40 years of tapes, 30,000 DVDs, one cricket superfan: The Rob Moody aka robelinda2 story

If you are a cricket geek – like many of us in Marcellus are – you will often wake up on Sunday morning asking questions like “how good was Sachin’s century in the first innings of the 1993 Chennai test against England?”. If you do ask questions such as these only one man can readily save you. That man is Rob Moody and he runs a legendary Youtube channel called Robelinda2 which is the ‘go to’ place for the nerdiest cricket geeks (and you might be surprised to know that there are billions of us out there). The Indian Express’ apt profile of a man who helps us re-populate our cricketing memories says, “Rob Moody has long gone public as the man behind the popular YouTube channel, but there’s no end to the conspiracy theories. The 44-year-old from Melbourne — whose moniker Robelinda2 has earned over a million subscribers and a billion views on YouTube, complemented by a burgeoning presence on Twitter…
Moody is a modern-day archivist, the ultimate librarian and YouTuber much before the term became a new-wave career choice. He is in his 40th year of taping cricket matches and cataloguing them. From this cache, he edits and publishes clips of moments seemingly lost. The latest offering is the fastest Test 200 by Nathan Astle, 20 years ago; “Cheat mode batting.””
Incredible as it sounds, this legendary Youtube channel is a total one man show: “”…Let me show you my team,” Moody switches to the rear camera on his iPad during the video call and takes us into his lair. There’s the desk with a system, editing equipment and discs lying atop. And the imposing walls of thousands of tapes and DVDs, neatly labelled a la ‘Australia vs India, 2003-04’.
Moody switches back to the front-facing camera: “It’s a one-man operation.””
Cricket boards have tried to shut down this one man show (on the grounds of copyright violation) but the popular outcry has been such that they have given up. And thank god for that because Robelinda2 is a labour of love which has lit up the inner recesses of our cricketing memories.