Tags:
Journalism of Courage
It8217;s been building up over a while and finally, over one miserable weekend, finally breached its banks. The outrage among Indian cricket fans at the performance of the national team ceased to be a matter of sport and personal emotion when a news channel dignified it by elevating the issue to the level of a prime-time debate. The topic broadly discussed: are Indian cricketers/ is Indian cricket accountable to the public? The trivial was on trial.
The debate 8212; similar versions have been played out over the print media, and in every water-cooler discussion 8212; touched on many themes but failed to answer one question: why? Why should Indian cricketers be accountable to the public? And why the BCCI? Leave aside the legal argument, that the BCCI is a registered society and so not accountable to anyone except, perhaps, the ICC. Since this is essentially a deeply personal matter, here8217;s a personal question: what have we, the cricket fans, done to deserve accountability? The issue of accountability arises only when there is an investment, and it is my belief that the Indian public invests almost zero in Indian cricket. The Indian fan has not paid his dues.
When, for example, was the last time anyone saw a decent crowd at a Ranji match? Forget a Ranji final, when was the last time you saw a decent crowd at a Test match? Was there any outrage when the last Ranji final was not shown on live TV? Or when the final stages of top domestic competitions were scheduled at the same time as the Pakistan series? Nothing but deafening silence. So if the general public ignores every form of cricket other than one-day internationals, what can it expect in return? The rise of reality-TV shows has given us a sense of empowerment; with the flick of a remote, by sending one SMS, we pick and choose our idols, we decide who wins and loses. But this is organised sport, the TV show with a difference; you don8217;t decide who wins. You can8217;t pick your captain, you can8217;t vote Tendulkar out.
In England, where football holds a position similar to cricket, the public8217;s fight is against what it calls 8220;Football plc8221;, the rampant commercialisation of the game. Across the board, football is slipping away from the people and into the hands of the suits and the City brokers with the Football Association looking the other way on a micro level, opinion is sharply divided over whether David Beckham should remain captain. Sounds familiar? Only upto a point. Because football in England is participatory in a way that cricket in India was till, say, 20 years ago; leave alone playing the game at all levels, people watch the game at all levels. Liverpool has a population the size of South Delhi yet it supports 8212; with a weekly gate of 40,000, largely unemployed people paying good money 8212; three professional teams.
Typically, English fans haven8217;t been whining away on TV. Long ago, they decided to do something about it. When their clubs 8212; and the relationship between a fan and his club is akin to that of any of us with country, you8217;re born into it 8212; went public, they bought shares. Shareholders United was born in 1998, when Rupert Murdoch launched a bid to take over Manchester United, and played a large role in the government8217;s blocking of that bid. Today, the lobby group has around 30,000 members who between them own 2-3 per cent of the club8217;s shares. The club is again under threat, this time from American billionaire Malcolm Glazer, and the protests have ranged from physical demonstrations to mass spam mailing of the banks and other institutions involved. If Glazer wins, SU says, they will resort to their last option: Boycott the club8217;s commercial interests tickets and merchandise. That could end up hurting both sides as much but that8217;s how far they are prepared to go.
How far can we go? The BCCI makes its money from TV revenue; are we willing to cancel our subscription to the sports channels? Are we willing to take our son or daughter to watch the next Ranji or Cooch Behar match playing near us, as our fathers did for us? Are we willing to give up our time and money, like a couple of Delhi lawyers have done, and take the issue to court? Are we willing to fight for our game?
Forget it, we don8217;t even want to spend time in the queue for a one-day ticket.
