Spare us, Sony

Spare us, Sony

Did the channel have to make the sportscaster repeat the ad slogans? And the dumbing down of cricket in evidence during its telecast  of the Champions Trophy tournament matches makes one shudder at what Sony might have in store for us for the World Cup.

 
Abhimanyu  Radhakrishnan
 
The recently concluded Champions Trophy Cricket tournament in Sri Lanka was a washout in more ways than one. We may not have had an outright winner, but there was definitely an outright loser - Sony Entertainment Television (SET). The channel which has won the rights to telecast next years World Cup in South Africa took cricket programming to abysmal depths with its show ¿extra innings¿ that appeared before, after and in the innings break of the ODIs.
 
To begin with, Charu Sharma is no Harsha Bhogle though that really isn¿t his fault. In fact to sympathize, one could see how uncomfortable he was in the idiotic format that, I suppose, was thrust upon him. Its one thing for a recorded voice to accompany an ad that says "Super Sixes brought to you by so and so..". Its downright demeaning on the other hand for a sports journalist to be saying, "We¿ll get back to you Krish, after we take a look at the Kwik 4s package - Kwik ho paas to dard khalas". After the montage of boundaries, we¿re back in the studio to hear Charu repeating "Well that presentation was brought to you by Kwik, Kwik ho paas to dard khalas! Getting back to you Tony, what do you think ." In fact most of Charu¿s time was spent interrupting the experts to tell them that there was "lots more to talk about after this next package". Montages are entertaining to watch, especially when Sehwag is in this kind of form. But there is a concept known as "too much of a good thing" and SET totally overdid it. Some of the packages were ludicrous and it was obvious that they had been made for the product and not the other way around. Shouldn¿t special packages be conceived for their relevance to the game so that a company can then decide whether it deems sponsorship fit, depending on the image of its brand.
 
Now Ruby Bhatia has been singled out for so much ridicule that I almost feel sorry for her. Some feminist friends told me I was being an MCP when I commented after the opening match that Ruby stuck out like a sore thumb. "Just because she¿s a woman invading a man¿s game" was their retort. The ironic part is that the reason she was put there in the first place should raise any feminist¿s ire. It¿s quite obvious that she¿s been put there PRECISELY because of the predominantly male viewer-ship and because she¿s part of the ¿entertainment.¿ Considering her knowledge of cricket is non-existent we all know what part of the entertainment she was contributing to. India Today¿s Sharda Ugra is right up there as a top cricket writer and Star¿s Sonali Chunder  is probably the best sports newscaster in the country. The issue was never about women. It¿s about people who know something about the game. Ruby just consolidated the stereotypical image of women being ignorant of cricket by perennially behaving like the dressed-up doll watching her first cricket match. Patronising men answering her idiot questions probably negates any effort made towards destroying the stereotype, on the pitch by the Indian women¿s cricket team. Little wonder that a curvaceous damsel with an exotic name was the host of the Indiatimes SMS prediction game in the same studio. Incidentally, one SMS question asked viewers to predict the number of times a fielder would crash into the advertising hoardings. W.G. must be turning in his grave.

 
Agreed - its entertainment after all. But one must realise that Indians take their cricket seriously. SET may have a strategy of focussing on cricket and Bollywood - but do we have to be forced to watch them being merged into one? Is anyone really interested in knowing at what position Fardeen Khan fielded for his school team? Or whether Arbaaz Khan prefers watching cricket on his home theatre system versus in a pub with his friends? The same bubbly attitude which makes a Ruby a hit as a VJ makes her look like a fool in a studio. The dance sequences are great on the movie screens - but do we need to be shown bollywood clips in a cricket studio?