Tour Diary

You can’t accuse the Indian media of not taking the IPL seriously. Today, CNN IBN has posed the million-dollar teaser: “Do cheerleaders degrade the game of cricket?” So outraged is the channel on behalf of its viewers that the question was illustrated by a close-up of a cheerleader’s cleavage. Clearly, a lot of people are working themselves into a lather.

CNN IBN was persuaded to ask its viewers to vote on the issue by the indignation of the Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party, a right wing party who are arguing that cheerleaders are no better than “bar dancers”. To the best of my knowledge, bar dancers are paid by the boogy. Whatever you make of the cheerleaders who have become one of the more incongruous features of this competition, I have yet to see them venture into the crowd touting for 100-rupee notes to be shoved into their bosom.

This is my ninth day in India, so I thought it was time to take stock and pass on a few things I’ve learned …

1) Cricketers don’t look good dressed as gladiators (or is it Roman soldiers?). An illustrated advert in today’s Hindu depicts Muttiah Muralitharan, Matthew Hayden, a moody-looking Stephen Fleming (well, he was left out of Chennai’s match against Kings XI Punjab) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni wearing leather tunics and brandishing swords. Hmm.

First, an apology to Shah Rukh Khan: you will not be mentioned in today’s diary entry. And nor will you, Preity Zinta. Sorry.

So, the cricket. I keep forgetting I’m here for the cricket. Before the IPL started, I asked any player I spoke to who they thought was going to win. To a man, they replied that anything could happen in Twenty20, that everyone had a strong squad, and that they were going to give 110%. At the time, these sounded like the kind of answers you get out of sportsmen every day, all round the world: non-committal, anodyne, knuckle-gnawingly tedious. But after six matches, and with a slap in the face for my cynicism, these purveyors of fence-sitting are yet to be proved wrong.

Yesterday, before the games at Eden Gardens and the Wankhede demonstrated that Indian fans really are capable of going mad for a team other than the national one, I was surprised to see a huge billboard just off the main road that links Andheri to Juhu in north Mumbai. It was not so much the slogan which caught my eye (“Be scared. Be s**t-scared”), nor the joints-of-ham that passed for Andrew Symonds’s biceps, but the fact that Mumbai was giving space to the Kolkata Knight Riders, a team not merely from out of town but from the other side of the country. So much for generating support for the local side.

My friend, a Mumbai resident, gently suggested that not only was the city more cosmopolitan than other places in India, but that – sorry, Simmo – Shah Rukh Khan’s connections with the Knight Riders makes them a drawcard wherever they travel. (When I return to England, that man will haunt my dreams: he is absolutely everywhere) In the event, there was never any question of Mumbaikars not getting behind the Mumbai Indians during their five-wicket defeat to Bangalore Royal Challengers last night, but the cult of celebrity looms alarmingly large in the Indian Premier League.

Most of the papers I looked at this morning led their front pages with pictures of the various stars and dignitaries who attended the Wankhede. Yes, there was a mention of the farcical floodlight failure in Kolkata and even a comment or two about the cricket. But what the readers wanted, the editors duly provided. The caption under the main snap on the front page of the Mumbai Mirror started with “Film producer Yash Chopra with Nita Ambani; actors Saif Ali Khan and Anil Kapoor; Sachin Tendulkar’s son Arjun; Mumbai Indians owner Mukesh Ambani with wife Nita,” and continued in a similar vein.

A crumbling pitch, a packed house, a power cut, sapping heat, too few sixes – and, eventually, a five-wicket win for the home side. The IPL’s first match at Eden Gardens had its share of drama, but eventually the spectators – 87,000, by most accounts – went home happy. The men behind the Knight Riders – led by the omnipresent Shah Rukh Khan - have some glitches to sort out for the remaining games, but the overall reaction and overwhelming support would have heartened them.

And there I was thinking India’s initial reluctance to embrace Twenty20 was because the format offered fewer ad breaks than the 50-over game. Well, folks, they seem to have found a way round it. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening tuned into Sony Max’s coverage of what – in unwitting homage to Sky Sports’ portrayal of the English Premier League – was unblushingly referred to as “Super Saturday”. All this meant in practice was that the IPL was staging two games in a day instead of one and never mind the quality (you fear already for Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals). But I digress.

