Cricket vs kebabs: guess which won?

Cricket vs kebabs: guess which won?

 

  Notable, during the recent cricket series, was the extraordinarily banal print reporting.

 

TCA Srinivasa Raghavan 

Of the many things that strike many people during recent cricket series, two things appear to have escaped everyone’s notice. One is the extraordinarily banal print reporting. The other is the number of women reporters. The two may or may not be related. I don’t know -- probably not, because the men were not all that great, either. 

Where print reporting is concerned, it is true that the superb coverage by TV has made the job very difficult. TV commentators, all ex-international level players of huge experience, leave nothing uncovered.  

But that surely cannot be an excuse because this is true of most other areas. Politics and economics are perhaps the most visible instances. TV provides excellent verbal coverage in other areas as well. Yet, print competes well in all these areas. So why doesn’t this happen in cricket? 

Consider the reportage when India went into the final at Lahore in the recently concluded Indo-Pak series. The main question in everyone’s mind was about the bowling strategy. Would it be the good old fashioned, plain-vanilla stump-to-stump, line and length stuff or would something more adventurous be attempted? On the morning of the match not a single print reporter discussed the likely strategy. In the event, the former is what it turned out to be, with remarkably good results. What were our dear colleagues in Lahore doing? Digesting kilos of kebabs? 

Take another example. Readers would have liked to know the broad field placing strategy that India would adopt. True, this can vary from batsman to batsman but there is always a general plan to which bowlers bowl. Not one reporter even mentioned this, even though fielding has become such an important part of the game.   

Or, not one reporter told us about the sort of batting Laxmipati Balaji and Irfan Pathan are capable of. After their first successful forays, we needed a backgrounder, both on their abilities and their temperaments. None was forthcoming, with the result that everyone was taken by surprise.  

This was a very serious lapse because this is the first time India has tail-enders who don’t draw away towards square-leg from the fast-bowlers. Not even from someone as fast as even Shoaib Akhtar. This is perhaps the most amazing change in the team, overshadowing everything else. Yet none of our print colleagues could be bothered. 

Take yet another example. Pakistani umpires have been the subject of much controversy in the past. In India, they have a very poor image. This image was reinforced before the tour started when there were many recaps of India’s previous tours. In particular, the LbW was singled out as an important weapon in the Pakistani armour - always say yes to the home team, and always say no the visiting one.  

But there was no reporting worth the name on the background and credibility of the Pakistani umpires. This was a very serious reporting lapse because the truth is that they performed better than the non-Pakistani ones. This too is a very important change. But clearly the lure of kebabs was too great.  

Another example: Not one Indian correspondent reported the late evening dew at Lahore. This could not be a state secret. Any club-level cricketer would have mentioned it. But did our heroes bother? 

One can go one and one but the point is made. 

Could there be some reason, other than kebabs, for the lapses?  Reason, mind you, not excuses. It is important to make this distinction because often lazy reporters will say that access was denied. While this may be largely true of the Indian cricket team, it is still not a reason. Access is a problem in all areas of journalism. 

If all the likely reasons were arranged in the declining order of importance, the usual answer would emerge: incompetence and favouritism at the sports desk. To date, sports desks are run as independent principalities, which are rarely subject to the normal disciplines of a newspaper. 

Nothing illustrates this better than the idea of sending women to cover what is entirely a male game. It is no coincidence that only India has female cricket reporters. There is nothing MCP-ish about this. It is what it is.  

If you send a young female to cover the game, the players will clam up even when they are allowed to meet you or when you run into them. Most of them are shy youngsters, often from conservative middle and lower middle class families. They simply cannot communicate with women, not about cricket certainly. You have to have played some decent level of cricket to know how most cricketers communicate. Sometimes the ball swings only because the air is so thick with four-letter words.  

The inference is a rather dreary one: sports editors have started taking readers for granted. My advice to them: don’t.

 

The writer is Consulting Editor, Business Standard.

Contact: tcasr@hotmail.com