Viewing sports on the idiot box can, well, turn you into more of an idiot! But there are advantages. You can watch the game up really close, sitting in your room
Is it better to watch cricket on the television or sitting on the stands in the groundIJ The question occurred to me while watching the recent India-England series — so far Tests and one-day internationals — currently on its last legs. To this was added another dimension when a friend grandly commented that watching cricket on television could turn one into a “couch potato” — one who sits on a sofa or couch watching television for hours and losing one's capacity or will for doing anything else.
The more I reflected the more I realised that there were positive and negative sides to the question I had asked myself. Before that, however, I felt that I should explore my friend's assertion and that of those who might hold an opposite view. The more I tickled by brain, the more I felt that the possibility could not be dismissed off-hand. Watching television is an exercise in passivity. It does not require one to do anything physically or mentally, and to just be entertained.
This is all the more so because entertainment, as Neil Postman points out inAmusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, “is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted and from what point of view, the overarching preservation is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure”.
While it is try true that television tends to turn everything into entertainment and, hence, can be addictive, one can argue that not just cricket matches but any programme — a serial, a film or even commentaries on social, political and economic issues — can make one a small-screen addict. So, why blame the king of gamesIJ
The question dispatched, at least for the time being, one can return to the one that started it all. Whether watching cricket — or for that matter any spectator sport — on television or directly at the ground, is better. Those who argue in favour of the former, say that it shows close-up views of shots by a batter, a bowler running up to bowl overs, catches taken and dropped, spectacular pieces of ground fielding, and so on. One does not see any of these from close quarters when watching from the stands.
This is a loss for any ordinary viewer. For cricketers, particularly the budding ones, it is loss plus. To cite an example why it is so, watching a batter coping with a ball rising awkwardly from just short of good length-playing back, lifting his/her bat, straight and shoulder high, and either relaxing the grip of the right hand (the other hand in the case of a left-hander) on the handle or taking it off altogether-can be helpful in showing how to cope with such deliveries.
Equally beneficial can be watching a top-drawer fast bowler running up to bowl, particularly how he/ she jumps at the end of the delivery to bowl, bends back his/her torso from the waist, and bring it forward with the end of the jump to lend to the delivery the momentum of the run-up and the weight of his/her entire body.
One can, of course, watch these things at the nets. But seeing them in match conditions is an entirely different matter because one can see them in full perspective of the field. Watching through binoculars, which we did when we were young, helped. We, however, could not hold a binocular endlessly to the eye and had to lower one's hands from time to time, which meant missing out on a shot or delivery or a catch or a run-out when the binocular was down,
Of course, watching indoors on television, one misses out on the atmosphere of the cricket ground-the cheering and jeering, the shouting of observations and comments with other spectators, the forming of bonds, fleeting but nevertheless warm, with strangers supporting or opposing the same team as oneself. Also, one misses out on the thrills and excitement, the sights and sounds, of being there is in person.
But then there it is. You cannot have everything. As Clint Eastwood said in the course of one of his more memorable dialogues, “You win some, you lose some.”
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)