Note

Cricket and Media
Anirban Biswas

For quite a few decades, the Indian news media have been laying maximum stress on cricket among all the sports, conveniently forgetting that the number of cricket-playing countries is only few, compared with football and even hockey. Over time, test cricket came to be supplemented, and then almost replaced by the one -day format of the game. A few months ago, there was widespread speculation in the press about when Sachin Tendulkar would be able to complete his hundredth century in international cricket, and even Tendulkar himself was so obsessed with it that when he finally made it, he played, and wasted, so many balls that India lost the match. The acolytes as well as the high priest forgot that a century in a 50-over match in Dacca or Sarjah is not comparable with a test century at Lords or at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. No bowler or batsman achieved greatness by playing in limited-over matches.

Of late, cricket has undergone another major innovation that has overwhelmed the media. It is the 20-over match. Any sensible follower of the game can understand that such a format of the game contributes little to its development, while exercising a profoundly decaying influence on it. What is at the same time distressing and farcical is that well-known commentators are writing on topics such as how Mahendra Singh Dhoni should lead his team in a 20-20 match (Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, arguably India's best cricket captain in the last fifty years or so, must be turning in his grave). The days when an international player's overall ability with the bat and ball will be judged by his performance at the 20-20 matches are perhaps not too distant. Nobody will then remember Don Bradman, Gary Sobers and Sunil Gavaskar, because these poor fellows were born earlier. Thanks to the propaganda of the media and the omnipotence of advertising, the spectators of the present want to be surfeited, like the surfeited grooms of Duncan in the play Macbeth, with sixes and fours. After all, cricket is a game of entertainment, and then why emphasize skill and technique? Commentators who get handsome fees for their 'contributions' will perhaps evoke the TINA syndrome, saying, " This is the fashion, and so there is no use running against the current."

In the latest Olympic Games, India has finished last in the hockey competition, and her place in the ranking among the football-playing countries is pathetic indeed. But this does not seem to bother the media. It is well known that the game of football can be popularized at very low cost among the masses, particularly the subalterns, and that quantity gives birth to quality. The same applies in general to hockey as well. But who cares?

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 21, Dec 2-8, 2012

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