IPL Day Seven - First Week Reflections

Today has been a traumatic day for me, the first on which I have been unable to watch any IPL action. It happens to all of us, of course. However much we commit to a sporting event, we are always unfaithful, even if it’s only to nip into the kitchen to make a cup of tea (which is how I missed the first ball of the first game on Saturday). Today I was detained in Birmingham, the details of which I shall not bore you with.

A similar determination not to bore the viewer seems to have gripped the IPL commentators in recent days. There has been a marked increase in punnery, similies, metaphors and verbal wordplay. Jeremy Coney led the way. A Hayden lob to mid-on was described as, “a chip shot...but not a blue chip shot.” In the background, Mark Nicholas and Harshe Bogle spontaneously combusted with mirth.

And though obliged to grasp the corporate nettle with both greasy palms, they have at least tried to minimise the pain with some brain-numbing grammatical gymnastics. Thus we have had DLF as a unit of measurement (“That didn’t register on the DLF scale,”) an abstract noun expressing a quality (“That had DLF written all over it!”), a verb in the past tense (“That’s the first time that Kumble’s been DLFed!”) and as an interjected synonym for a six, (That’s a DLFer!”).

There are still some cricket matters thought, that continue to stump the imaginations of Gavaskar and Co. In particular, the booth-dwellers seem unable to get past their fascination with Andrew Flintoff’s hands. It appears that he doesn’t have normal hands, like you or I. He has buckets. His hands are like buckets. He has bucket hands. So often is the word bucket used in conjunction with pictures of Freddie that I am unable to think of the one without the other. Last night I dreamt of a film called ‘Freddie Buckethands’ in which the England all-rounder, unable to reintegrate into society after his stint in the IPL, exists a lonely outcast until he finds his true calling as a sandcastle construction assistant at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, Antigua.

Of course, dear reader, Freddie doesn’t really have big red plastic containers attached to his wrists. It’s a metaphor, see. Tricky blighters though, metaphors. They tire easily. And rather like Praveen Kumar, they aren’t at their best when bashed repeatedly over the head. I understand that social workers concerned for the health and wellbeing of this particular metaphor are flying out to South Africa this weekend to interview Mark Nicholas and Robin Jackman

It has also been a disorientating few days in which many of the things to which we clung for comfort have been taken away from us. I am particularly struggling to come to terms with the dumbing down of Jeremy Coney. Once a be-suited, sardonic but compelling studio guest on Sky, his transfer to the IPL seems to have necessitated the fitting of a brain implant, by which he can be transformed into a performing monkey at the flip of a switch.

The nadir was reached on Thursday. There was Coney, pitchside. Three Chennai cheerleaders stood in front of him. You couldn’t look. Like David Lloyd being asked to review Les Folies Bergere, you knew there was no way this could end well. A little light banter to start with. “How long have you been dancing?” he asked the stationary blondes, who to their credit resisted the temptation to say, “We’re not dancing, we’re talking to you.” With that, the conversational well dried up. There was only one place for the interview to go. Don’t dance, Jeremy, we screamed. To no avail. The camera lingered on the twitching, gurning Coney for just long enough to frame his humiliation.

But he wasn’t done yet. He soon popped up in a control room somewhere high in the stands, to tell us about a camera. This was no ordinary camera. Oh well, alright, it was, but still, it took two men to operate it. Jeremy, adrenalin still pumping, squeezed between the two understandably alarmed men. “Can you make it go blurry?” he asked, jumping up and down like a five year old full of fizzy pop. “Yes we can,” replied the Obama of camera operatives. The screen blurred, mercifully.

The disorientation continued away from the IPL. At one point last weekend, I found myself watching county cricket. I forget the teams involved. Actually, I’ve also forgotten what competition it was in or where the match was taking place. I do remember a sleepy, droning Nasser Hussain, the low hum of distant traffic echoing across row upon on row of empty seats and then the sound of someone snoring.

Next thing I knew, it was Monday afternoon and I was waking up on my sofa. Of course, I only had myself to blame. Last year, my doctor had advised me against watching county cricket whilst operating a laptop and I had foolishly ignored his advice. So remember, kids, if someone sidles up to you in the playground and offers you free tickets to Northamptonshire versus Gloucestershire in the Sleepy-Time No-One-Gives-A-Toss Charity Knock Out Shield, just say no.