TELEPROMPT
India’s religion: Cricket
Mannika Chopra

If there was any doubt, let me say it again. Cricket is not only India’s past time, it is also its present and future as well. The final face-off on April 2 at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai had the whole nation on the edge of its seat. You just had to wander down to your neighbourhood market or walk down the street to feel that cricket mania. Those lucky enough to have a TV were stationed permanently in front of it; those with other compulsions were carrying radios, or had their cells transmitting the match.

Even I, who treats cricket with just about the same degree of interest as quantum physics, was reduced to a nervous wreck when Sri Lanka knocked a pretty solid 274 in their innings.

Call it midsummer madness, or national religion, but everyone I know was talking, eating and breathing cricket. There were some, of course, who treated this frenzy with contempt but they were the aliens who landed from another planet. All normal, hot-blooded Indians were rooting for our boys in blue that Saturday, and revelling, in what CNN-IBN’s Rajdeep Sardesai calls "the surround sound" coverage given by television.

All news channels had back-to-back coverage of  Team India winning the championship. Photo: AFP

But it was actually after India grabbed the World Cup trophy that the news channels really swung into action, giving us a 24x7 dose of cricket, cricket and, yes, more cricket. Before Saturday channels were airing programmes that had been planned months in advance like King of Cricket segment on CNN-IBN, which had a line-up of fantastic panellists like Viv Richards, Imran Khan and Anil Kumble, all chatting with cricketer-in-anchor’s-clothing.

CNN-IBN, as part of its run-up to the WC, had also sent off reporters to interview the past captains of all the winning WC teams. I have to admit that didn’t excite me as much as the actual game but then as I said I am not such a fan of the game.

By Sunday all news channels had back-to-back coverage of Team India winning the championship. The 3G scam was relegated to the ticker. As an example, simply glance at Headline’s Today line-up last Sunday evening. 7 pm: We are the Champions; 8 pm: The Magic of Mahi; 8.30 pm: Sachin Tendulkar; 9 pm: Panel discussion on the victory; 10 pm: The Coronation of Yuvraj; 10.30 pm: Thank you, Gary Kirsten; and 11 pm: Bollywood and the World Cup.

Other channels were also doing the same kind of intense coverage, tapping as Uday Shankar, CEO Star (India) said, into the mood of the nation and the euphoria over the victory, which had excited Indians the world over.

Shankar said if TV had played a "balanced" middle-of-the-road-approach, the TV-viewing public would have felt cheated. Till the victory, there was no sense of yesterday or tomorrow; the TV viewer was simply caught up in the moment, giving official broadcaster Star Sports humongous ratings.

After the win, the public was hungry for the cricket celebration story. The game had climaxed into a victory but then there was a vacuum. Had TV had not stepped in, there would have been major withdrawal symptoms.

To its credit, television also ably highlighted the various backgrounds of our cricketing stars. Far from coming from elite backgrounds, Team India came from humble beginnings. Most of the parents of the members of the winning team interviewed spoke in Hindi/Punjabi, reflecting perhaps their more modest backgrounds and, that to me personally, was the real highlight of the coverage of the CWC 2011, the way television was able to make the game much more inclusive and personalised. Shankar says emphatically that TV made the cricketing story; it moved coverage much beyond the game and its cold statistics into a people’s story.

But let’s face it. TV also helped in the financials of the game. It almost bank-rolled the sport. Cricket has become the ideal TV sport and with all the technology involved, the interactivity between the audience and the game will only increase. Wait till 3-D comes in a big way; no one will want to move way from their TV screens for a sport that is the bizarre legacy of British imperialism.