To those who cheered the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) decision to ban the insufferably unsporting Sourav Ganguly for two Tests after his shenanigans with over rates in a one-day game against Pakistan, the inexplicable overturning of that decision before South Africa’s tour was simply more depressing confirmation of the extent to which Indian television money has a chokehold on the game.
Former England captain Michael Atherton, exchanging his usual brand of eloquence for another no less insightful, declared the ICC’s defence of its action (that the overturning of the decision demonstrated its independence) to be ‘absolute crapâ€, and joined the chorus of those who see an Asian cartel buying the ICC to do its nationalistic and financial bidding.
But such protests come far too late. It is said that Ali Bacher introduced the idea of cricketing television rights to tycoon Jagmohan Dalmiya, but whether this is true, the fact remains that India has bought cricket and has been enjoying its new plaything for the past five years.
The question, then, is not how to wrest back the game from the country’s media moguls, but rather how to approach the changes and adaptations — both cricketing and social — that are inevitable in a future dictated by New Delhi and Dubai.
This isn’t selling out: the ICC did that for us long ago. It is simply a way of negotiating a new and lasting reality for the international game, in such a way that it is not irreparably damaged or destroyed in the hands of a nation liable to love it to death.
There is a story, repeated on fairly good authority, of an Indian shepherd high up in the foothills of the Himalayas who scrimped and starved and saved enough money to have his life’s savings turned into a tiny gold statuette of a cricketer. He then put this on an altar in a temple, with prayers for an Indian Test victory, and walked away.
This man wasn’t a fan. He wasn’t a supporter. He was a fanatic. He was unhinged. Even football in its wildest ecstasies, in steamy Uruguay or the alleys of Madrid, would never elicit anything vaguely resembling this devotion from its followers. If other nations love cricket, then Indians lust after it.
And this is why the first half of this century is certain to see steady but immense changes, in standards, in rules, and in reportage. Already the shady practices of pitch-doctoring and of entrenching home-town advantage have become standard, as other countries happily retaliate for the treatment dished out to them on the subcontinent. The ICC will squawk about standardising the quality of pitches, but it is merely a paid piper now: future batsmen are doomed to dance to the tune of whichever star bowler the home team is fielding.
Certainly the game seems ripe for a huge injection of Bollywood melodrama, that obsession with the personal that has fed football in England for decades. The Indian media are a major institution, offering commentary that ranges from the mildly interesting to the rabidly amateur; but nearly all Indian journalists share a peculiar sentimentality, one part Victorian patriarch, the other part Barbara Cartland, that turns every cricket match into a fight between twin brothers, both with great hair and lots of money, over the virtue of the beautiful seamstress of straightened circumstances and pneumatic bosoms.
In short, the game is romantic once more, and as such, objectivity has gone out the window. The solidity of the game’s laws and conditions will be next. When individual celebrity outshines tradition — especially muted traditions based on conservatism and understatement — superficiality is bound to follow: 20-over internationals, two-on-two slog-offs against bowling machines. Vaudeville is well and good, but shows end up needing scripts, and in cricket the kind of investors who fund those scripts are more familiar with concrete slippers than plot coherence.
Of course the irony is that Atherton’s sentiments would have been incomprehensible to most Indian media consumers, who, combining 19th century jingoism with a peculiar brand of nationalistic paranoia, are convinced that most, if not all, foreign match referees and officials are conspiring against them.
But if India doesn’t look after its toy, and let us have a turn now and then, they might just be proved right.