news platform has revived the timeless schoolyard favourite Book Cricket as an interactive online game, perfectly timed to ride the cricket wave gripping fans across the globe. The reimagined Book Cricket ditches textbooks for smartphones, blending old-school nostalgia with modern gameplay. Once a sneaky recess pastime played by flicking book pages to score runs, the digital version now offers seamless fun for anyone craving a quick cricket fix between overs.
Available in English, Hindi and Telugu (with more languages planned across News18’s network), the game sits within the platform’s fast-growing gaming portfolio of over 20 titles, all built in-house. It joins event-driven hits like ‘Kursi Catcher’ and ‘Result Rewind’ during the 2025 Bihar Assembly Elections, plus festive specials such as ‘Durga’s Astras’ for Durga Puja and ‘Mouse Modak’ for Ganesh Chaturthi.
News18 Digital CEO Mitul Sangani said, “Gaming is a key pillar of our engagement strategy. At News18, we uniquely combine our newsroom agility with immersive gaming experiences. By blending credible content with interactive formats, we are creating meaningful engagement in an era defined by shrinking attention spans and evolving consumption habits.”
Select titles have expanded beyond News18.com to CNBC-TV18.com and Firstpost.com, reflecting the network’s push to deepen user interaction across platforms. The Book Cricket game is live now at https://www.news18.com/games/book-cricket/.
In a tournament where every boundary counts, News18’s digital Book Cricket proves the simplest games can still deliver the biggest smiles no syllabus required, just pure cricket joy one page-flip at a time.
