On the back-foot: The PR machine behind Indian cricket

Here's an activity for you. Following are five statements, made in press conferences, books, or on social media by five international cricketers in the last five years. You have to guess which one of these came from an Indian.

“Everyone has been asked this and it’s just simple. We have played crap. I said the same thing last week and it’s the same.”

“When I’m looking at my Instagram and seeing innocent kids, videos of them dying, passing away, that’s what hit me the hardest."

“Let me be clear: I don’t think for one minute that they were coming from a racist perspective. I think they were insensitive and lacked the imagination and empathy to put themselves in the other person’s shoes."

"This makes me really mad. Completely unfair and very poorly timed. Why are you trying to drag our game down as well? Happy to discuss this with you in person instead of you just throwing these comments out there."

"When will the BS stop?! I'm not surprised by my brother's non-selection, but with the recent changes in [country name] cricket management, I held onto a bit of hope for the better. This is NOT acceptable, and I just can't make sense of it! So here are my burning questions: What's the criteria for [country name] team selection? Surely, it can't be solely based on performance?"

If you've guessed the answer already, you know what we are going to talk about. If you have not, the answer is none.

The first is Ben Stokes's assessment of England at the 2023 World Cup; the second is Usman Khawaja speaking about a war far away from his country; the third is Ross Taylor speaking about racism in the New Zealand dressing room.

It is followed by Alyssa Healy's reply to Sanjay Manjrekar's post on X questioning the Australia women's team's on-field 'grace', and the last is Dwayne Bravo criticizing the Cricket West Indies (CWI)'s selection process.

The common theme in these comments is emotion. It's a trait that for Indian cricketers - mostly, but not limited to, men - has lately only been visible in stump-mic chats, which are also picked up by accident.

It's not that Indian cricketers don't feel frustration, grief, or anger. So why do their press conferences and interviews have the same diplomatic tone? With almost identical phrases? It's a personal choice, yes, but how do all of them prefer to be quiet on socio-political subjects, just like machines meant for a specific task?

"Our media and our audiences are very different [compared to other countries]," an athelete manager who has worked with multiple Indian and international cricketers, told Sportskeeda, but did not wish to be named.

"If athletes and cricketers say something that can be twisted and taken in the wrong way, it can hamper their careers. I don’t think they are very, very diplomatic. And when it comes to talking safely — that’s because the stakes are very, very high. Historically, we have seen that KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya’s interview with Koffee with Karan," the expert said.

Hardik Pandya made sexist and misogynist remarks on the chat show which led to him and KL Rahul being sent back from an ongoing international tour. They were suspended for two weeks. And apart from fines worth ₹20 lakh each, Hardik also lost some sponsorship deals overnight.

The expert also said that the BCCI and other boards also give a list of do's and don'ts to all contracted players regarding their media interactions.

"It’s like any job. If I am an employee of a company, I have to follow the company guidelines. So because of those reasons, you as a journalist or people feel that they are diplomatic," they added.

These dos and don'ts are also called 'media training'. It includes everything from professionalism to managing tough questions during interviews, conferences, and impromptu interactions with the media.

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An inter-connected ecosystem

India has a large number of talent agencies. Athletes from most sports hire them to bring brand sponsorships. The agencies negotiate and secure deals and make money by taking a commission.

"[Talent management and sports PR] became mainstream in India, I think, a few years ago," the expert stated. "I don’t know the exact time but I think the IPL made a lot of difference... Even the athletes who were not playing for India started making a lot of money in the IPL and that’s where it came into the picture a lot. Athletes thought, ‘I want to be marketed in a certain way, I want brands, I want my core audience to be associated with me in a certain way.’"

These brands want athletes to be ideal and inspiring people, who their customers would see endorsing a product and would want to buy it themselves. In Hardik's case, his sponsors saw him being labeled as a misogynist and had to pull out.

Agencies, thus, can’t afford the image or the 'brand value' of athletes being affected. This means socio-political subjects are off the table.

"Players don’t get a say in it," Aakanksh Sreenath, the Head of Content and Athlete Talent Scouting at Square The One, said. "We have told our players to not talk about political things... It's simple -- their fans are from every political party. If someone says something in favor of Party A, they might lose Party B fans."

And brands don't just come on board for on-field performances. Apart from the bat and shoes, there's not much space for companies to advertise themselves during a match. So, they pay athletes money to promote them on their social media.

