Osstrayeelien for cricket. A new version of the game, unlike the one we were watching on the telly. Instead of team scores taking up permanent residence in the top right hand corner of the screen - so that you could always applaud India's latest, deplorable performance - there's the recorded speed of the bowlers' balls hanging some where between their legs! Swear. It happens to fast bowlers only - and Anil Kumble who's that rare creature, a fast-medium spinner. Then, there's this graphic which indicates where the bowler pitched the ball and how often. In percentages. Very hi-tech; very interesting. Quite.And very irritating: who cares whether Shoaib bowls at 200kmph and Warne at 50kmph, if Shane collects the wickets and Akhtar only the runs?These innovations join other cute tricks: pieces of a pie indicate where the batsman hit the ball, chalked lines where the batsman should have hit it; simulations indicate whether or not it's LBW and useless statistics how many balls the batsman faced, blocked,hit for one, two, three..So long as our boys score runs, do we care a kangaroo how they compile them?You know what it going to happen next, don't you? The game is about to desert the cricket pitch and shift indoors onto the computer. Which will have analysed every aspect of the game- pitch type, player profile, wind direction - to the nth degree and encoded every conceivable, possible and impossible hypothetical situation. Press keyboard buttons and Sachin Tendulkar will be outed by Umpire Harper because the Glenn McGrath ball kissed his lips. Sachin will be online, to describe the kiss.This is an absolutely marvellous idea: it eliminates his back injury so he can wallop the ball through MRF steel radial and into outer space. Also, `no rain stopped thee play'. If current IT software geniuses apply their minds to it, we should be able to play matches featuring the olden golden. Imagine!: Don Bradman faces Wes Hall. M'dears, no joke this: there are already computer cricket games, including onefeaturing the World Cup. A little refinement is all that's missing. Meanwhile, the real thing (shucks). In the real thing, commentators, especially Tony Grieg, do what they can to generate tension when the game is as dheela as untied pyjama strings. Barring the fifth day of the first test, when India's tail forgot the cardinal reason for their existence (wag the team, bhai), these experts frequently raised false alarms of an imminent Indian resurrection - when it was crimson red as the Kookaburra ball that we were tumbling to a predictable defeat.Another virtue of the virtual game: no inflated expectations from commentators who huff and puff to ensure you, the viewer, rises at 6 a.m. to watch a game advertisers spend crores to sponsor. Were they to say at the end of Day 3 when India were nailed onto the back foot, that India had been hammered, would you have bothered to get up the next morning? Would Pepsi bother to sponsor?Manufacturing tension. If there was as much `tansion' on our nationalborders as there is in our TV serials, we'd be at war. In perpetuity. A few characters know the feeling: in Alpviram (Sony), Amrita's ex bf, Rohit, wants to visit her and her baby in hospital more than anything else in the world but ``main tansion nahin dena chhahta.'' Never mind that Amrita is so tensely unhappy without him, she seeks release in bed-wetting (tears), no matter that his love for her is causing Shweta who yearns to marry him and her father who doesn't (want her to!) tansion hi tansion.Aangan (Zee): Rajesh sneaks off to dinner with a woman. Sis-in-law, Payal finds out, informs his wife, Subhadra who confronts Rajesh, who vehemently and mendaciously denies it which leads Subhadra to insult Payal who dissolves into water. Payal's husband, Rajesh's younger brother, wades in: ``yeh tansion, kam karna hoga''. He does so quite simply by telling Subhadra the truth. She is most shamefaced: kya hi ki ``main apne tansion mein thhi.''There's past tense too. Jaggi lies in hospital (where he willencounter other TV characters in reclining positions. This is a popular TV rest & recreation resort: in Saaya, Raahein, Alpviram, Heena, Naya Zamana, Palchhin to name you six others, the hospital is the site of declining fortunes).Jaggi is tense because of mom's past (Tulsi, DD1). He's been informed by well-wisher Jatin that his mother was Jatin's father's keep. What does that make him? Very tense. Momsie wants to lower his blood pressure. She denies the allegation: your blood consists of only one mother's blood, she assures him - slightly besides the point since it's his paternity which is causing him `tansion'.Kora Kagaz (STAR Plus): mom-in-law is tense 'cos dot-in-law, Pooja wants a job. Not true: her younger son Ravi's attentions to Pooja are the problem. She discovers them at breakfast: Pooja reads the newspaper, Ravi arrives bearing two muggas of tea. Arre, what were you doing?. Making tea, he replies, want some? Music and tension rise. Mom declines: why not ask the person you share such empathywith? She glares viciously at Pooja.It's enough to give you a tension headache.
