Back to the future: lessons from the Asian Games for the Olympics

India were in a familiar situation at the Asian Games. Victory was taken for granted, defeat would have counted as a disgrace. This is the fate of top-ranked teams: damned if you do and doubly damned if you don’t.

The repercussions would have been greater had India lost to Japan following the infamous ‘wide ball’ in the last over by Axar Patel. The right decision was made, but it needed a show of dissent by the players to get there.

That an international tournament was played without DRS (and even, as it turned out, without proper pitches) is stunning. Forget the complaints about accommodation and transport, the fact that cricket had been reduced to a ritual doesn’t speak well of the International Cricket Council which should insist on minimum standards at multi-event games. One hopes the ICC (or its representative) will do better at the Olympic Games two years from now in Los Angeles where the teams and competition will be of a higher standard.

The final had one message for cricket fans: Know the ‘passport names’ of your heroes. Thus we learnt — thanks to the amateurish television coverage — that Sanju Samson was actually Sanju Viswanath in disguise, and that the man we have been admiring as Tilak Varma is in reality Tilak Namboori. Skipper Shreyas Santosh is rumoured to have been amused by it all.

It was a great match for nostalgia buffs. Often we missed the first ball of an over or the last, and had to sit through inane advertisements to find out if a batter had been dismissed and if so how so? We were back in the 1980s, with the Justice Lodha Commission recommendations (“advertisement should be telecast to the extent of drinks and break session and unnecessary advertisement after every over and fall of wicket should be avoided”) decades into the future.

Target audience?

It does raise a fundamental question: for whom is cricket played? The players, who have a personal stake in doing well, and who, presumably love what they are doing and can do things the rest of us can only fantasise about? The spectators, who buy into the tribal and cultural ethos without being conscious of these? The administrators, who enjoy the power and the positive impact on their business interests? Television moguls whose scorecard doesn’t have bowling or batting figures but dollar and cent signs? Columnists, who find the negatives in a positive and vice versa? Perhaps it is all of the above, some of the above or none of the above.

What Joyce Carol Oates said about boxing applies equally to cricket (or any sport at the highest level). Speaking of the three Ali-Frazier fights, she said these were “boxing’s analogues to King Lear – ordeals of unfathomable human courage and resilience raised to the level of classical tragedy.”

Still, India may have scored more runs and claimed more wickets in the tournament than viewers actually saw live, which takes us into the realm of philosophy. Does it count as a six or a wicket when no one saw it? TV can make philosophers of us all.

The Asian Games gives breath once again to the argument against having cricket in multi-event games like the Olympics. An Olympic medal will mean less to a player than winning a World Cup or World Test Championship. And if the games are in a country with little or no interest in cricket, it is unlikely to spread its message which is what the ICC hopes for. From the International Olympic Committee’s point of view, it will draw in the south Asian population, or more specifically, the television viewership (this will also call for more professional handling from TV).

Perhaps an age limit like in Olympic football (under-23) can be applied to cricket too. The argument is similar: a world cup exists already and a team would prefer to win that over an Olympic medal.

If the Asian Games cricket, which has asked more questions than provided answers, succeeds in raising the right questions ahead of the Olympic Games, then the telecast would be a minor crib. The ICC will have to find the balance between spreading the game and keeping the television viewership satisfied without diminishing the quality.