Vohra’s view: Far graver issues for cricket than dissent following Kohli's match fee fine

Bikram Vohra 09:13 03/03/2016
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  • Excessive: The 30 per cent match fee fine on Virat Kohli against Pakistan was way out of proportion for his action.

    It seems a little excessive to fine a batsman large sums of money for pointing his bat as evidence of not being out to the umpire; pretty much what Virat Kohli did during the Asia Cup match against Pakistan. Compare that to the mob that surrounds a soccer referee or a hockey umpire, and the protest is diluted vanilla in comparison.

    This anointing of the custodians of the game on field as being above reproach has gotten a bit tiring. Seeing how they make their fair share of errors and are willing conspirators in that absurd charade of making batsmen wait after they are out to see if the foot of the bowler didn’t cross the line, my sympathy sort of dries up. If you didn’t call it when it happened, you cannot fall back on replays to check it out. That is cheating. Not so long ago there was a lusty yell of ‘ No baaaalll’ and the batsmen went for it. That is not in the rules any more.

    With the World T20 and the IPL in rapid succession, it is time to clean up the act.

    The other annoyance is the needlessly high number of angles and cameras and it detracts from, not enhances, viewing pleasure. They even have cams on the heads of the umpires. I truly do not want to see the umpire’s finger in dramatic close up.

    This visual burden is further ruined by the endless graphics and the now inane information flung at the helpless audience. On Mondays and Tuesdays Pakistan win 45 per cent of their matches. If there are clouds in the sky, then India lose 56 per cent of their games. If a mongrel walks across the pitch mid-game, Sri Lanka loses 33 per cent of their games.

    There has to be a limit to this deluge of utterly pointless data and we seem to have crossed it. Leave the game alone and let us watch in peace. Rather they spent money on Snicko and DRS and had a challenge each for the teams, all of which reduce the error factor.

    I do wonder who sits there working out these gimmicks and foisting them on us. In the current tournament, they have a ridiculous semi-circle with clock hands that bounces around indicating the win percentage at a given time, these projections based on the most tenuous of inputs…besides making a mockery of the glorious uncertainty of cricket. The replays they show now are so frequent, you lose track of whether you are watching live, or the done-and-dusted for the 17th time. It is almost as if they were all bent on taking the fun out of game by deflecting attention.

    Perhaps where the most attention should be paid is on the close ups of players and the easy lip reading of the foul words used. The non-English equivalents make sledging sound like a conversation in a convent and it will come as no surprise if warnings are issued before the games start asking adults to exercise parental caution if children are part of the TV audience and children are certainly watching.

    In fact children make up 43.67 per cent of the viewing public (go on, prove me wrong) and with so many mics on the pitch, these kids are exposed to not just the mouthing of the vituperative but even the low-key sound that follows the obscenity, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind what has been said. Rather swiftly the parlour game of guessing what the word is has now become redundant. Everyone knows, including the commentator.
    One way of probably ending the verbal ugliness is to issue red and green cards so that batsmen are docked runs, or, for a second offense, sent back to the pavilion and bowlers blocked from doing their thing for say, thirty minutes.

    These steps will at least clean up the act a bit because the way cricket is being broadcast, it is on the top of the list as the most profane sport in the world.

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