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It is as though everybody forgot what their primary responsibilities
are in the first place. Sportsmen are expected to opine about the
events. Ex-players are expected to comment. Regular commentators are
expected to forecast about the fortunes of the game. Coaches are
expected to double for the players and win the games. And there is a
new brand that has just joined the bandwagon - politicians, who are
expected to reverse the fortunes, if the team is failing, and steady
the course and stay by its side, till the team is well on its way
towards some fortuituous glory. And the only ones left in the fray, are
the people. However which way the tables have turned and the chips have
fallen, people are expected of pretty much the same thing - gulp it up,
and since this is the only category that lacks the mouthpiece, the
forum or the voice, guess what else are they going to do. Much has
changed with the sports in the psat few years following the abrasive
invasion of the media - print, electronic and byte - into every facet
of the game and every quarter and quadrant of it. It became a classic
case of which is wagging what here - the tail or the dog? Probably
sports is one such arena where the terms over-exposure, exploitation
and brating to death do not mean the same as they do in the regular
world. Immediately following a sporting event, every outlet expresses
its opinion in the way it chooses fit with its target audience, and
reactions thereby oscillate from one extreme to another, from muted to
rambunctious, from reserved down right to outraged. Granted it is a
free country and the freedom of expression and the choice associated
with it rests equally among all the complaining segments, but the
manner of expression of what is at contention here.
Before we begin the finger pointed exercise, let's step back a little
and see how it came down to this. Sportsmen are used to be just that.
They went into the arena and played their sport. Win and loss were
accepted as part and parcel of the game and everyone (the players and
the watchers) abided to the principle. Most of the times, with the same
playing unit, a win resulted for as much the same reason as a loss
occurred. On a given day, everything clicks in place and all the parts
seem to move like well-lubricated machine. On a wretched day, things
are just the opposite - the rust, the inertia and the clay feet. Just
as it is in the regular world with regular people, there are good days
and bad days. This was an accepted fact till not so long ago, when the
first guy with a mike stopped the player heading into the dressing room
and asked "WHY"...and that opened the flood gates. Unmindful of the
fact, that the player was in fact only a player, and not an orator
along the lines of a Megasthenes, everybody started hanging on every
word out of his mouth, and began accepting it on face value, without
the slightest consideration of objectivity - if you are too close to
the trees, you cannot see the forest. That was the first nail or the
final straw, depending on how you look at it. Whoever did the first
interview waiting in the wings, or whoever decided on sending somebody
with a mike down to the trenches, became the chief culprit for
propelling sports into a different stratosphere altogether. Where once
was great passion and genuine emotion, entertainment claimed its place.
Suddenly sports people are expected to talk funny, make wisecracks and
put the opposition down, all in an entertaining way. Historically
speaking, the trend was started by Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer,
and Howard Cosell, the highly popular broadcaster. Instead of
commenting on the game as is the norm, Cosell pushed the mike infront
of an already charged up pugilist and every word of Ali ("I am going to
crush him like a bug", "he aint seen nothing yet") passed off as pretty
funny, as pretty entertaining. And the stage was set...literally.
The second step in this sad evolution was when the player, after
hanging up his boots, went straight into the broadvasting booth and
picked up the mike. That moment that signified the blurring of the
lines between broadcasting and blabbering, in the name of
entertainment, spelled doom for the seriousness in sport. Players
usually are presented with the best seat in the house, when playing a
game - either on the field in the thick of things, or in their quarters
inside strategizing about the game. They are uniquely advantaged as
they are privy to the actual machinations of the game, that the rest,
waiting outside, can only divine. However the challenge reamins,
whether the player who has made it to commentary booth has the gift for
the gab, to be able to translate the happenings on the field, process
it through his player's privileges, and pass it down to the listener in
a way that unique and never-heard before. Unfortunately the art of
articulation is a boon to only a chosen few. So what do we have for the
rest? A talk in cliches, a platter of platitudes, and a chatter of
commonplaces. The glamor that is associated with the name if fast lost
in a mix of trite and tripe. Case in point, listen to the commentary of
a Arun Lal or a Siddhu. While the former covers it up in a pile of
steaming tedium, the latter masks in a road-side show kind of
exaggerations, expressions and cheap shots. When the players have taken
up position previously occupied by professional commentators, they are
expected to provide a little more than juggling acts and jumping
through fires. Sadly, barring an exception here or an exceptional
talent there, the experiment of morphing a player into a broadcaster,
is still waiting for the payoff. It is quite mind-boggling, when the
same player who has failed many a time on the field, steps up and casts
the first stone, while standing on the other side of the line. The
media outlets for the wont of talking heads to fill up airtime go out
looking for anybody, particularly in the playing fraternity, to stand
up, hold a mike and deliver his opinion. If they are stupid, it is
entertainment, if they are valid and thought provoking, it is
broadcasting. Either way, the media wins.
The latest casualty in the war of (stupid) words are the coaches.
Particularly in cricket, the role of the coach on the playing field is
as important as that of the appendix in the human body. The game has
been without coaches for a good 20-25 years and suddenly now, a team
without a coach is considered to be backward, out of touch and out of
sync with the fast moving world. Coach became even more important than
a player. A person who has faced the near impossible uphill task of
rising above millions to stand alone at the top to make it into a team,
is suddenly considered less important to somebody who wears the coach
tag on the back. Just as a coach is undeservingly accorded the credit
for the winning ways of the team, he is just as unjustly vilified for
the downturn. Some games depend more on the performance than on the
strategy. And the role of the coach in such situations end behind the
sidelines, when the players take to the field. Calling for his head at
times when the team is in doldrums does as much good as firing the
towel boy of the team. The sheer ignorance of the talking heads about
the nature and the vagaries of the game, causing them to target the
only non-playing member of the team, talks as much about their
intellect as it does about their understanding of the mechanics.
The tentacles of careless commentary has now reached the venerable
halls of esteemed institutions - the Parliaments. Suddenly, the speaker
of the house has something to say about a team's state of affairs. All
of a sudden, the Prime Minister of a country has an opinion, when the
bowler of a visiting team has a suspect action, that he wants to share
with his colleagues in the august chambers. It became the need of the
hour to talk about accountability and spend the tax-payers' monies
discussing seriously about an issue that in only a national past time
at best. It is indeed ironical that political figures talk about
accountability in sports. Right from the closed door senate hearings
about the steroid drug usage in Major League Baseball, to the calls of
immediate suspension of the current Indian cricket coach, by the
highest institutions responsible for public policy, all the clamor for
accountability and transparency by the politicians makes people really
proud of their representatives. But aren't their time, (our)money,
energies better spent ,when the politicians go after the issues that
would raise millions about poverty lines than worry about why the
average of the certain players is dipping below the pass grade in a
particular serious. What do you say, Mr. Kettle?
In the end, in any sphere of achievement, if maximum results could be
produced by letting people do what they do best by not constantly
butting into others' boundaries, then why not let players play,
commentators comment, coaches coach, and politicians...well...
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More Views by Srinivas Kanchibhotla
