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Journalism of Courage
THE next time you watch a cricket match, listen to the phrases that pop into your head with every piece of action. Have you heard these words before? I don8217;t know about you, but I am assailed by familiar phrases and sentences when I watch cricket, and I recoil each time one pops into my head. I am a cricket journalist, and it is my job to describe every game of cricket that I write about in a fresh manner, to give the reader a clear picture of what happened. And yet, that is so difficult.
Cricket writing, and commentary, has a dialect of its own which consists of lazy shorthands, cliches that do not evoke what happened in the field of play, but regurgitate banal expressions that dull our mind. It is difficult to escape this dialect, to write outside it, because we have been exposed to it repeatedly over the decades, and we reflexively think in this dialect whenever we watch cricket.
They could be common descriptions, such as of a man who plays a 8216;8216;captain8217;s innings8217;8217; or another whose 8216;8216;feet are stuck to the crease8217;8217;, as the 8216;8216;the game meanders towards a draw8217;8217;. And then there8217;s the hyperbole: 8216;8216;it8217;s all happening here8217;8217;, the ball 8216;8216;sped to the boundary like a tracer bullet8217;8217;, and 8216;8216;when he hits it, it stays hit8217;8217;.
Two, there are the aphorisms. 8216;8216;Form is temporary, class is permanent,8217;8217; they say, adding, 8216;8216;When you8217;re in form, make it count.8217;8217; After every bad decision someone is sure to write, 8216;8216;It all evens out in the end.8217;8217; That is not just a cliche, but also false. And every twist in a match is sure to be accompanied by talk of 8216;8216;glorious uncertainties of the game8217;8217;.
Three, there are the adjectives. Certain cricketing nouns always seem to go with particular adjectives, which is why we talk of 8216;8216;fiery spells8217;8217;, 8216;8216;elegant cover-drives8217;8217;, 8216;8216;crisp driving8217;8217;, 8216;8216;lionhearted spinners8217;8217;, 8216;8216;gritty customers8217;8217; also a dead metaphor, 8216;8216;needless run-outs8217;8217; which run-out isn8217;t?, and 8216;8216;metronomic accuracy8217;8217;.
| nbsp; | Vaughan, Ganguly and Dravid all play 8216;elegant cover drives8217; that are different from each other. It is the duty of the cricket writer to convey that difference |
These are objectionable not because they are inaccurate, but because they do not convey the particulars of a circumstance. Michael Vaughan, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Yasir Hameed all play 8216;8216;elegant cover-drives8217;8217; that are different from each other, and it becomes the duty of the cricket writer to convey that difference.
What shocks me as a reader, and saddens me as a writer, is how in many Indian publications mastery of this dialect is considered a virtue. And television has actually sanctified it. For celebrities-turned-commentators, in fact, who have received no training in writing or commentary, the easiest way to cope is to pick up such shorthand. And if you learn the dialect, you are at least never at loss for something to say, for every situation evokes a basket of cliches to choose from. Perhaps this is an art in itself, if an ignoble one, but it does the game, and its followers, a disservice.
Regardless of whether we are writers, and regardless of the context of cricket, the language we use reveals the way we think. Are our ways of thinking fresh? George Orwell, in his famous essay 8216;8216;Politics and the English Language8217;8217;, wrote: 8216;8216;Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration.8217;8217;
Replace 8216;8216;political regeneration8217;8217; with 8216;8216;the enjoyment of cricket8217;8217; and that sentiment still holds. And that is why I get angry when people say that cricket is a dying sport. The game is not dying for faults of its own, but we are killing it with the ways in which we think about it, and speak about it.
Cricket is full of dramas, epiphanies, epic passages of play that reveal and celebrate the qualities that make us human. It is we who refuse to see cricket the way it is, and reduce it to banality.
The author writes on cricket for Wisden and The Guardian, and for himself at http://indiauncut.blogspot.com
