Slaps, Cheerleaders and Big Business: IPL Musings

The Cricket jamboree has finally dawned on this country. There is strict regulations on media coverage where monopoly has been garnered over using images; also included are 'Slap-Stick' comedy involving players in Mohali that gained more prime-time than any other event; then there are the cheerleaders. There is 'slam-bang' action, big hits, faster runs, swifter turn of events, rising TV timings and much more. The efforts are now to make us believe that IPL is THE BIGGEST THING happening on this planet. In this 'see it believe it' world, sport has got entrenched within the very same system that creates "One Country, Two Nations". That of millions living and struggling for one square meal a day, where hundreds of farmers have committed suicide due to agrarian distress in the countryside, where prices continue to rise thereby further trampling the aam admi and where the country shines & rises for the corporates. On the other end of the spectrum are a handful of multi-billionaires who keep vyeing to always remain in the top brackets. It is into such a volatile milieu that the manna called IPL has made its descent.

As games egg on, with cities in India pushing and shoving to be noticed, where false consciousness is injected with full vigour; thus making people identify and personify their 'model' teams; where sportsmanspirit and camraderie seem to come from the only fact that different nationalities melt with the joining of hands. Big money has come to stay authoratively in this make believe world. The game has been made to move on from the hands of the puritans to that of the entertainers. Throw in the corporates, throw in the big bucks, throw in the big names in entertainment industry and throw in the high-profile sponsors waiting to extract their share from the market. You now have the perfect receipes for the Big Dish. Thats what Cricket in the country in India has got as the label. Matches are being started in tune with the TV timings, with the best example being the Chennai Super Kings v/s Kings XI Punjab match had already crept into the scheduled 8 pm telecast of the Delhi Daredevils v/s Rajasthan Royals match; however, the latter match started only after the entire proceedings in the former match was done with. Entertainment has become the buzzword, with the sooth-sayers and eulogizers crying over the roof tops that the 20-20 format has started attracting the housewives (or as they say the fairer sex back into the drawing rooms in front of the television sets!!)

But such form of Entertainment brings with it crass commercialization and encourages the race for profit as correctly put forth by Nirmal Shekhar. The Cheerleaders of the different franchisees performing in the grounds has already raised much debates and protests. The 'roving cameras' moving in different angles is not only atrocious, but also projects women as mere objects for sexual desire. The commodification of bodies of women resulting from such concepts of cheerleading that have been justified under the banner of them existing in the United States, speaks volumes of the hankering of such culture. The space being occupied in the media by IPL has relegated many other serious issues into the background that include Price Rise, the international situation and even the new lows happening to India's national sport (and thats not cricket), Hockey. The expose of corruption ruling the roost in the administrative establishment of our game (that this was our national sport could only be realized once Chak De made it explicit!!) in an Olympic year where our team has failed to qualify brings home the realization that full degeneration has occured in our sporitng milieu as a whole. The 20-20 version has been often used to underline the need to chuk out the aged and replace them with fresh blood. The failures of Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, and Kumble (Tendulkar not playing in the 1st 4 matches for his team) has been cited as the need to infuse new passions by abandoning the old baggage!!

Cricket has changed..................not only from the white flannels to coloured clothing or from the red cherry to the white kookaburra, but also the perception and larger vision. Money has started speaking BIG!!Players feel more secure in IPL than national duties (Aussies certainly think so and even New Zealand cricket is feeling pressure of both IPL and ICL with fear of desertions!!) Players are even demanding 45 days' window in the ICC Future Tours Programme so that IPL could be conducted smoothly without any 'hitch' of being called for national duties, thus envisioning IPL as a permanent feature not just for the coming 5 years, but mcuh more than that in the future. With the players being professional, they can afford to skip even national duties to play in IPL. After all, its their choice!!But as things stand now, this seems a mere formality. The game plummeting to new depths has been often stated; however, this is not a doomsayer's prophecy. Its a general lament. However, the question is whether anyone is listening?

A Jamboree by name IPL

That Indian Cricket is going through a glorious period is something that has caught the fascination of many in this country. The team has started winning consistently outside the sub-continent. Whether it be in venues like Port of Spain, Kingston, Perth, Nottingham, or Johannesburg, where the test team has recorded comprehensive wins. The Twenty20 phenomenon too has caught on and the dreams of the young blood raising the 2011 World Cup are also being increasingly put forth with greater intensity. However amidst all this comes, a big festival by the name Indian Premier League or call it IPL.

Christened by that name, the IPL was the official version drawn up against the revolting Indian Cricket League of Subash Chandra and the Essar group. This parallel league envisioned could not take off in a fitting manner due to the efforts of the BCCI to erode any attempts to change its dictum in India's cricket scene. With the Twenty20 fever catching on in the country in the context of India's win at the Twenty20 World Cup has made IPL a permanent entity in the cricketing arena. However let me at the outset state that the game is increasingly become commercialized. A dear friend writes stating that this commercialization is nothing but fait accompli. Though I appreciate his article, for once I do not endorse the fait accompli factor at all. The Board of Control for Cricket in India or the BCCI is the most richest sports body in the country. Lalit Modi, BCCI Vice-President and the brain behind the IPL is out to 'market' or 'sell' the game.IPL is nothing but a complete sell-out to higher interests. In the name of Franchisees, big corporates have pooled in their moolah. The bidding process bares out the commercial interests running-or say, ruining the game!! The way in which players were bought exposes this fact. The corporate media was in the forefront stating disappointments as to why certain stars were sold only on the base price? Ricky Ponting expressed his belief that he could have been for a 'bit more'!! With the glamour quotient quite in vogue in this cricket crazy country, the film stars add glitz to the entire IPL!! Throwing in a Shahrukh Khan or Preity Zinta fetches more returns according to market analysts!!

The dream machine or the treasure box called IPL has also been sold out in terms of media rights, with the five years of telecast rights given to Sony television, which had also similarly pumped money to the ICC in five years to telecast World Cup and the Champions Trophy. The media has also gone to town with the fact that many small town cricketers will stand to benefit, thereby somewhere putting in the theory of trickle down. That the small town boys do have great dreams of wearing the India cap and colours is not some thing I would argue against. However, one also feels that brand endorsements along with the graded contracts system now in place in Indian cricket do benefit them. Even the domestic cricket today has a much more enhanced graded payment. Post-retirement too the players have been given many sops. Indian cricket arena has turned out to be a golden goose laying prosperity. But whose prosperity-of the corporates, brands, players or the audiences?? Thats the million dollar question!! My dear friend, though rightly points out that the entirely skewed system of IPL is part of the same system that produces handful of multi-billionaires and hundreds of farmers committing suicides!! However what is even more interesting is the fact that the person who should have been held accountable for those suicides is himself running this showbiz by being at the helm of affairs in Indian cricket. Perhaps the Great Indian Tamasha, now unravelling the maze of cricket's corporatization has more such fun-filled tales to reveal!!

(Cartoons courtesy The Hindu)