Regular watchers of cricket on commercial TV will be used to ad breaks at the end of each over, preferably with a respectful pause to ensure the ball really is dead before we find out about the latest brand of anti-dandruff shampoo. But Sony Max has allowed several adverts to appear in a single over by shrinking the picture. Apparently this cunning tactic has been used on Indian TV for a few years now, but what seems to be new is its frequency.

What happens is that the picture shrinks to allow space underneath it and to the left, allowing the name of a well-known mobile-phone company to step seamlessly into the breach. If the commentators are busy talking at the time, so much the worse: their musings are simply drowned out by the advert’s verbals. The effect can be tantalising. Yesterday, in one of the rare moments when a commentator seemed to be on the verge of using an adjective other than “fantastic”, “incredible”, or “amazing”, he was cut off in his prime.

And there’s more. If a boundary is struck (and with the organisers needing no encouragement to position the boundary 65 yards from the wicket, the minimum distance allowed by the ICC, this happens quite often) up pops a banner ad to point out the joys of a renowned brand of camera.

Partisanship is not the most attractive word, but it may yet turn into the abstract noun most craved by the organisers of the IPL. They’ve got the money, they’ve got the glamour, they’ve got the players, and last night they were handed a gift-wrapped start by the bat of Brendon McCullum. But have they got the crowds? I’m not talking about numbers: the Chinnaswamy was packed. The question is whether the fans will come to cherish their local team like, say, followers of European football. Because without some degree of partisanship, sport is just another form of entertainment.

There was no doubting the passion of those who turned up. In descending order of ear-splitting decibels, the most emotional responses were reserved for: Sachin Tendulkar’s entry onto the stage in his role as captain of Mumbai Indians (surely it was no coincidence that his stroll, the longest of the eight captains, was left until last); the jeers for Sharad Pawar, proving once more that sport and politics do mix, just not always very comfortably; the brief booing of Ricky Ponting, captain – as if you need to be reminded – of those dastardly Australians; and the cheers for Brendon McCullum, who was batting for the away team.

It’s easy to get swept along by the razzmatazz of the IPL, and I apologise if I’ve already mentioned that cricket will never be the same again, or some variation on the cliché of the moment. But journalists are supposed to challenge assumptions, so – deep breath – here goes: is cricket really as popular with India’s youth as the English like to imagine?

Now before you start shaking your heads at the appalling naivety of the question, consider this quote in today’s Times of India from a Mr Sandeep Kumar Bajpai, described as an engineering student: “The IPL has the potential to become as popular as the English Premier League.” As popular? What about the IPL becoming as popular as, ooh, the Indian Test team, or the Indian 50-overs team? No, Sandeep chose a sport which anecdotal evidence suggests is in danger of diluting the average Indian youngster’s apparently innate love of cricket.

Last year, in the course of researching an article on the phenomenon of the long-distance sports fan for a British magazine, I spoke to N Manoj, an 18-year-old economics student from Bangalore and a mad-keen Chelsea supporter. He assured me that he and his friends made a habit of gathering around the TV a few times a week to watch live coverage of the English Premier League on ESPN and Star-Sports. His nickname, naturally, was Frank, after the Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard.

One of the many delights of being in India is the understanding that cricket is not so much a sport as a lingua franca. I promise not to fill this blog with too many facile comparisons, but it’s safe to say that if you get into a taxi in England and ask to be taken to the local county ground, it is not usually the cue for a riotous debate with the driver about the prospects for Derbyshire’s new overseas paceman. Today I flagged down one of the thousands of auto rickshaws that make India’s streets feel like a giant beehive, and, sure enough, the driver and I were talking IPL almost before I had sat down.

Actually, “talking” is stretching a point. We roared a few words at each other over the steady drone of the traffic and managed to construct a fairly meaningful conversation about tomorrow night’s IPL opener here in Bangalore between the Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders (whose name I will at some point be able to write without thinking of David Hasselhoff and a mysterious talking black Pontiac).

Usually at this time of year I would be going through my first-game-of-the-county-season ritual: wrap up warm, pack the binoculars and the latest edition of Wisden, think of a quick summary of my winter with which to regale press-box colleagues, and – important, this – glance nervously at the April skies. My options today would have included the Rose Bowl, Canterbury, The Oval, Chelmsford, Bristol, Grace Road and Edgbaston, names that evoke a certain nostalgia even as I write them. Instead, I am in Bangalore, where – in case you have just arrived from Mars – the revolution begins on Friday. It is the kind of decision freelance journalists think of as a calculated risk.