Pitch angst highlights India’s version of Lipsyte summary
Near the end of An Accidental Sportswriter, the memoir of New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte, some lines leap off the page. About how the gap “between jock and hack widened as the financial value of sports grew… TV freed athletes from needing print journalists to present them to the public… Athletes could control their images through ads and paid appearances… tweets and Facebook pages would give teams athletes direct access to fans. They could spin their own news.”
Lipstye was talking about the behemoth US sports industry and its four multi-billion dollar leagues in American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey, plus the US collegiate NCAA finishing schools. In that context, Indian sport is a one show pony: cricket with its national team, their superstar players and the IPL. The Indian version of the Lipsyte summary is currently in play but do fans care about the gap between jocks and hacks? No.
The official Team India handle has 16.7m followers on Instagram and 13.8m on Twitter. Virat Kohli’s combined total of Insta (100m) and Twitter (40.9m) followers is 16m short of the entire population of cricket’s SENA (South Africa – 60m, England – 68m, New Zealand – 4.8m, Australia 25m) countries put together.
Indian cricket and its superstars today have untrammelled social media influence, a worshipful commentariat and a market that can’t have enough of the same. Yet, despite torrents of television-produced acclaim, social media love and financial appreciation, there appeared to be an unease during the India v England Test series expressed via Indian cricket’s important voices, addressed to those who do not get with the programme.
Rohit Sharma wanted reporters to stop debating pitches but debate players and their performances. Ravichandran Ashwin detailed the build up to the Cameron Green debut in Australia which gave him “massive perspective… on how we as a community treat our cricketers… and at times, it feels, you know, that we are searching as to what’s wrong with them.”
Virat Kohli then said he was pretty sure “none of our people wrote” about the green wickets in New Zealand last year, during India’s 2-0 Test defeat. The tracer bullet of takedowns came from batting legend Sunil Gavaskar, who, on Star Sports’s Hindi channel, introduced a charming Mumbai tapori expression into cricket conversation.
Gavaskar wanted Indian papers and TV channels to say “chal phut” (roughly, buzz off) to bahar ke log (outsiders, mainly foreign cricket experts) who criticised Indian pitch conditions. A chal phut was needed because Gavaskar said, toh hi yeh log sabak seekhenge (only then will these people learn their lesson). The lesson being, it appears, not to criticise Indian pitches. Or maybe Indian cricket. Or maybe anything Indian. At all.
This release of angst from a team that had caused absolute global delirium following their Border-Gavaskar series victory in Australia was distressing. To be fair, every time there is a disastrous cricket performance featuring any team, the first stories put out by the hardworking news agencies are about responses from the home team’s local press and cricket pundits.
These days they don’t even have to wait for the next day’s papers for what is known as “REAX” – it is available on social media within minutes.
There are several good reasons why global cricket gurus jump into an Indian cricket debate and create headlines. First, to annoy the Indian fans and up their troll count. The second, to be noticed more prominently in the media. While that may reduce the chances of getting a commentary gig in the IPL or at any other series in India, it gives them rebel cred when India come touring. The Indian media pays attention to these “mavericks” and their alternative headlines because well, our jobs will be on the line if we merely keep parroting the BCCI media unit’s stories.
What the media certainly gobbled up post Australia was Ashwin’s Let Me Tell A Kutti Story series. What would have taken the media weeks to unearth was served to us on a plate, with video interviews full of detail and humour. Who needs journalists, the fans chortled. Well, if there is similar treatment of post-defeat post-mortems, hacks could chuck away their laptops.
Lipsyte again, talking of the US sports media around Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, writes that, “most reporters didn’t report, happy to be allowed to watch them and god them up.” Given that Indian cricket is a religion anyway, would anyone dare “god down” the team? This “with us or against us” call has turned up often over the last few years, maybe a colour-coding of cricket reporters and analysts is required now. (As this is my idea, may I please have first dibs on magenta?) It appears that love and worship from millions of followers via TV and every possible social platform could be inadequate.
The question that goes searingly to the very heart of this disquiet – why don’t other cricket teams suffer the grumpy cranks of non-rights holder media like the Indians do? What looks like jock-hack camaraderie in SENA nations could have something to do with cricket not being their whole, sole, identity-strengthening, maschismo-enabler No.1 team sport. They have football, rugby union, rugby league, Aussie rules, even swimming to turn their obsessive attention towards.
While everyone in media loves a winner, Indian cricket’s journalistic love may, perchance be of the tougher variety. Which is not, it must be pointed out, of the toughest variety.
During a football World Cup, the Brazilian team’s practice sessions are telecast live back home with a commentary feed. Every paper sends teams of close to 10 per organisation for the event. One evening during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, when a friend covering the event returned to his guest house, it was like there had been a death in the owners’ family – it was the day Neymar was injured.
Regardless, the bad vibes that Team India seem to be getting from us is disturbing. They need to be in a good “headspace”, negative narratives dispelled forthwith going into their World Test Championship final.
How about we start with a détente over pitch chatter? Get rid of ‘em monsters, once and for all? Broadcasters stop doing daily pitch reports, curators don’t give interviews and the P word with all its synonymns wicket, track, deck, surface are done away in voice, text or social media. Everyone will be happy. Deal?