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IPL, 20-20 Cricket and Spectator Manipulation
Romit Raj |
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It would be reasonable to assume that a popular game would retain most of its characteristics over a long period of time and still remain popular. One has hardly seen any change in the format of football over the years. However another popular sport - cricket - has seen many changes in its format over the years. In its newest avatar - that of the 20 over game - cricket seems to have evolved in a way that radically changes the interaction level of the audience with the game. Here I discuss the emotional involvement of TV and stadium audiences in competitive sport, focusing on cricket and the changes in emotional involvement that 20-over cricket and the Indian Premiere league is bringing about in the audiences.
Sports involving "big money" such as football, cricket, tennis etc. provide both stadium and the TV audiences with situations that generate a whole range of emotions. It is quite reasonable to say that the target audience for these sporting events are more those who are willing to emotionally attach themselves to a side in the game than those who might appreciate the craft involved in it - say the writer/critic. There is little doubt that the passion the competition generates among the players and the audience directly affects the revenue generated from the competition. It is obviously for this reason that an India-Pakistan game traditionally has seen greater viewership than, say, an India-New Zealand game.
One can visualize the emotional plane in a game of cricket with a stimulus-response model. However, it is not simply a two variable model, for the response from the stimulus also depends on the context under which the stimulus arises. Therefore in the following situation:
109 for 9 wickets
Target - 500
40 overs remaining on day 5 of a test match
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a six from the batsman will hardly elicit excitement from a rational audience. If the target was 120 however the six would have been seen in a different light. Similar is the case in a football game - the response from a goal depends on the context in which it is scored. This is what I would like to call the progressive nature of competitive sport - defined by the fact that a stimulus does not have a fixed response but may vary according to the context, and contexts vary as the game unfolds.
But the response elicited in any situation is not directly explained even by a combination of the situation and the understanding of the context of its arrival but is affected by various other factors also. Perhaps, another important factor is the commentary accompanying the game. The emotions that the TV audience exhibit during a game is deeply impacted by the commentary they hear. For example in the no win situation of 109/9 posited earlier, a six would probably be commented upon along the lines of - "a good shot for a six, but too little too late", or "a brave effort from the tail ender in a hopeless situation". These comments from those (the commentators) whom the audience recognize as the experts of the game have an impact on the audience, who are highly unlikely to cheer a six, knowing the context and also hearing the commentary.
In traditional test cricket the TV and the stadium audience was not exposed to stimulii that elicited from them a response which was detached from the consideration of the situation that created the stimulus. 20-20 matches and - my topic of focus - the Indian Premiere League (IPL) arose from and exemplifies an era of what I will like to call - associate stimuluses - that accompany the situations/stimulii arising from the game, and expect responses without the consideration of the context. Let us call these associate stimulii - AS and primary stimulii S. The relationship between them can be better explained with the help of the example chart below.
S |
AS |
A Six |
Vodafone ads on the bottom of the screen
displaying, "sixer"; "DLF maximum six" on the
display boards; cheer leaders dance, etc. |
Similar are the AS for other S such as a four or a wicket. These AS remain constant, irrespective of the situation under which the S have arisen. For example, the expression on a cheer leader's face or her dance will remain the same no matter what the circumstance under which a six has been hit. Even the commentators are under contract in the IPL to mention certain things when a particular situation arises. For example, commentators have to mention "DLF maximum six", almost every time a six is hit.
The AS engenders among the audience responses that are increasingly blind to the context within the game. A six by a Rajasthan Royal batsman is responded to by a huge cheer by the audience in the stadium even though the team requires 42 of 3 balls. I am not suggesting that the context of each moment in the game has entirely lost relevance but the degree to which it had an affect on the responses from the audience seems to be decreasing as cricket moves closer towards a completely entertainment oriented event.
The problem is that with this development the progressive nature of the sport that I mentioned earlier becomes lost. The audience simply responds to situations that repeat themselves in identical fashion. 18 sixes in a match implies 18 times a particular dance of the cheerleaders, 18 cheers from the stadium audience, 18 times 'DLF maximum six' being invoked and 18 times the Vodafone ad at the bottom of the TV screen - in a two hour entertainment show. This kind of viewership which is progressively moving closer towards a two way stimulus-response model - without the greater complexity of the context activated response - represents a lower level of engagement with the sport.
Romit Raj has just graduated in the arts and is trying to find his way into an academic career in economics.
This is a logical examination of how the 20-20 model in cricket represents a lower level of engagement with the game. While most aesthetes of the game will concur with its conclusions, this essay actually arrives at a way of establishing the degradation that the new model has wrought upon cricket. To look at the arguments differently, conventional cricket is composed of moments that invite responses related to the 'context' i.e. the changing fortunes of the particular match. There is, in effect, a narrative being constructed in the mind of the spectator. In 20-20 cricket, the use of cheerleaders, dramatic emphasis on the commentary induced by advertising turns the game into a series of autonomous moments with no binding narrative.
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