October 27, 2007 New Delhi, India
Chris Cairns, the legendary New Zealand All-rounder, was in town to launch to Lotte Superskills. An event and TV programme where 15 top cricketers from all over the world assembled to play 2 days of hard fought cricket, to be crowned Lotte Superskills champions.

Teams from India, Pakistan , Australia, England, and the Rest Of The World, made up the competition, and top names like Sehwag, Sreesanth, Afridi, Katich, Razzaq, Atapattu, Justin Kemp etc tested their skills against men and machines.

Lotte Superskills is a TV cricket programme, that was initially conceived of by the late Pakistani coach, Bob Woolmer, and the last two editions had seen some fierce competition from players like Akram, Cairns, Dravid, Kaif, Petersien, etc.

According to Chris Cairns, who is the only player to be associated with all three editions of Superskills, the first as a player, and the other two as a presenter, ” Lotte Superskills is hard fought. Players have a lot of pride and prestige at stake, and as a player who participated in the Event, I can assure you it’s a real test f all-round cricket skills”

The event covers :
Power Drive:
The batsman is bowled a series of deliveries from a bowling machine. Points for the hitting the ball the farthest

Stroke Master:
All about how cleanly batsman can drive and push the ball into the gaps.

Wicket Speedster:
Batsmen run one, two and three runs. Points are scored for the fastest individual timed runs.

Deadeye:
The fieldsman chases and throws at stumps within a time restriction – accuracy of throws determine score.

Fine Line:
Most Accurate Bowler – Simple test to evaluate Line & Length . The ‘ Corridor of Uncertainty ” and THE PERFECT LENGTH make the event unique and competitive

Over the years, the concept has been honed and fine-tuned by Anthony Bouchier and Navroze Dhondy, ensuring that the gripping action lends itself well to great television viewing.

Title Sponsor Lotte, the Korean based confectionery giant which recently bought Chennai based Parry’s , is looking at a 3-year association with this exciting cricket game format.

According to K V Ramachandra, Managing Director, Lotte India, ” We were delighted when Creatigies approached us with this opportunity. Lotte Superskills is a perfect ft with our target group. Children and young adults would love the fast paced action, and the excitement of meeting top class world players. We plan to extend this to schools, and get a lot of ground activity around the event as well as the telecast”

The teams:
India: Virendra Sehwag, S Sreesanth, Suresh Raina
Pakistan: Azhar Mahmood, Abdul Razzaq, Shahid Afridi
Australia: Simon Katich , Travis Burt , Andy Bichel
England: Ed Joyce , Darymple , Sajid Mahmood
Rest of the World: Marvan Atapattu, Justin Kemp, Andre Adams

Umpire: Ian Harvey

Chris Cairns, who has been associated with all 3 Superskills events, was clearly of the opinion that this format has great potential, and can be developed as a great coaching aide by many schools, colleges, clubs and countries.

According to Anthony Bouchier, MD, QGH, the company that co-created and implemented the event, was happy with the 3rd edition. ” Having top cricketers come back each time to play the Event, makes us believe that this format and skill concept has the potential to grow globally”

The other companies that have appreciated the value and partnered with Lotte Superskills, are Western Union, Canon, Boost, Pizza Hut, Club Mahindra, DYC, exchange4media & Power.
Navroze Dhondy, CEO, Creatigies Communications, who has been co-creating the event, and is the marketing associate of QGH, for Superskills over the years, said,” having an aggressive brand like Lotte come on board is wonderful for Superskills. Lotte Superskills will raise the bar, and with more than 500,000 lakh outlets at its disposal, Lotte Superskills will enter far more homes and minds than ever before. It’s also very heartening to see so many other enlightened companies and brands partner Lotte Superskills, and maximising its value through concerted leveraging”

The programme will be aired as a 14 part weekly programme on Zee Sports and highlights / weekly round ups would be available on CNN IBN. According to Satish Menon, President , Zee Sports, ” we are extremely happy to be the channel partner telecasting Lotte Superskills. It’s a game show that we believe will get eyeballs that will benefit the channel as well as the sponsors of the Event”

Telecast: Preview shows: 5th & 12th October 2007
Telecast: Lotte Superskills: 14 episodes,

September 30th, 2005 New Delhi, India
We all know the World Cup is won by the team that has the best all-round game – the team that can turn a match with the stolen single or the saved boundary. And we all marvel at the fielding of Kaif or Younis, the strength of Powell or Klusener, the guile of a Prince or Sangakkara, the accuracy of a Dravid or Pollock.

