IPL Observations Day Thirteen

I haven’t been feeling very English lately. I do my best to conform to expectations. I never cry in public, unless I’m drunk. I don’t complain about poor service in shops, unless I’m drunk. At the first sign of a sunny spring day, I rush out and buy ten pairs of ridiculous three-quarter length shorts. All the same, in recent days, I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am letting my people down.

You see, I’ve been watching an awful lot of the IPL, which in English cricket circles is a bit like admitting that you failed all your exams. People look at me with a mixture of horror and pity. “But what about Michael Vaughan,” they say, in an effort to lure me back to the straight and narrow with a nice, decent bit of cricket chat, “Do you think he’ll get back into the England side? And what about Ian Bell?”

But I have a confession to make. I don’t care about Michael Vaughan right now. Nor do I have any feelings one way or the other about Ian Bell. At the merest mention of Andrew Strauss, Alistair Cook, Stuart Broad and the rest, I feel a yawn rising deep within me and an overwhelming desire to drink a glass of warm milk and go to bed. It all seems so parochial, so narrow and well, so very very dull. When all the best cricketers in the world are gathered together in one place, why on earth would anyone want to talk about Ryan Sidebottom?

It was brought home to me how much the IPL is changing the shape of my cricket brain on Sunday. Whilst waiting for a strategy break to end, I was channel surfing and came across what looked very much like a game of cricket. There were players in coloured clothes. There was a bowler, a batsman and some fielders. Somewhere in the ether, Mike Atherton was talking. But something wasn’t right. It took me a while to figure it out. Then it dawned on me. THERE WAS NOBODY THERE.

Meanwhile, out in South Africa, large numbers of people have been turning out to see apparently made-up franchises with no history and no sense of tradition play a disgracefully vulgar version of the great game. And what’s worse, they appeared to be enjoying themselves. There was a lot of music, trumpets, fancy dress, drinking and dancing. Whisper it quietly, particularly if there is an English cricket journalist in the room, but these people were experiencing something almost unheard of in county cricket. They were being entertained.

Sadly, the commentary has continued to be more Bangalore than Deccan this week, though Harsha Bogle did pull a master-stroke during Thursday’s play by asking Neil McKenzie whether he thought Kevin Pietersen was really a South African. Suddenly there was tension in the booth as McKenzie mumbled his way through a few syllables of feigned disinterest, whilst trying to choke back his urge to yell, “Traitor!” at the top of his voice. “If he thinks he’s an Englishman, then he must be,” said the temporarily unemployed opener, through gritted teeth.

But Bogle aside, the broadcasters seem to be doing their best to minimise our viewing pleasure. During the first week, the camera would lazily pan over the jubilant crowd between overs, perhaps lingering on the cheerleaders before returning to the action. In week two, this relaxed scene-setting has been replaced by the scourge of sports coverage the world over: the player interview. A never-ending stream of non-combatants have been miked up and prodded wirelessly to read from the official IPL Cliché Manual, whilst being unsure which camera to look at.

And then there’s Jeremy Coney. On Monday he blagged his way into the manual scoreboard.

“There are all sorts of things here,” he began, breathlessly, “Numbers and er…”
He could have added ‘letters’ but that would have been it really. He cornered the chief scoreboard operator, a serious-looking chap, who seemed slightly bemused that the broadcasters would want to go live from the inside of a score box.
“How long have you been working here?” asked Coney, a la Prince Charles
“Since 1979,” replied the number king.
Coney the Comedian spotted an opening;
“You don’t live up here do you?” he asked, with a chuckle.
“No, I do not live up here,” deadpanned the interviewee.
It turned out that the man watched the cricket through a small peep hole.
“I see, and what do you do then?” asked Coney.
“I tell this man who operates the scoreboard.”
“And what does he do?”
“He changes the score.”
It was gripping television.

And in between episodes of the Jeremy Coney Show, Setanta have redoubled their efforts to give us all a yellow-tinted headache. It isn’t just that their studio guests are awful. It’s the fact that every five minutes we are snatched away from the stadium and dragged kicking and screaming back into Setanta world, not because the man in the shirt and slacks has anything useful to contribute, but simply because, rather like Bangalore, they’ve paid out good money and they’re damn well going to use him.