Published: Oct 28, 2011, 10:32 AM (IST)
Edited: Apr 25, 2014, 05:52 PM (IST)
By Golandaaz
It’s not too much cricket. It’s too much meaningless cricket
The administrators’ greed for television dollars has finally achieved the impossible. The stadium-going Indian cricket fan is now on the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) list of endangered species. According to current estimates, the WWF puts Indian stadium-going fans along with the tiger as a species “vulnerable to extinction”. Only 3,200 of them remain.
When NEO Cricket proudly touts a meaningless ODI series as a “Revenge Series”; it betrays the sensibilities of average cricket fans. Beating England in an ODI series and celebrating it as revenge for a 0-4 whitewash in a Test Series is like Jai, Veeru and Thakur plucking five strands of graying hair from Gabbar Singh’s beard and calling it a revenge for wiping out Thakur’s family!
When asked to comment on WWF’s assessment of the possible extinction, BCCI president N Srinivasan said, “We are not aware of any such report. If WWF have a problem they should speak to us. Cricket is produced for TV, not for stadium goers.”
The BCCI is also set to announce at the next ICC meeting that, like the DRS, playing cricket in stadiums should be optional. According to a new proposal, which Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Harsha Bhogle have called “visionary”, cricket matches will be played in “state-of-the-art” television studios, so that the TV producers, technicians, managers and executives have better control of the game.
“Giving TV producers, the right to dictate just the itineraries is not enough. The way business works, leaders need end-to-end control. There is no room for romantic opinion where money is concerned”, said Harsha Bhogle speaking on a television debate on the issue of “Conflict of Interest”, sponsored by Anil Kumble, the RCB franchise and Tenvic chief.
Along with the optional stadium issue, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is also set to table many changes to the format of the game to suit live coverage over Smart Phones, Tablet PCs and Twitter.
Some of the suggested changes:
1) Do away with the 15-yard circle. It will now become the boundary line. It was Steve Job’s dying wish that iPhones capture the market share for devices for watching cricket. He had said that cricket grounds need to be smaller to fit on iPhone screens. BCCI will now support this change as essential to securing investment from Apple.
2) Strategic breaks in T20 cricket should include batsmen making love to pole dancing cheerleaders. This rule is to allow cricket to be broadcast on porn channels and websites like Playboy, Vivid and TEN. If a batsmen is injured a runner /substitute will not be permitted.
3) Introduce a new format of cricket called “Tip and Run”. After having signed a multi-billion dollar deal with Twitter, their basic requirement was that there should only be as much action in the game as can be “tweeted” in 140 characters.
4) To capture the “reality TV market” the BCCI has also suggested that Powerplays in ODI cricket be determined by audience participation, where the captain has to either ‘poll the internet audience’ or ‘phone a friend’ to determine when to take the Powerplay. Additionally the Big Brother franchise has secured the rights to place cameras in player dressing rooms, bathrooms, hotel rooms and lobbies.
(Golandaaz is a blogger @ Opinions on Cricket and likes to see the humorous side of the game, like the spoof above. He often sketches cricketers in black and white. You can follow Golandaaz his blog on twitter @oponcr and facebookOpinions on Cricket)
