It used to be a sport. Then it became a religion. Now cricket has been reduced to fluffy commerce.
Cricket in India owes its popularity to the fact that despite being in a largely non-sporting culture, we the 30+-year-old janta have played the sport ourselves. Very few of us might have been able to bowl a 150+ kmph yorker or hit a 120m six, but we can easily identify with a swashbuckling player who can.
The game demands a mass, near-religious following to justify huge ad money spends by corporates (now increasingly Chinese). But, the younger population, at least in tier I cities, does not have the same level of personal engagement with the sport. This has as much to do with the lack of physical space to play cricket as the availability of other options for entertainment, social affiliation, and identity. The new generation prefers to work towards personal self-actualisation, rather than to blindly follow the herd.
The battle for eyeballs
When it kicked off in 2008, the IPL grabbed eyeballs with its sportainment model of scripted on-field and off field drama, cheerleaders and auctions while hawking the then hot commodity of T20 cricket. India had just won the T20 world cup. What is more, the IPL also cleverly targeted the thus far untapped women audience. For a while, it worked like a charm with the BCCI laughing its way to the bank. But not for too long… other T20 leagues propped up globally. Simultaneously the age of affordable smart phones, 4G Internet and ubiquitous social media was upon us. Cable TV gave way to OTT. The mental monopoly of cricket was over. The instant gratification of a social media ‘like’, obviated the need to wait three hours for a match to end in order to feel good about oneself.
Cricket as an escapist fantasy is no more palatable than 80s Bollywood cinema. Hero worship of film stars and cricketers is no longer cool for younger audiences. Expressions of nationalism and religious identity may still be strong draws, but they are transient. Cricketers must compete with film stars, politicians, and TikTok celebrities for eyeballs. That is why, they are promoted heavily, even when games are not being played. Anushka and Virat’s pregnancy pics, Dhoni’s baby, and KL Rahul’s girlfriend stories are meant to breathe oxygen into flagging brands.
What complicates the equation paradoxically is that most things that can be done to boost cricket’s popularity have already been done. The stadiums are top-notch; the telecast is first-rate (including fake audience noise); we are regularly seeing totals in excess of 350, weekend IPL matches are regularly last-ball affairs. Am I the only one to have spotted an otherwise world-class bowler sending down five bad balls in a row?
And that too on a TRP-friendly Sunday evening. We should rightfully call it the Indian Premier Entertainment League just like we have the World Wrestling Entertainment.
Think small
The only way forward is to work towards realising the potential to develop the sport in tier II and III cities. For almost two decades now, unglamorous towns have given us real, raw talent. In these areas, there is also less competition for cricket with respect to the above factors. But then again, the challenge would be to contextualise the game, the advertisements, and social media promotion to the needs of multiple regional markets. It also means giving more facetime to talented small-town cricketers who may not have Virat Kohli’s good looks. I am not sure that our cricket administrators or sponsoring corporates are ready to step out of their urban comfort zones. They are hooked onto the low investment-high (and quick) returns model.
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