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P. SAINATH
CRICKET: Knowing that big money is undermining the game as a whole
and pussyfooting around it just isn’t cricket. “Advertising is like the
arms race. Once you start, there’s no way to stop.”
Jeffrey Campbell, Chairman, Burger King, 1986 AND FINALLY, the
business of endorsements in cricket is on the table, however briefly.
Thanks to recommendations credited to a bunch of ex-captains.
But some of the ex-skippers have begun to jump ship. A couple say
they did not press for limiting the number and nature of product
endorsements a player can get into.
And the Board of Control for Cricket in India, despite wide public
approval of the idea, has begun to waffle under sharp attack in the
media. Such is the power of corporate rage.
Whether the curbs first announced were the most appropriate ones is
another matter. The massive corporate backlash is against the very idea
that their rights to milk the game no matter what damage it causes can
be restricted. Just when it seemed something positive might have come
out of our World Cup exit, after all.
But the debate at least highlights that corporate pressures on the
game are real and dangerous.
A fact long known, but little acknowledged. My favourite is a clause
reported to be in the corporate contracts of two players: the more time
you spend at the crease, the more money you earn. What happens when the
interest of the team demands a hurricane, do or die knock? Or if taking
root at the crease loses your side the game?
If you’ve got billions of rupees riding on your shoulders, it will at
some point affect your play. More so when you have contracts from
sponsors that make failure financially devastating.
So many of our cricketers play like gods in their early seasons.
There is no fear of failure.
Then, they’re playing for India, enjoyment, and fun. Soon, they’re
playing for Brand India, endorsements, and funds. When a team returning
from one tour sees some of its players dash off almost straight from the
airport to ad-shoots, something is awry.
More so when another series is to begin within a very short time. So
the ban on shoots 15 days prior to a series, if enforced, might do some
good.
Even the most experienced and strong-minded cannot evade the effects
of endorsement raj. So imagine a 21- or 22-year-old caught up in this. A
kid who has been blazing away at the best bowlers in the world without
fear of failure. Once the endorsement web closes in and you have crores
riding on your next performance, it’s different.
That too when you’ve had a couple of bad outings. With what freedom
will you play that next innings? Will you play safe or with spirit? Will
you go for the bowling or will you hesitate on that big, bold stroke? Of
course players should not be barred from income outside of the game.
They have a right to that. But the nature and effects of this source
of income went way over the top ages ago and need checking.
In 1986, a study of a single India-England one-day match showed that
72 ads from about 20 companies had been telecast in under seven hours.
At that time, this was thought to be a matter of some concern.
How trivial those numbers seem today. Not just the match but what
Erik Barnouw called the “surrounding territory” is suffused with the
sponsors’ material.
There are pre-match, lunch interval, and post-match programmes
designed to showcase the sponsor’s products. There are curtain raisers,
cheerleader shows, and post mortems that do the same.
There are no more boundaries in cricket. There’s only Corporate X’s
Fantastic Fours, Business Y’s Super Sixes and Company Z’s Magic Moments.
Not to forget some other concern’s Sizzling Catches.
As this whole culture takes root, the successful player drowns in
sponsor money.
The distinction between cricket player and product peddler blurs in
more ways than one. Logos and uniforms proclaim who owns the players and
it’s not the country. Once it was just an annoying bunch of
ear-splitting ads between overs.
Now it’s a colossal money-spinning industry in which the game is
smaller than the revenue.
It’s not just about match fees, really. Nor so simple as the BCCI
regulating players’ endorsements. The nature of the game’s ties to big
money — the Board’s own deals and those of the media, too — have all got
to be looked at honestly.
Those calling for increasing the number of selectors should reflect
there already are more. Corporate sponsors and agents. They’ve got too
much to lose from `their’ players being dropped or sidelined. They will
interfere.
But there’s more. In one estimate, three players of the Indian side
had endorsement work for 60-75 days each last year. It could overwhelm
anybody. Imagine the pressure on 20-somethings.
Because some of these players are so very good, they will still
perform brilliantly at times. Because the stress of so much money riding
on them is so intense, they can falter at crucial moments.
That’s why the ex-captains have rightly spoken about the need to
check performance-linked clauses in the endorsements. It is easy to
forget that the same players have also won significant victories.
Like it or not, if you drew up a list of the country’s 20 best
players, it would be hard to exclude many of those in the present team.
Their replacements, anyway, would simply be fresh prey for sponsors,
ads, and agents.
Now that endorsements have at least begun to be looked at, there’s
one more thing that should be factored into analysis: the role of the
media. Hysterical over-the-top stories, astonishing levels of
speculation, intense personalisation, are one part of it. Lobbying,
plants, and camp reporting are another.
Meanwhile, the media are bashing the `fickle-minded’ cricket-loving
public, blaming them for the proposed curbs on endorsements.
“This is to appease the public,” declared one channel. In truth, the
media have been far more fickle. Their own polls show the public’s stand
on these issues is not much different from what it was earlier.
However, the media’s rah-rah campaign for the team changed
drastically with our Caribbean catastrophe. No more cheer India, right?
There is an important link. The same commercial interests that weigh
down the players are also massive advertisers. The money they put in
there drives the kind of whipped up, concocted feel-good factor you saw
in the media prior to the defeats. The players become super humans.
A class apart. No need to consider that other teams might be better.
Just have yards of newsprint and hours of broadcast time devoted to
halo-building and product hawking. This too obviously piles up the
pressure on players of any age, let alone 21-year-olds.
Fact: It’s a game (or used to be). We weren’t good enough, we lost.
And Bangladesh played with a passion and energy we lacked on the day.
It’s no accident that among the first round of stories that appeared
as the team faced an exit was on how much corporate sponsors stood to
lose. Quite absurd. They made millions before the first match was played
in the World Cup.
But those stories had to happen. They reflect the reality that the
media was set to lose a lot of advertising revenue. They’re furious with
the curbs. It’s not the `gagging’ of players that upsets them. It’s the
money. All those `exclusive’ links with players that translate into
revenue.
Meanwhile, the home remedies being doled out will hopefully not drown
the new, welcome look at endorsements. Regional bias as villain has
surfaced yet again. Sure, such a bias in selection can be a problem but
it is not the root cause of the evil.
This view assumes that the supermen who will replace the regional
system of selectors will be free of such bias themselves.
Is there evidence to support that notion? What if they are only
familiar with cricket in the major centres they know? Curbing regional
bias surely involves more than just doing away with the old method?
The enduring appeal of all these remedies is, of course, that most
have some truth in them. But that truth gets badly stretched. The cult
of youth is one of these. It’s wonderful to have young players do very
well as indeed they often have for India.
Making this a mindless mantra ignores that Australia’s Dad’s Army is
the most feared team in the world. It is no less true that everybody has
to go sometime. But should that be on performance and record or do we
just set an expiry date that treats the capabilities of all sportsmen as
being exactly the same: “Best before 2008. Shake well before use.”
The others too, we’ve heard before. And they’re all very true:
quality pitches. Improve domestic cricket. Better infrastructure. Treat
the junior level of the game more seriously.
Quite right. But all these would apply to almost any other sport as
well. Including those that have produced far better achievers than
cricket — without any of the sponsorship or attention it receives. The
one huge difference between cricket and all these sports is the money
involved.
And remember that our team got almost anything it could have asked
for. Failure too is part of the game. And others can and will often play
better than us. But knowing that big money is undermining the game as a
whole and pussyfooting around it, that’s dumb. It just isn’t cricket.
Courtesy-The Hindu |