Media Fringe Binge @ TeamIndia

Cricket is our obsession.

The question is are we mature and obsessed or immature and obsessed.

I notice that the graph of maturity, of us obsessed Indians, has taken an upward curve in the last few years.

Such, I regret pointing out, is not the case with much of the Indian media,

The reaction of the media, particularly the visual one, to yesterday’s defeat at the hands of Australia in the World Cup semi-final is illustrative.

The media began preparing for the World Cup long before Team India crossed over to the practice nets.

It was after all a mega budget affair. Crores of rupees involved. The big stars of cricket from Tendulkar onwards contracted. Each inch of the screen sponsored. Special sets erected in the studios. Teams readied to move to Australia. Live sources and streaming possibilities considered. Innumerable programs conceived and packaged. As match days neared, the drama unfolded possibilities never imagined, like, for example, anchors in suits and ties wearing a colourful turban and in the midst of anchoring getting up to join a band of drums and trombones, shaking a leg or two. Literally, anything that could go, went.

What was the assumption behind all this? It was primarily a presumption that Indians are obsessed with cricket and they would watch channels covering anything related to the game? And the presumption that the more colourful, the more outlandish (read innovative), the coverage is, the more the viewership would be? Maybe.

The channels were not proved wrong. The obsessed Indians did not disappoint them.

Now comes the difficult part.

The media obsession with the coverage of cricket.

It translates quite simply into edifying the cricketers in triumph and denigrating them in loss.

(Without being immodest I must admit that my group did not fall into this category. I do not say this lightly.)

Let us dissect this obsession.

Go back to March 14, 1996, the day after a group of obsessed Indian fans set fire to stands in the Eden Garden in Kolkata after Sri Lanka began to annihilate the Indian batsmen. The newspapers and what little of television we had then did criticize Team India’s abject surrender but without losing their sense of proportion and propriety. The media came down heavily against the fans for their over-enthusiasm.

In 1999 when India was out of the tournament after a dismal performance in the Super Six stage, the Indian media did call for captain Azharuddin’s head but led its coverage with the positives from the tournament, including the coming to age of India’s big three – Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid.

Now we come to the World Cup in the era of Indian broadcast journalism. The year, 2003. India barely managed to beat minnows Holland. Then came the inglorious match with Australia where India tumbled out for 125. Across the country, the fans took out effigies of TeamIndia and burnt them in front of television cameras. For the first time we noticed the television media bringing in nationalism into its narrative. Phrases like ‘’national shame’’ were bandied about with alacrity. Literally playing to the sentiments of the fans.

The first chinks in the armour of professional journalism practice went unnoticed. Perhaps, overlooked. The grudging come-back by TeamIndia in the later part of the tournament, beating Davids and Goliaths alike, making it to the final (before losing their nerve against Australia) was hailed by the media as regaining ‘’national honour’’. The fans too took out victory processions, conveniently leaving the effigies at home.

FaceBook entered our world the following year, 2004. By the time of the next World Cup in 2007, the obsession with cricket became the mainstay of the social media. As Bangladesh thrashed India, television newsrooms were busy monitoring FaceBook to collect posts and show them on their screens. Television producers quickly realized that the fans now had a powerful communication medium at their finger tips. So the TV screens became louder, more garish. A victory in a World Cup game became a greater symbol of India’s national identity than August 15, 1947. Anchors and cricketing guests alike looked up the net for nationalistic phrases. The fans were in a similar mood as they took out protest marches in Bengaluru and Mumbai and piled their bile on FaceBook.

Twitter entered our world in 2006 and five years later, when the World Cup began in 2011, India was in the grip of social media to the extent that the traditional media was forced to source much of its coverage from FaceBook and Twitter. The hashtag of Indian nationalism was #TeamIndia. Any systemic or symptomatic difference between the traditional media and the social media was blurred completely as both steered the mood of the country to make it somewhat resemble the heydays of 1947, 1965 and 1971. The World Cup, being played at home, would remain at home, they said. They dismissed India’s only defeat – to South Africa – as an aberration! After the final, a TV channel even said Dhoni was God. Many channels highlighted tweets and posts demanding a Bharat Ratna for TeamIndia and Dhoni.

Four years later, time for the World Cup again. The news channels carried their nationalist pitch to greater heights. They did not notice a difference from 2011: The fans, these obsessed Indians, were taking the Indian victories in their stride as their tweets and posts revealed. There were an equal number of tweets and posts applauding rival teams. In fact the social media in India was calling New Zealand, Australia and South Africa favourites even at the preliminary stage. Many thought India were favourites too, but not necessarily the only favourites. Of course there was a fringe element which kept up the nationalist rhetoric. But with few takers. The television channels, however, outrivaled the fringe in their nationalist outreach. Their headlines, their hashtags, their bugs, their anchor lines, their packages were splashed in the tri-colour.

In the event, India lost the semi-final. The fringe blamed Anoushka Sharma. The fringe lamented the blow to national pride. It strangely found itself on the receiving end on the social media for its utterances. There was general unanimity in the flaying of the fringe. The reaction of the obsessed Indians to the loss was, equally strangely, sober. Unlike never in the past. After the initial shock it was taken in their stride. TeamIndia acquitted itself decently, they said in their posts and tweets, while noting that the pressure of the game and lack of experience may have been Team India’s undoing. Some television channels stood out as sore thumbs and bad losers. They created a din throughout prime time last night as they berated TeamIndia, called it names, held it responsible for India’s shame, asked for their heads to roll, attributed motives to some players. They did everything just short of describing TeamIndia’s loss as an act of sedition. If they thought they were mirroring the sentiments of the majority of the obsessed Indians they were abjectly wrong.

For once, they were the fringe.