Thursday, May 13, 2010

T20 | Media Faux Pas

The minute Kapugedera hit that six there at St Lucia, West Indies, all hell broke loose for the Indian Team back home. Electronic media crucified MS Dhoni and conjectured the reasons of failure as fatigue and parties of Indian Premier League. The screens started blazing with the images of Indian cricket team members missing it on the field juxtaposed with the images from the parties that they have been to during last Indian Premier League season punctuated with loud background scores. Once again one of the most amateur media of the world started playing fowl.

As fans, yes, we all are dissappointed. We would have all loved to see Dhoni and team playing in the finals and also winning it once again. But its a game - you win, you lose.If you win - you celebrate and get on to next big challenge. If you lose - you retrospect, gather everything again and bounce back with fresh energies and get on to next big challenge. So you win or you lose you always get on to next big challange because it does not end with this one game where you may win or lose. What matters is with what ferocity you bounce back and get on to next big challange. And Dhoni and his boys have proved it time and again that they have great bouncing back ability. And I am convinced that they will surely bounce back. Give them time. Comfort them. Dont destroy the magnanimous spirit of these boys. They are the ones who toil from dawn to dusk in the field to get that smile on millions of faces. They are the ones who give reasons for celebration to millions of cricket fans. Now you can't even stand them smiling. Picking up words out of context, framing them into sentences and serving them to public is highly irresponsible, sad and exposes the paranoia of electronic media.

As for Indian Premier League factor, it is not only played by Indian players but also foreign players, Sri Lanka, England, Australia all did well despite of playing not only IPL but also International series just before IPL. If there needs to be a reason for the losses it has to be bouncy tracks, for which Indian cricket team needs to practice. I dont think that any one of the player that steps out onto that field puts franchise over country and gives anything less but more than what he gives in club cricket. They have done it in past. They will do it in future. All this criticism is born out of the desperation to fill in the vaccum of 24 hour broadcast bandwidth when there is no other sensational "news" or others are doing it why not us.

It was the same media which was singing odes to Dhoni's captaincy and teams credibility just a week back. But now they are being court martialled by the guests on various shows on prime time. Videos and images from parties and events in past being played on the screens in split screens while the guests and host pronouncing their sentences. I was apalled by the coverage of a brawl that took place in a pub in West Indies between Indian cricket team members and some nuts who claimed to be fans of Indian cricket team. What outraged me more was the language used by the so-called national news channel with highest viewerships. A real fan celebrates with the team and comforts them in their loss. And dont they deserve to live a life of their own. when does going into a pub and lightening the mood during stress became a crime so big that it engulfed the space on national news broadcast. We all have chilled out and loosened up when we flunked our exams. Does that ever mean that we loved flunking.

In trying times least we could have done was to comfort the players, reminded them of the times that they have done us proud which would have filled them with new energies to bounce back. Instead we chose to lash out our own frustrations on them which would fetch nothing but the destruction of the sporting spirit. We all need to be mature and media more responsible. Its a game. Be a sport.