The Art of Televising Cricket
It would seem like a never ending déjā vu to someone who has the patience to watch DD Sports’ telecast of the current India-Pakistan series, if he happens to tune his TV to the national sports channel in the evenings. I just cannot understand the logic of showing the entire day’s play ball-by-ball again, given that you have already showed it once, live, the very same day. The seemingly simple concept of a highlights package is lost on the yawn-inducing channel.
See, this is where Doordarshan gets it wrong. They shouldn’t need highly smart and overpaid marketing guys to tell them that for people like me, having spent 10 long hours at work, highlights are the only preferred way of relishing the superb batting by Virender Sehwag. Mind you, I still love Test match cricket enough to watch an entire India test match live if I have the time, but watching the replay is like sitting through a serial-killer movie with the opening credits declaring who the killer is, and with advertisements every five minutes. The sadder part is, when eventually they have mercy on us beleaguered souls and do show the highlights, it’s on the next morning when again you are busy with getting ready for the day’s chores. To top it all, they have been so conceited that they aren’t even giving out the highlights package to anyone else. What’s the reason of such misplaced vanity? It’s not as if they have the greatest quality of footage or the best commentary team to back it up. Of all the men behind the microphone, Sanjay Manjrekar is perhaps the only one worth lending an ear to. The rest of the line up comprising of Arun Lal, Sivaramakrishnan & Co. is just plain negligible. Of course, there’s always Ravi Shastri to provide the necessary redundancy in case people are lost for words.
Now, for the whole highlights business - there’s three things DD could do:
A. Sell the highlights package to someone like ESPN and make a cool profit.
B. If option A is infeasible due to legal constraints, show some heart for public service and let them show it for free
C. Show them yourself at a time convenient for most people.
For Doordarshan, it seems the mammoth exercise of logically reaching the option C, is just another facet of the art of televising cricket, worthy enough of spending a lifetime learning.
See, this is where Doordarshan gets it wrong. They shouldn’t need highly smart and overpaid marketing guys to tell them that for people like me, having spent 10 long hours at work, highlights are the only preferred way of relishing the superb batting by Virender Sehwag. Mind you, I still love Test match cricket enough to watch an entire India test match live if I have the time, but watching the replay is like sitting through a serial-killer movie with the opening credits declaring who the killer is, and with advertisements every five minutes. The sadder part is, when eventually they have mercy on us beleaguered souls and do show the highlights, it’s on the next morning when again you are busy with getting ready for the day’s chores. To top it all, they have been so conceited that they aren’t even giving out the highlights package to anyone else. What’s the reason of such misplaced vanity? It’s not as if they have the greatest quality of footage or the best commentary team to back it up. Of all the men behind the microphone, Sanjay Manjrekar is perhaps the only one worth lending an ear to. The rest of the line up comprising of Arun Lal, Sivaramakrishnan & Co. is just plain negligible. Of course, there’s always Ravi Shastri to provide the necessary redundancy in case people are lost for words.
Now, for the whole highlights business - there’s three things DD could do:
A. Sell the highlights package to someone like ESPN and make a cool profit.
B. If option A is infeasible due to legal constraints, show some heart for public service and let them show it for free
C. Show them yourself at a time convenient for most people.
For Doordarshan, it seems the mammoth exercise of logically reaching the option C, is just another facet of the art of televising cricket, worthy enough of spending a lifetime learning.
posted by Atul at
9:13 AM
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