Commercialization and Where the Problem Truly Lies
Cricket…a gentlemen’s game, you say. Would you still stick to that belief, seeing how drastically the pay of players has risen in the last three years or so?
Many purists have described this aforementioned commercialization of the game as ‘the death of cricket’, But should we, arm-chair and sofa viewers that we are, be taken aback by surprise at this rapidly changing face of the game where players are running away from 50,000 pounds a year county and international contracts to 500,000 dollar 6-week, 3 hours-a-game-and-back home IPL contracts?
Face it, something like this was waiting to happen. Yes, it has thrown the future of ODIs, and to a lesser extent, Tests, in doubt.
Football, basketball and baseball have long capitalized on its commercial value, with team owners, national boards and players the main beneficiaries, and now the same is happening to cricket.
I am in no way saying that the gradual movement towards 20-20s, or 40-over ODI’s, is a good thing. In many ways, it is quite the contrary.
The point I am trying to make is that this was a move waiting to happen, that of the commercialization of the giving rise to massive player contracts and leading to club v country debates, much like we have in football, where clubs are unwilling to let their players go since, as they have argued for years and years, they are the ones ‘paying the astronomical wages.’
As the prime form of cricket, I do not see a threat to Tests, except for the odd tweak here and the odd change there. But what is my main point here is commercialization, of which I have an interesting take, if you will allow me to key it out.
Most commentators( basically everyone who has an opinion) has stated strongly that the move to T20 cricket has signaled the end of cricket’s ‘age of innocence;' and given rise to the rampant advertising joke that we see today and while I can see the merits of their respected arguments.
I would beg to take the other thin piece of string and say that it s the other way round, that it is the commercialization of the game which has led to the move to quantity over quality, and money over everything else.
You see, commercialization has been the driving force in the game for a long time now. The game wouldn’t survive on stadium gate receipts alone.
The game needs the advertisers, the ones who pay thousands and more for that 10-second slot to showcase their product in-between overs, and because attendances around the world have been falling drastically (as consumers FINALLY realize that arm-chair watching is perhaps the best way to see a cricket match), the importance of the advertisers has grown that much bigger, and it was only a matter of time before they started dictating terms.
It has been said that it is the spectators who want to see more cricket, more 20-20s, more excitement, less of those boring ‘middle overs’. Trust me, there are many people who would rather have cricket stay as it was.
MOST people, in fact. But advertisers wanted bigger returns on their investments, so what they might have done is pressurize governing bodies to switch to forms to cricket that would stop viewers changing channels and keep them glued in for the whole match.
My point is, in a 50 over match or Test cricket, many viewers would say- ‘okay, I’ll come back to this channel in 45 minutes time while this passage of play peters out’.
Viewers change channels, ratings go down, advertisers lose revenue, and sponsoring companies lose interest.
Compare that to a T20 game where viewers don’t really have a chance to say that (well they do, only that they would miss out on a lot even if they miss 5 minutes of action).
So yes, the whole point of keying all this down is to explain to my revered readers that contrary to perhaps what you might think, I believe that it is commercialization of cricket from broadcasters, advertisers and a million other connected subjects, which has dropped the game into the quandary it finds itself in today.
Every next move of the ODI and Test cricket seems to be met with skepticism and ‘But T20 is so much more exciting’ looks.
So, there it is…my take on what I think is destroying the roots of cricket.
In a way, you cannot blame it, because sooner rather than later, cricketers would have pointed to their footballing brethren to show how they were earning millions while they were not, but then again, advertising and commercialization in football is done much more respectably.
We do not ever hear commentators yelling out terms like ‘that was a spectacular DLF volley’ or ‘That was a Samsung Super Save’ or ‘What a brilliant KitKat freekick?!!!’ in football, do we? (Yes, that is a stab at you, Mr. Modi!)
