The Ghost Of Cricket

Since there was so much of opinion floating around on the Indian Premier League (IPL), I too wanted to have one. When it comes to cricket, every Indian is expected to have an opinion and when thereis something as revolutionary as IPL touching the game, how could one beindifferent? I decided to watch the tie between the Bangalore Royal Challengers (BRC) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) last Monday (28 April) at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. The desire to acquire an opinion by watching the match 'live in concert', I should confess, was not so much to arrive on the shores of fresh insight on the league, but to generate some authentication and greater depth of argument to some already received and perceived wisdom on cricket's new avatar.

I bought a ticket worth Rs 2,725 and planted myself amidst the audience in the North Terrace (referred to as the 'BEML end' by commentators). Along with the ticket came free coupons for a meal, snack and two mugs of KF beer. I went a good two hours in advance so as to not miss the entertainment. A local orchestra was performing some racy Kannada numbers from C grade movies, desperately trying to knit a bond in the crowd and artificially forge a rivalry. And, of course, there were the cheergirls in full glory. By 'full glory' I mean there was no 'cover up' uniform that was imposed on them in other cities. I still can't decide if the Washington Redskins were out of place or the Kannada numbers. Instead of choosing between the two, it is easier to say neither of them suited the place.

As soon as I stepped into the stadium I felt nothing familiar about the place that I have been frequenting since my childhood. The strong images that have remained etched in my mind of the stadium are of the gentle spread of grass, the dewy glitter of the outfield and the calm of the little characters in their whites. There was also the aesthetic rash of the red cherry on the flannels of the pacemen. The violent rubbing of the cherry in the abdominal area for a shine was a ritual. Every kid in the neighbourhood who wanted to play cricket began by simply rubbing the ball on his knickers. That was the initiation. Even these images when they line up in my mind do so with the game's characteristic slowness. They don't rush, crowd and clash. Surprisingly, in this queue of images the crowd in the stands is missing. It is mostly the solitary groundsman painting the crease, the loneliness of the leg umpire, the long run up of speedster and the unhurried run of the twelfth man with drinks that dominate the cache. Although a team-game of11, it was still intensely about individuals.

But as I walked in on April 28, these self-drawn images were severely jolted. The eyes could never get fixed on the green centre. There was,in fact, no green centre. The eyes were perennially roving in the stands, amidst the crowds. The Chinnaswamy Stadium, which refused to change its concrete grey apparel for decades, was now a riot of colours. The pillars were painted gaudy bright. The whole thing looked disfigured. Watching the crowd appeared more important than the game. To add to this was a huge stage erected to allow performances. There was a DJ stationed permanently to juggle with the dance beats. And each time there was a six or a four or a dismissal, the music went blaring and the crowd mindlessly were on its feet. There was no savouring the stroke or the hiss of disappointment over a dismissal. It was like the baraat ina north Indian wedding, you danced and you danced till the groom got down from the horse. Some would disagree with me for offering such a honourable comparison and would draw my attention to the strobe lights. Yes indeed, I forgot, it is unfair to compare it to anorth Indian wedding but it is like a 'live band', a local euphemism that we use for dance bars, where you keep throwing money till the lights are switched off and you see no fleshy contour. After the free beer coupons were over, the bar was still open. There were chicken legs and biryani for company. It was a carnival without catharsis. A simple question: why does one have to be cooped up in a cricket stadium for such licensed revelry and consumption?

The crowds didn't concentrate and I am sure the cricketers couldn't either. The stadium noise and booing has a certain rhythm and a strange melody too. It is like the Mexican wave. There is a pattern. A player perhaps tunes himself to that since his early playing days. But to be suddenly exposed to the chaotic orchestra of Shivamani's drums on the boundary line or the DJ decibels at the end of each over and many timesin-between, coupled with the gyrating crowds and cheerleaders, what else can this cause other than distraction? It can only trigger a migraine. Then there was also an announcer with a cordless mike telling people when a four or a six was smashed. As if people couldn't see it for themselves or wasn't the umpire signaling it? But that's precisely the point, people weren't watching cricket. How can a batsman at the crease who is so sensitive to any movement near the sidescreen shut his ears to the cacophonous attack on the boundary line and beyond? If they are keeping quiet about it then it is their greed that is telling them to do so.

IPL is being promoted as fun and that is how people are treating it. If it was branded and marketed as serious cricket then perhaps people would have taken it seriously. Just imagine if a cricketer like Rahul Dravid had to use an extreme metaphor like 'bikini cricket' to define T20. There is a perceptible aggression among the sponsors to redefine the game and in the process they are shifting the focus away from thegame itself. A friend who accompanied me on April 28 put it best: "There is more focus on the theme song for instance than cricketing atmosphere. I don't blame the T20 format per se, it is important to constantly reinvent the game but the primary concern should be to ensure that you don't dilute the game in the process. You can have cricket and entertainment in the 80:20 ratio or even 70:30 ratio, but IPL is trying to keep it at 50:50 and that is where the problem lies." They want to quickly recover their investments, or else why would Vijay Mallya call his team 'Royal Challengers,' after one of his liquor brands? Why would he name every nook and corner of the stadium after one liquor brand or the other that he owns? There is an overkill happening.

Probably now Mallya realises that the team name and the Redskins are not creating an association with the city and perhaps as an afterthought allowed the singing of Kannada numbers on April 28 and also got a Kannada actress, Ramya, to create a bonding from the boundary line. I am pretty sure they were not looking for the Kannada element in their branding of the team when they began. The 'Royal' and the local after all don't blend. And something funny was that Ramya seeking crowd support for Royal Challengers was wearing a pitch yellow polo-shirt, which was the colour of the rival team, Chennai Supper Kings. So much for the brand gyan. The slide and the compromise from Redskins to Ramya could not be missed. And where were Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble, the local lads? Dravid had allowed Mark Boucher to do most of the field setting from behind the stumps and had also reluctantly walked seven down to bat. Kumble was not in the playing eleven. Boucher's enthusiasm on the field beat that of his captain. I really wonder if Dravid and Kumble, the acknowledged gentlemen, respect this version of the game atall. I hope there'll soon be a sting operation on this.

Amdist all the colour, chaos and confusion the only corner of peace in the stadium was sitting right behind me. It was a lady, perhaps in her 30s, dressed in an immaculate white saree with a blouse running down her arms like our MadamePresident's. She, if I am not mistaken, was a member of the Brahma Kumari congregation. I don't know if I can call her a sanyasin. All through the match she sat sipping a glass of water and ate nothing. Her stoic presence was in complete contrast to all that was happening around her. She did not once frown at the unruliness of her fellow-spectators. Her smile was fixed like that on a figurine. I wondered if she was the ghost of good old cricket?