Therefore, managers and agencies also handle the athletes' entire social media communication. Everything you see from photos, training videos, reels, and even the witty and funny memes that make you think, "Well, this is a new side of this cricketer, haha", are generally made by their managers.

Managers make strategies after considering the athletes' demands and studying their personalities to create a certain image that resonates best with the target audience. This, in turn, helps the cricketer, the brands, and the agencies.

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Where PR comes into the picture

For every cricketing controversy that divides opinions, for example, Hardik replacing Rohit Sharma as Mumbai Indians' captain, the abbreviation 'PR' is thrown on social media like seeds to a homing of pigeons.

PR, or Public Relations companies are the ones tasked to maintain a positive image of their clients among the audience.

They, simply, try to highlight their qualities and hide their negative traits using carefully managed press conferences, interviews on specific topics, hosting events, overseeing social media, and so on. They also handle their clients' communication with the media to keep them in journalists' good books.

PR becomes the most important at a time of a 'crisis' like event that suddenly puts an athlete under a lot of backlash. Here, PR looks to craft messages of empathy and transparency, coordinate with media and brands, manage social media responses, and work on long-term reputation restoration.

Sometimes it’s done by taking the challenge head-on and trying to shift the narrative back to positive, other days it’s done by studied silence.

Although the roles of a talent management agency and a PR company are different, some aspects overlap. So in India, while some talent management agencies hire PR companies to manage the communication side of things, some agencies prefer doing it themselves.

According to Udita Dutta, a former journalist, PR expert, and the founder principal of India’s only Sports and Esports specialized Communication Agency, Artsmith Concepts & Vision, this gap and lack of understanding of the importance of a specialist PR agency also plays a role in cricketers/sportspersons being diplomatic.

"It’s the mistake of the talent agency that manages the players," she said. "Most tell them, ‘Don’t say anything that creates controversies’. Players get psyched. Abroad, a talent agency take help from communication experts to manage his communication. Here, everyone wants to be an expert. They tell them, ‘Either speak like a way 'ki chaaa jao' (so you shine) or just play it down."

While athlete management and marketing rapidly gained popularity with the IPL, specialized Sports PR came into the mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During lockdowns, not only did most sports teams and athletes' communication shift exclusively online but there was no direct connection between the media and the athletes either because journalists weren't allowed on the ground.

"We would set up virtual press conferences -- which would ideally happen in-person if Covid was not there -- we would do it virtually over Zoom, we would get player interviews done over Zoom, " Sakshi Shah, a communications consultant at WordsWork, a company which made a big shift towards specialized Sports PR during the pandemic, said.

"And secondly, we would help [journalists] with a lot of quote copies. It became [necessary] because there was of lack of resources on the end of journalists also," she added.

Although virtual press conferences are still a norm, quote copies, aren't as popular anymore because access to athletes has been restored somewhat.

But they still play the role of a wall between journalists and stakeholders during big announcements. For example, for Hardik's promotion at Mumbai Indians, media organizations were sent quote copies with vetted and cleanly written comments to use as news.

It replaced a press conference where reporters could've asked direct and important questions to the new captain, the old captain, or the head coach.

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Navigating the grey areas

The communication between talent management agencies and players/teams works both ways. Agencies usually reach out to clients to build a relationship and sign them. More recently, young cricketers have also started approaching agencies, usually just before an IPL auction, for branding and promotion.

But promotion often becomes a grey area in this complicated system of journalists, player agents, and PR communication specialists. It is vulnerable to misuse and vested interests taking over the integrity of the sport and journalism.

For instance, what if a player with less skill gets more interviews and promotions because an agent likes her more and asks a journalist for a favor? After all, unlike journalism, talent marketing, and PR don't have university-taught ethics. It's just the individual and the brand's moral compass that defines their direction.

According to Shiv Dhawan, also a former journalist, and founder of Square the One, agents contacting journalists for a promotion 'mostly doesn't happen'. Generally, journalists reach out to a player's agent after being impressed by their game or getting to know about them through an agency's social media handle.

Dhawan said most agencies in India work in an 'ethical' manner where they 'recommend' players to journalists by sharing their videos or stats and leave it to their judgment whether to go ahead with arranging an interview or not.

Social media is often also concerned with whether the former cricketers and pundits' opinions they read on X are by an agency that wants to promote a player. But a lot of agents told Sportskeeda that they haven't seen any such thing in the industry yet and the opinions were "solely" their own.

