Cricket, Television style

Over the years, cricket has gained enormous popularity and became one of the most popular sports of India and other countries. This high status of the game has surely done a lot good to the game but the worst part is that it has turned the game into a mere television product which is being sold to the highest bidder, and for this reason the special features of the game, like the contest between bat and ball, in the end cannot be enjoyed by the viewers.

The main reason for this problem is the increase in number of sports channels. Nowadays, the overseas matches are also broadcasted by the sports channels round the clock. Thus, a huge sum of money is spent by them for buying the telecast rights of the tournament or series and showing it all over the country. To make a profit, they took a few steps which ended up being disastrous for cricket lovers and also for the sport.

The television channels increased the running time of the one-day internationals and twenty-twenty matches. They sold a part of the match for showing those commercials and advertisements and started earning big sums of money. At first, after every over bowled there were advertisements; thus depriving the viewers of the action that was taking place in between two overs. This was very irritating for the cricket fans. Then they took things to the next level – advertisements after every wicket-fall. This was the most irksome thing for the cricket fanatics. They only got to see the real time action of the dismissal and a replay of around 10 seconds after the advertisements. The replays from different angles and slow-motion closeups were not shown to the viewers. No more could they enjoy the fall of the wicket or judge by themselves if the umpire’s decision was correct or wrong. In the present day, even when the ball or bat is changed or the ball is lost in the crowd, advertisements come onto the screen, making the viewers more annoyed, more irritated and more disappointed.

Ten Cricket, the channel which is one of the best in this business, was served a notice by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Department for not showing the viewers even some part of a match between India and South Africa in the year of 2010.

Not only cricket, football has been the victim of these terrible media-men. Once they wanted to break the game into 4 halves instead of 2 halves in India. But the sports officials rejected this request quite smartly and prevented the destruction of the game.

These advertisements, commercials and the media’s news reporters have exposed the personal life of a player immensely in front of the viewers and they have given the players a celebrity status, for which the cricketing skills of some cricketers have suffered a lot in the future. Secondly, the relation between a cricketer and a sport’s fan has the potential to be a friendly and a very close one but due to the celebrity status given to the players by these media men, there was no chance for the formation of this relation and the future hopes have been completely ruined by them and news reporters.

Hence, these sports channels, news reporters and the advertisements featuring the players have ruined the environment of the gentlemen’s game. Maybe there will be a day when, after every boundary hit by the batsmen, there will be a couple of advertisements and the viewers will be forced to watch a small part of the real match due to those heavy interruptions. All this will decrease the interests of people towards cricket by a great deal.

Let’s hope this changes so that the viewers and the cricket lovers can once again cherish every moment of the game and enjoy the matches like they did years back.