IPL slogfest a Big Mac v steak of first-class game
Cricket’s conception as a sport of subtlety goes out the window
The pandemic has driven people to lengths unimaginable in normal times, which is probably why I found myself watching the opening stages of the Indian Premier League (IPL) during the past week.
This was harder than it might have been, as I neglected to lay in extensive supplies of beer to moderate the experience. Watching this absurd confection, with its slogging, raucous music, yelling and attempts through faux-portentousness to convey the impression that something profound is happening is not to be done with a mind unaltered by alcohol.
Brought up on England’s good old Gillette Cup and the John Player League, I gave up watching one-day cricket about 20 years ago, as it had begun to bore me. Once I went to a T20 match and though the hospitality was lavish and liquid, the culture shock was intense, and not in a good way. I thought of Mr Spock: it’s cricket, Jim, but not as we know it.
The cost of watching various crews of mercenaries engaging in these vulgar slogfests was having to restrict my consumption of the streamed coverage of Essex vs Somerset in English county cricket ’ s Bob Willis Trophy final. It provided a reminder of the fascinating drama that the first-class game, played by seriously skilled cricketers, provides to those willing to concentrate on it.
Having over the past five years written repeatedly that the resemblance between limited-overs and first-class cricket has become increasingly indiscernible, and that the game should split into two distinct codes, a few days spent watching the IPL has removed any doubt I had.
Cricket was conceived as a game of subtlety; the IPL is like Van Dyck doing paintball or a Big Mac to first-class cricket’s fillet steak. It assumes on the part of the spectator the most meagre attention span and a world in which calm is almost offensive. Everything must be superlative; a “dot ball” leaves commentators in unfeigned astonishment.
This year, of course, there are no crowds and the IPL is not even being played in India, where Covid-19 is, sadly, rampant. So it has been moved to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and bovine crowd noises are being piped around grounds to create atmosphere. Were T20 played without an imitation crowd it would draw attention strongly to what a fundamentally silly exercise it is.
When you have a game of which the whole point is extremes, an aural backdrop of mild hysteria becomes essential, not least to propel commentators towards the ludicrous pitch of manufactured excitement that they are apparently paid to project. To compensate for the absence of fans, videos of happy, smiling Indian people watching at home were flashed around the ground to remind us how we on our sofas should be reacting. Just for balance, showing a middle-aged Anglo-Saxon exuding bemusement would have been valuable, but one suspects that is unlikely to happen.
Most of the commentators sound as though they have been at the Benzedrine. They use clichés and jargon that the uninitiated strain to comprehend. As the sun set over Arabia I kept hearing about “the Jew
Factor”, which struck me as a possibly tasteless reference to another of the region’s main powers; I eventually realised they meant “the dew factor”.
To maintain the excessive excitement required during commentary must be debilitating: one imagines them having to be carried off on a stretcher at the end.
Everything, after all, is “massive”. The holy grail is the six: the tone of barely suppressed rage that greets a non-six (or a non-wicket) transmutes into a spasm of ecstasy when a ball clears the boundary. The word “maximum” flashes across the screen; a sign flashes up to report the distance the ball has travelled. Cheerleaders wave and smile on screens. Depending on the state of the game and the distance the ball has travelled, the commentator calibrates his expression of rapture: “It’s huge! It’s massive! It’s unbelievable!”
This reached its apex when Rahul Tewatia hit five sixes in an over to bring Rajasthan Royals to what had appeared to be an improbable victory over Kings XI Punjab, but then the next evening, as Mumbai Indians took Royal Challengers Bangalore to a super over, we reached a new height of philosophical truth: “Last night was spectacular: this was unreal.”
At a time of misery, it is wonderful this game makes so many people happy and, indeed, so many businessmen so rich. And it is delightful that cricketers, for too long the poor relations of professional sport, are now able to stagger to the bank weighed down by their crocks of gold.
And if this sort of “cricket” allows clubs to survive financially and preserve real cricket, then even better. I am just glad it is not compulsory to watch it.