That's not true for the influencers or 'fanfluencers', though. Over the last few years, social media has seen a massive boom in the following of aggregators and photo-sharing accounts. These, again unlike journalists, aren't answerable to companies and are free to promote a particular player, team, or product of their choice.

Although all professionals that Sportskeeda spoke to for this piece denied any first-hand experience in the scenario, some confirmed that marketing agencies do strike deals with them for the promotion of players, franchises, and competitions. These could be monetary or a barter for travel, access, and so on.

But, when cricketers promote a product on social media, they have to mention that the post is an "ad". Influencers don't have to do any such thing and there's no way to tell whether they are paid or not. Isn't that a matter of concern?

"It is," Dutta said. "That’s where there is a grey area in conversation when it comes to advertisement vs content. There’s been a shift in the influencer business. Brands pick up nano influencers more then ever instead of big ones. You’ll have a natural propensity to believe it because it’s not an ad."

And what about fake accounts? Can't a marketing agency just build a thousand X accounts and post in favor of their client to push a trend?

"It can be done, but most Indian agencies don't do it because they have so many things to do, so many aspects to focus on that they don't have time to manage extra accounts and do these things," Dhawan answered.

Dutta said that even if some agencies tried to do something like this they'd be caught. So, instead, they make it "more genuine" by promoting or backing fan pages. As they grow and amplify a player's positive image, it automatically contributes to the brand.

But the same fan pages contribute to the toxic environment on social media. Where every simple opinion even remotely criticizing a cricketer on the minutest of issues is flooded with vile comments. Even simple posts of families of athletes aren't spared in these nonsensical 'fan wars'.

Shah said PR agents monitor it and respond by trying to enforce a positive image of their players without pulling anyone else own.

"I have worked on multiple accounts, the objective, even from the clients’ end, and the brief has always been about promoting a positive narrative and reinforcing positivity for the client," she said. "It has never been about putting an opposite team or player down. And even if we feel that it has been the case, somehow, by fans, or by the players, we try to make sure that it's neutralized or it’s made positive in some way."

Finally, a small section also believes in theories that PR can influence national selections. It seems convenient too -- if the agent wants their client to get more deals, why shouldn't they use all the might to lobby for a place in the 11?

“These people don’t have that much power," Sreenath said, with a chuckle.

Dhawan chipped in:

"I don't know if it happens or not but the most influence an agent can have on a selection is through sending videos and stats of their clients to scouts. But the final call on giving the athlete a trial or not is still not theirs to make."

Building bridges

The IPL is growing in brand value, stakes are getting higher, deals are being proposed to younger athletes, and it's all moving towards football-like transfer arrangements. With it, management and PR agencies are only welding themselves further into the system with more bragging rights in communication with journalists.

Most agents that Sportskeeda has interacted with for interviews with their clients so far don't interfere with our editorial freedom. Some like to be present during calls with athletes or want to see a draft copy before it's published.

In rare cases, agents exercise their rights as a player's representative and guard them against answering something that could put them in a bad light. Generally, young players are happier to speak from the heart in interviews, which gets rarer as they see the money involved and realize its risks.

Some journalists, meanwhile, feel it necessary to approach agents because they can't reach athletes unless they are present on the ground, which is only allowed if they are from an accredited organization. Sometimes, if a journalist reaches out to the athlete online, they divert them to the agent themselves.

Overall, the ecosystem is too vast to generalize as good or bad for the sport. Most professionals that Sportskeeda spoke to said although most agencies in India work ethically, there are some "bad apples".

They said some talent marketing agencies push their agendas through interviews, like for example, squeezing in a subtle promotion of another client in an interview.

There's no way to find out if journalists have a personal relationship with an influential manager to do these agenda-driven stories in return for something else either. Journalists, after all, aren't exactly beacons of virtue.

In fact, one reason why athletes have felt the need to hire agencies to proofread their communication is their bad experiences with reporters using their words out of context and distorting narratives. And this whole tedious process isn't easy on those around whom the system is built.

"Sometimes the atheletes also feel saturated and burst off," Sreenath said.

The lack of overall trust isn't new and won't be sorted out overnight. At some levels, it's bigger than the sport.

Ironically, an industry hinging on communication is lacking that itself. Surely, journalists, PR professionals, and athlete managers can get together in one Zoom meeting and discuss what everyone wants. Just so there can be a balance between brand value and the athletes seeming like relatable people instead of more and more Godly ones?

It may or may not bring a breakthrough. But it would at least be better than asking young fans to follow the wham-bam of T20s and then running the sport on the back foot because everyone fears getting out.