Ducking Beamers: A Cricket Blog

Harsha Bhogle has written a characteristically perceptive piece on what we can do now to improve cricket commentary. The most radical suggestion is to offer viewers the “no-commentary” option; that is, just enjoy the visuals and graphics without an annoying man injecting his interpretation (or, more typically, silly anecdotes) into your ears. Here are some general thoughts:

1) I am not a fan of the Indian commentary team (except Bhogle, of course), but I will always leave the commentary on when I watch a cricket game. I don’t know why this is; I think we’ve been conditioned to have both sound and sight together (and by ‘we,’ I mean kids born in the 1980s era, not you old radio-only fogies). Do other people feel this way? Would you prefer no-commentary to insipid commentary?

2) Bhogle argues that cricket viewers deserve more choice, since they are, ultimately, the consumers funding the whole enterprise. So if some, like Jarrod Kimber, want nerdy cricket talk, they should be able to get it; and if others want Danny Morrison, they should deserve to die in hell. (My words, not Bhogle’s.) This is part of the overall drive to customization that the Internet has unleashed (the “Daily Me,” as it’s known), and it’s good in that it seemingly empowers particular niche preferences, but it’s bad in that it does, in a sense, fracture the community. Didn’t we all once upon a time fall in love with Richie Benaud and hold his voice as the standard to be met? [Some may argue that the universal Benaud-love was hardly so, and instead catered to a particularly powerful community -- old white guys -- who had the power and now don't.]

3) Bhogle seems to think that because the visuals have gotten better (technology wise), the sounds should inevitably follow. That’s not quite right. There are plenty of professions that suffer from Baumol’s cost disease — the famous example is that it takes just as much time and effort for a quartet to play a Beethoven piece now as it did in the 18th century. No, one of the great attractions of commentary is that it is indelibly human. Commentators, as we know, make mistakes; they say annoying things; they go off on useless tangents, and they are also, quite often, insightful. Cricket telecasts have become increasingly artificial — the graphics, the silly 3D replications of a bowler, Hawkeye…Why not resist the perfectionist drive of technology and retain the flaws of the commentator?

M.S. Dhoni has been giving some pretty interesting interviews lately, a nice contrast to his usual, “Well, of course, [insert useless, inoffensive, cricket player talk here].” I particularly liked this note about his future plans:

“I can’t become a television commentator. I would not be able to remember all those statistics and will have problems in matters relating to techniques,” he added.

Two points: 1) Why has commentary become so obsessed with statistics? There is this idea that all these numbers will yield some insight into what players are trying to do (i.e., their strategy), but there’s plenty of nonsense stuff — like wagon wheels. Has anyone looked at a wagon wheel and discerned any insight? Unless you come across a rare innings in which a batsman has decided he will absolutely not score anything on one side, wagon wheels just don’t tell you all that much. I’m also relatively neutral about pitch bowling maps: yes, on several occasions, they will show a bowler’s erratic ways, but most of the time, they show bowlers hitting the “good” or “full” lengths. Big deal.

I recognize that silly statistics — “Record sixth wicket partnership between two Jharkhand players for India in India against Australia at Rajkot” — are a long and respected part of cricket discourse, but is the emphasis on “analysis” as old? Wasn’t there a time when commentators preferred to deal in narratives, characters, and plots, rather than numbers? Say what you will, but I like Harsha Bhogle; I think he’s still up there with the best commentators precisely because he knows he needs to tell a story. The TestMatchSofa kids are similarly intriguing because they seem to resist the statistical nonsense; they treat their players like villains and heroes — and are more than happy to let us know (in the foulest of language) what they think.

2) It’s impossible not to read Dhoni’s statement about techniques as a pointed critique of commentators’ know-it-all tone. Dhoni seems to be saying, “I have a shit technique, yes, but I am also India’s best ODI batsman and enjoy a more than sufficient Test average.” Certain commentators — Sunil Gavaskar, definitely — act as if they wrote the cricket textbook, and they delight in pointing out players who violate the orthodoxy. Pedantry is terrible, and cricket pedantry is the most terrible.

I’ve long been a fan of Devanshu Mehta’s blog Deep Backward Point, but I am an ever bigger fan of his side project, Teesra. It started off as a sort of “What if The Onion covered cricket?” but it’s now something more. Devanshu understands that cricket blogs — and blogs in general — are outdated; we prefer tweets, gifs, and images, and in many ways, they are often better in the service of a good argument. For an excellent example, take a look at Devanshu’s post on the Dominica Test match, in which he nicely weaves together statistics, graphics, and text in one compelling narrative.

I’m aware of the irony of using a blog to condemn blogging, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. I think there’s a proper place for people like Kartikeya who need thousands of words to diligently analyze a particular issue. And there’s demand for that! But blogging, at least done traditionally, also tends to encourage a top-down relationship between author and the reader. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (I bow down everyday to my Old Batsman shrine), but it’s not taking full advantage of the Internet’s possibilities. Too much of cricket is top-down, and that’s a trend that will likely worsen as more corporate money floods the market. For too long, the reigning image of the cricket fan has involved him/her sitting idly in front of a television screen. But now we too have the power to create our own stories, to remix our sport, and to make it ours. If that means dressing up like a big bear (a la The Two Chucks), or turning Chris Gayle’s power into a series of GIFs, or approaching the ICC cricket rules as a lawyer would, or reaching out to cricket greats and interviewing them for a podcast series, or getting a bunch of friends together to provide your own brand of commentary…then, you’re doing something right and great. This is our generation’s pitch invasion.

The chief attraction of Harsha Bhogle is his outsider nerdiness. As a non-athlete, he stands alone among cricket greats and legends in the studio. In doing so, he gives the cricket fan a vicarious thrill: if he can talk to established cricketers, so can I. By being so inclusive, Bhogle is a creature of the rise of televised cricket, which expanded the boundaries of the cricket world — a very clubby circuit, once upon a time — to include a currently impossibly large cast of characters. And whereas others prefer to talk technique, Bhogle possesses the gift of narrative. See, for e.g., this:

Again, the focus on stories and characters — Rahane, student; Dravid, guru; Rahane at the bottom of the mountain; Dravid at the top; Rahane’s backstory and his slow rise to fame — exemplifies Bhogle’s everyman appeal. More than most, he understands that cricket is a complicated game that often defies analysis. Rather than explain it, he talks about experiencing it; what matters to him chiefly isn’t strategy or the mechanics of swing bowling (though he no doubt understands both), but the humanity behind the spectacle. If you get the chance, watch his Step Out W/ Harsha YouTube series — unlike Mark Nicholas, who often comes across as rehearsed, Bhogle’s earnestness never seems to dim. I’m a fan.

This is part of (an otherwise great) guest post from Satadru Sen:

When the Indian cricket team returns from Australia in a few weeks, the Customs and Immigration officers at Delhi or Bombay or wherever their plane lands should give the players, along with Duncan Fletcher, a good public beating. Then Srikkanth should be summoned to the airport to receive his own thrashing, for screwing up the bowling attack.

Again, I understand the anger and frustration, but calling for public beatings when those events are all too common in India isn’t necessarily kosher. Recall Dhoni’s house being stoned during the 2007 World Cup? Or the various effigy burnings that usually occur when India does badly?

I was struck recently by how Gautam Gambhir described public criticism of the team. He said: “We have given the opportunity to people back home to give whatever they are giving [us].”  It’s a strange way to construct a sentence, but it belies the siege mentality the Indian cricket team has to adopt. If we do badly, he seems to be saying, we give these people the rope to hang us with.