Keep your eye on the ball
The sports page designers for the Express seem to be dying to do something else. This will not do, if the Express wants to remain competitive.
KHELKOODKAR returns to cast a beady eye on sports coverage.
FROM THE STANDS
S R Khelkoodkar
A great deal happened in the world of sports over the last few days. In football, the finals of the Confederation Cup took place. In tennis, Wimbledon is under way. In cricket, Indian and the West Indies just finished two out of four of their ODIs. Usain Bolt, the fastest man on earth, was seen on the tracks again, and he didn’t disappoint. All in all, it’s been an exciting few days, and the papers should have a packed sports section, not to mention a weighty one, considering that the Dhoni-bashing bandwagon is still rolling. So, in this issue, three newspapers will be analysed on variety and how they have dealt with it.
Cricket was the focus of the Times of India’s main sports page. West Indies beat India in the second ODI of the series and the TOI let it be known that Dhoni admitted to having read the pitch wrong. Dhoni and rest of the team losing might be a selling story right now, with everyone upset over their recent loss in the ICC world T20, but still, let the boys rest for a while. And if they are not allowed to rest, at least back them to the fullest. A waste of space on the main sports page, or any sports page, I feel, was the story on Irfan Pathan marrying his childhood friend. Who cares? Is it going to make him play better cricket? Or will it be debilitating to his cricketing career. Outside of these dimensions, his marriage is nobody else’s concern. It shouldn’t be in the papers at all.
Brazil defended their title against the USA as the Confederation Cup champions, and they deservedly received most of the second sports page for their efforts. The Wimbledon matches were relegated to the third sports page. But that’s ok, it’s not as if the important matches have started yet.
The Hindustan Times put the result of the cricket match on their main sports page, along with the expected story on Dhoni admitting to having misread the pitch. What they did have prominently was that Yuvraj had passed the 7000 run milestone during the match, and a list of the current list of similar achievers, as it stands. 7000 runs is no mean feat, even though some other players might make it seem so, and deserves the attention it got.
Wimbledon was on the second sports page, with Federer’s win over Soderling (again) and Ivanovic’s painful pull-out featured prominently. A nice touch was the four or five quotes from some top current players on Federer and his achievements, right next to a large photograph of the great Swiss himself. One of the quotes was from Ivanovic, who, poor thing, had to retire from the tournament after sustaining a thigh injury during, or maybe before, her match against Venus Williams.
Brazil took the third sports page for their win, and Bolt came on the fourth sports page, having won the 200m and the 100m to qualify for the world championships in August.
The Indian Express, the third of the main dailies in this analysis, also put the cricket match on the first sports page. Maybe just for variety’s sake they should have put something else there. But jokes aside, hopefully this will be the last time the Indian cricket team makes the front page, short of them winning the next two matches in the series. They need a break from cricket, public scrutiny and probably each other (read Sehwag and Dhoni).
Brazil’s win as well as the Wimbledon results up till now were featured on the second sports page in quite a boring manner, I might add.
The Indian Express seems to take its lead from stodgy old dailies like the Hindu in how they present the news. There is no excitement, and there seems to be no planning in how they present their stories. If there was some interest among the page makers on the sports desk, there might be some innovation in the page design. But from what I’ve seen, the sports page designers for the Express seem to be dying to do something else. This will not do, if the Express wants to remain competitive. The rest of the newspapers have upped their game, and TV, which is the epitome of dynamism, is a constant threat to readership. Unless the Express becomes more interesting and engaging, it’s going to lose a whole lot of readers to the other dailies and most definitely to TV.
