Of Cricketing Gods, Media and Us - World A-Team Cricket Forum

fight_club · #1 (**permalink**) 29-06-2006, 10:08 PM

By fight_club

If comparison has to be made, no doubt India takes the biscuit as far as being the ‘fattest’ board of any country playing cricket. The amount of money that goes through the BCCI is almost obscene.

Now, lets shift our focus a little on the media. The Indian media is never short of creating their cricketing gods at the drop of a hat, and just as it happens in TV serials once it has been achieved a long, love-hate relationship starts. Amidst all this, big multinational contacts come into scenario. You have a bunch of people sitting doing as little as possible but looking to fill their coffers. Also, powerful politicians who wants a piece of the “pie”, mult-crore Satta market and the entire scene burst with cacophony and suddenly, you find more action off the field then on it.

The success lies in using cricketers even in off-seasons as well, when nothing much is happening. The media has mastered this art by cleverly utilizing every small injury anybody is suffering from.

You will are made to feel rather silly by watching stone-faced doctors, with their beaming projectors talking about.

Bone-alignment and works making wild prediction about recovery time, and what he should eat, wear and not wear. Then comes a bit of glamour. Harbhajan, Jaheer and Dhoni have all walked on the ramp much to the concern of sulking models but to the relief of their corporate bosses, and while watching them you begin to wonder how come players with such bad footwork on the field walk so effortlessly on the ramp.

And finally let’s talk about cricketers themselves. Firstly, they become unsuspecting victims to their success

One major innings is all that is required for action to start, then you are watching a Hindi movie with their family members being interviewed, neighbours volunteering to tell camarawallas how they grew up here, candidly admitting how “he” broke their glasses. Gullywallahs, panwallahs all have their tales to tell and the media are always gleefully obliging everyone. It makes you wonder if the instrument called ‘the camera’ has mystical magical powers!

So the game has started. Soon players smarten up to the fact that glory would be short lived and grab as much of it as possible. They also learn the art of staying in the limelight knowing fully well, that the “next best thing” can arrive at any time and they will have to settle for classified, rather then front page headlines! Of late there have been many cases when injured, semi-recovered players have made themselves available, just to either break down in the middle of the tour or put on poorly rated performances. Furthermore, various cricketing boards all over the world are getting busier by the day chalking out plans for various meaningless, One-dayers, World-XI matches, and charity matches, take a look at the upcoming one-dayers in Abu-Dhabi! Just when both the teams were coming to end of a long tiring schedule, they wake up to the news that some more one-dayers have been added in the calendars.

So, the time has come to conclude that as the ICC wants to go global and the respective boards are happy to oblige and that they have Ever Ready media grinning from ear-to-ear with plans on how to make it as sensational as possible, that this all appears to me that these bodies are hell bent on killing the goose laying the golden eggs for them. As a result of this overkill we have more and more injuries to the players - especially fast bowlers – players being stalked incessantly, and insecure players, who would be examined by media and every success or failure would be blown out of proportion leading to intense public debate and subsequent outcry. Players achievements are fast becoming like headlines in newspapers, screaming for attention one day, dumped in the garbage the very next day, the bigger god it is, more outcry would result fuelled by continuous media debate, all leading to decreasing tolerance in the public.

When Sachin Tendulkar who is the biggest media god, walked out at sixteen with a bat in his hand, roughly sixteen years ago, never in his wildest dreams would he have realised, that he would go down in his history, not only as most talented batsman ever played but the most talked about also. The question remains, after seeing the way he was booed by Mumbai public, whether he has used media to become one of the richest cricketer, or whether he has become a victim of a media who are on a constant lookout for anybody who can give them their two minutes of glory.

So, who is the victim? Are cricketers just becoming a pawn of a complex but very powerful system, or are we also subconsciously playing a role in it, which they want us to play to exploit our passion?

Playing with our emotions, blurring our judgement, are we asking valid questions? Are we asking these “Boards” where the money is going and how much of it is coming back to the field?

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