Who’s the world’s most accurate bowler?
Which batsman hits the ball the furthest?
Who’s the best fielder?
Who’s the fastest runner between the wickets?
Who places the ball most precisely?

Samsung Superskills finally answers these questions in a series of programme
that pitch the world’s finest cricketers fight out for individual and team supremacy.

At a press conference held at Hotel Vasant Continental, New Delhi, Mr. Ravinder Zutshi, Deputy Managing Director, Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd., said ” Samsung has always been at the forefront of innovation. The unique and innovative format of this Programme as well as its rich content are the compelling reasons for our association with this Programme. And we are confident that Samsung Superskills, will be able to build on its last year’ success and will generate a huge interest amongst the growing number of cricket lovers in the country.”

Samsung Superskills, a unique cricket skills world tournament telecast over 13 weekly episodes on Star Sports starting 4th
October, 2005 at 2030 every Tuesday.

Sanjay Kailash, Vice President – Ad Sales & Business Development, ESPN Software India Pvt. Ltd. said, “We provide wholesome sports entertainment viewers by showcasing various live and non-live programming on our two channels. Samsung Super Skills will add to our existing bouquet of interesting and innovative non-live programmes. With some of the biggest cricket stars participating in the contest, the programme is well poised to make interesting and engaging television-viewing for millions of ESPN STAR Sports viewers who catch the excitement each week primetime“.

The tournament will see the players of the caliber of Younis Khan, Lance Klusener, Shaun Pollock, Rahul David, Mohd. Kaif, Ricardo Powell, Salman Butt and many more facing each other head-to-head in team and individual competition.

The Format
Samsung Superskills 2005 brings to the viewers a more exciting format. This year number of teams have been from 6 to 5 and from 4 players per team to 3. As compared to last year, the episodes have been cut in a match format i.e. Episode 1 sees India v/s South Africa, episode 2 again has one team playing the other. This was done to make the format interesting from the viewer’s perspective and have a winner at the end of every episode.

There would be 5 teams battling to be the Champion at Samsung Superskills winning not the just the title but also an
International holiday by Qatar Airlines.

The 5 Teams are:
India
Pakistan
South Africa
Sri Lanka
West Indies

As Bob Woolmer one of the persons behind the creation of this concept said: “Every skill is as challenging and interesting as the other one which will test the skills of some of the best players in every sphere of a cricket It was not easy planning and conceptualizing something as innovative and unique as Samsung Superskills”.

“With vagaries of pitch, weather, opposition, there is no truly international benchmark that provides players the opportunity to perform on a level playing field, and we hope Samsung Superskills as last year, has once again given a platform where the best of the best prove their mettle” says Navroze Dhondy, Quintus India.

According to Mr. Zutshi , “Viewers can be assured of an hard fought battle by the best in the world in an exciting and innovative world cricket tournament. We expect Samsung Superskills to enthrall viewers.“

” The programme has received tremendous support from associates on the ground as well as in the media. “We are delighted that a number top brands have associated with the Event. The co-sponsors of the programme are ICI and Oriental Bank of Commerce. The Official health drink is Boost and the official airline Qatar Airways. Luminous, Hutch, Jaypee Hotels, Exchange4Media, Hindustan Times & BDM have all contributed to making Samsung Superskills an even bigger event and TV Programme this year.” Said Navroze Dhondy

‘With lot of cricket happening around the world, we thought why cant we have a different platform for the cricket lovers and came out with an idea of Super skills which became a big hit in India and other cricket playing countries supported by Samsung. Last month I was talking to few Australians in Sri Lanka during Triangular series and they said that they had a good time watching Samsung Superskills.” says Hansvir Singh, Quintus India.

Programme promotion:
The programme is further bolstered by an interactive quiz that is actively promoted on air, in the Hindustan Times as well by SMS on Hutch, allowing readers and viewers to win a wide range of prizes every week.

Schedule:
Starts October 4th 2005, 8.30 pm on Star Sports. Followed every Tuesday 8.30 pm.
Each programme repeated on both channels ESPN and Star Sports.

About Samsung India
Samsung India is the Regional Head quarters for Samsung operations in South West Asia, and is a leading provider of high tech information technology, telecom, consumer electronics and home appliance products in the country. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, the parent Company of Samsung India is the global leader in semi conductors, telecommunications, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2004 parent company sales of USD 55.2 billion and net income of USD 10.3 billion.