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Magazine
MEDIA MATTERS
A different game
SEVANTI NINAN
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The boycott by the international news agencies underlines the greed factor associated with the IPL.
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Photo. Bhagya Prakash K
Serious entertainment: The inaugural function of the DLF IPL.
When a newspaper owns the cricket team that is playing, expect its reporting to reflect that. The Deccan Chronicle was sore about the Deccan Chargers going down the first time they played in this tournament. “Poor lights, ump
iring errors and a substandard pitch contrived to subdue a spirited fight by the Deccan Chargers in their opening IPL match against the Kolkata Knight Riders at an erratic Eden Gardens here on Sunday.” The theme running through the story was that if the lights hadn’t gone out, the outcome of the match would have been different — it gave the home team time to regroup. The paper quoted David Hussey saying as much.
If you read the Telegraph the same day, the account was completely different — the high point of their story was Shah Rukh Khan leading a rousing song on the grounds after the light went out, that helped keep spirits up — Korbo, lorbo, jeetbo re. (will do, will fight, will win). Funny DC never mentioned any of that when so much of IPL is about the atmospherics.
Partial to its own
On Friday morning, the day the tournament started, the Deccan Chronicle was sounding upbeat and a trifle partial to its own. “The Deccan Chargers, with devastating batsmen such as Symonds, Adam Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs and Shahid Afridi in their ranks, appear to be the most menacing of the squads and should go all the way.” It also came out with a special supplement called Deccan Chargers.
The day this column is being written the Chargers are to meet the Delhi Daredevils on home ground, in Hyderabad, and the paper is fondly predicting a run feast that will favour its own. “With a convincing win against Rajasthan Royals under their belts, the Delhi team are likely to get a trifle overconfident, an area the Chargers would like to exploit as they push for points.” Inside its city supplement there are more rah rah stories. (“City charged up for the big fight”, and “Here come the Chargers”.)
You could argue though that is being catty and the DC is doing no more than attempting to whip up the loyalty for the home team that its readers should have. After all, just imagine for a moment how far the Times of India would have gone, had it invested in the Mumbai Indians rather than in the stocks of sundry future advertisers as it is doing through its Private Treaties scheme. Its masthead would doubtless have been transformed every time its team played a match.
Cricket has become rather central to the livelihood of India’s media. Nobody was more desperate to drop the fight with Lalit Modi over the Indian Premier League’s media coverage rules than the TV channels. What would they fill all those 7.30 p.m. shows with? The Editors Guild was still protesting on their behalf until the day before the matches began but then the matter disappeared from the papers, having been resolved just in the nick of time through last minute negotiations between IPL and the News Broadcasters Association.
However, the hoopla on domestic television obscures the fact that there is an international news agency boycott. . The News Media Coalition (NMC), an industry umbrella organisation which includes Associated Press, Reuters, and Getty Images, is boycotting IPL due to the restrictions which prohibit them distributing photographs of the tournament to cricket websites. A fleeting visit to Cricinfo.com confirms that websites have paid the price for this. When Cricinfo uses photographs, they are either pictures of Indian newspapers ablaze with cricket photos, or file shots of some cricketer. And there is no ball by ball coverage, only news roundups of what’s going on in the most talked about current cricket series.
Serious resentment
The boycott has helped to underscore the greed factor associated with this tournament. Headlined The Times, U.K.: “Lights, cameras, dancing girls and cash?” Its correspondent couldn’t resist a snipe: “Should the worry beads of our sporting community really be preoccupied by a 20-overs final in Bombay between two Indian cities with a scattering of foreign mercenaries?” And there have been nasty lobs about the foreign players who ducked subcontinental tours in the past “holding their noses as they collect big money for a few hours’ work”. And about Lalit Modi and his consorts taking “the next generation of Packer cricket, Twenty20, and import[ing] it as a plaything for the newly rich of India”. (Fazeer Mohammed, Trinidad and Tobago Express.) Wow. Serious bile there.
Compared to the gush here, the external view is jaundiced. Commentator Philip Derriman in the Sydney Morning Herald, talking about the wisdom of money coughed up by Channel Ten in Australia to broadcast IPL matches, wondered about the quality of the picture. “Some maintain pictures from India are always a little grainy, although nobody knows why. Air pollution is one suggested explanation.”
Evidently there is a lot in our messy country that importing players and cheerleaders cannot allay.
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