There cannot be anything bad about a sporting event. Win strongly or
lose badly sporting events are always good unless tainted by drugs, fixing or
outright cheating. It’s only the screaming headlines in the media that often
make it out to be more than sports. Coupled with silly headlines are the
endless and mindless discussions on TV channels about Cricket. For a long time
all cricket matches are telecast live and yet on a daily basis there are at
least 2 hours of mental masturbation on cricket on every channel. A hyper anchor
with a bunch of ex-cricketers is typically bad news for any sensible discussion
about a test match or a series. Recent tag lines are “India’s thunder down
under” … “India’s best chance to beat Australia” and the less said about Sachin Tendulkar’s
hundredth 100 the better.
Headlines Today, of course, out-does every other
channel in preparation of Sachin’s hundredth with a half hour montage of
all his centuries that is telecast about a hundred times a week. Sachin’s 100
can come when it has to but what exposes the idiots in the box is the manner in
which India has gone down in the two tests to Australia in the current series.
The second loss at SCG was even worse than in the first test. Well, all this is
after the media had predicted this was India’s best chance to beat the Aussies.
That also makes it six test losses in a row abroad. And it’s not over yet! Virat Kohli was unnecessarily fined for his gesture. I do believe his middle finger was directed clearly at the media or should have been.
If you heard the experts on the TV channels before the series started
all that India should have done was to enter the field and Australia would have
folded up. It’s just one more lesson that whatever the media hypes, expect the
opposite to happen. That’s true not just for cricket, but for every event and
entity that the media hypes up. It helps if the spurious campaign is launched
by a foreigner from the opposing camp himself. Listen to Ian Chappell: "It is India's best chance to beat
Australia in Australia. The Aussies have been inconsistent and there have been
unbelievable number of injuries….” And the Indian parrots are thrilled!
Cricknext (December 12)
headlined this report: “It's our best chance to beat Australia: Dhoni” “Even last time we had a very good
chance and we did perform well. It is not like that the opposition is not doing
well (but) it will be the best chance for us.." Dhoni said what he did
with minor mention of the opposition but as captain of the team he is not
expected to be pessimistic. But the headline of the article should explain the
mindless hype from the media. The growth of cricket following had increased
dramatically in India following the 1983 world cup win. Even that was a lucky
escape from an extremely over-confident and arrogant West Indies.
Here’s another one from Deccan Chronicle: “India in with historic chance of beating Aussies at home”. That’s another issue with the media. Every
50, every 100, every match win, every series win is a “Historic” win! The term
is abused so much that it loses meaning every day just as media analysis has
proven to be history. Add to this the crazy rating game over teams. No1., No.2
blah, blah.. without realising it’s stupid to even make sense of any rating in
a game played between 7 or 8 regular teams. That apart, the rating doesn’t
count for anything in any tournament. Worse than seeing India lose a match is
this mindless reasoning for losses. The only sensible one seems to be Kapil Dev
who, in his usual down to earth style, states: “you lost because you played
badly, that’s all” and that there can’t be any better reason. In the TV
discussions and newspapers you are unlikely to find any new insight or
intelligence on the game that you can’t find at your local corner shop discussion.
Over 3 decades ago when the Pakistan team toured India for the first
time in ages Sunil Gavaskar, the
captain, stated “they will smash us to
pulp”. This is after the beating
India took when they toured Pakistan earlier in 1978. This blog describes the situation well. Apart from spreading
pessimism in the media Gavaskar must have also lowered expectations from the
public. The end result? India beat Pakistan 2-1 in that series in 1979. In 2011
the hype about India centred around the last chance for Sachin to win a world
cup title and less on the team itself. India won the world cup, in contrast to
2003 and 2007 when the media almost concluded a certain victory much before the
tournament began. The exit in the very first round in 2007 had provided some
learning for the media only to forget it quite quickly.
Here’s the best of the whole lot from a discussion on CNN-IBN by their
sports anchor Gaurav Kalra with Harsha Bhogle and Sanjay Manjrekar. Kalra sets
the tone by a leading question that already under-estimates Australia:
Kalra: Is this India’s best chance to win a series in Australia?
Bhogle: It’s 20 years since I first went to Australia and I can’t think
of a better time…this time there is fear in the enemy camp … Australia is not
the side they were…
Manjrekar: Australia is at its most vulnerable.. I expect Indian
batting to be a stronger lot..
Manjrekar, of course, added the usual ifs and buts. But every channel
and almost every newspaper got the whole shit dead wrong. That’s what
happens each and every time the media hypes up something – the opposite
results. Anyone who is considered an expert would have to be exceptionally
stupid to have not learnt anything from India’s recent tour of England. So you
might wonder why all the excessive theories of an Indian series win. Well, bad
news makes headlines, but good news gets a lot more sponsors I suppose.
India has been beaten six tests in a row abroad. Well, that shouldn’t dishearten
us at all from a sporting angle. Chances are we might be beaten in the next
test as well. So what? After all, after
his first win over Jimmy Connors didn’t the great Vitas Gerulaitis say: “And
let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a
row".
Now it is starange to see that certain channels of a Group have decided to broadcast that there is most urgent need to drop Dhoni from Captaincy. Same chnnels were singing ballads of Dhoni just a few days ago when India was winning against West Indies at home.
ReplyDeleteI am tired of cricket and the media. This is feast to my eyes. Media is making cricket boring.
ReplyDeleteThe misfortune of team India is that it has virtually no fans at home. All fans are for individual players and the media plays upon this weakness.It does not upset an Indian fan as much if the team loses by an innings, as it would if a sachin is bowled out for a duck.Whether media propagates nonsense or otherwise,I have never seen a team India with a strong core strengh in the past or even in future.
ReplyDeleteThe only "man", in the bunch of commentators that we have,seems to be Sharda Ugra, which is why she doesn't get to speak as often as she should. Most of the rest are "sarkari" commentators, with quite a few average ex-cricketers thrown in. The "live" commentary is carefully partisan, with big-bro BCCI keeping tabs, the camera-work is shoddy/ indifferent and the important moments/ comments/ incidents are drowned out by advertisements. No lucid explanations are given by any selector, past or present, for their planning or thinking. Nobody wants to thoroughly expose the rat-pack called the BCCI for fear of being cut out of the gravy train.
ReplyDeleteFor quite a while now, the team is capable of giving a good performance once in a while, no more.You get the impression of impulsive, rather than purposeful play.