Reading about Indian cricket is tedious. Here's what we can do about it.

Why is Indian cricket writing so tedious and unenlightening to read? Why do I never feel I learnt something new and interesting when I read any article, report, or opinion piece about Indian cricket?

Maybe it is tedious to read because the BCCI — a creakily named, rust jointed governing body of Indian cricket — has elevated muzzling of its employees to Great Firewall levels.

Or maybe it is tedious to read because Indian writers don’t understand creative writing, or narrative building, or the art of interpreting the unsaid, or the ability to demand more answers from the players and staff to serve and educate their readers.

Or Maybe It Is Just Me?

As an Indian cricket fan, I read content about Indian cricket with a contextual awareness that I lack for other countries.

Could that be why Indian cricket writing feels so uninspired? Luckily, this is the easiest to detect.

If, after having read this article so far, a non-Indian cricket reader says they have similar complaints about cricket writing pertaining to their own country, I’ll accept that maybe the fault is with me as a reader. Maybe we are like those experts who read journalistic articles on a subjects they have expertise in and find those articles shallow and lacking in nuance.

Some Examples

Barring this possibility, let’s examine a few examples of cricket writing and reporting on ESPNCricinfo to see if Indian cricket writing is genuinely tedious when compared to cricket writing covering other countries.

Here’s the subtitle of a recent article is about England’s first inning collapse in the ongoing second Ashes test

Questions will be asked in the home dressing room after a desultory collapse at Lord’s.

Note the use of the word?desultory?to describe a perfunctory, aimless batting display from the English side. One perfectly chosen word explaining all that went wrong with England yesterday.

Compare it with the subtitle of an opinion piece by former Indian cricket Saba Karim demanding the appointment of a Director of Cricket to guide Indian cricket.

The country’s cricket set-up requires one person who is in a position of oversight and authority, who will be answerable for the performance of the national teams.

So many dull, dry words to ask for someone in an?executive?role responsible for driving tangible results.

In other contexts, I have read such people in single-focus, executive roles referred to as?Czars. For example, US Presudent Joe Biden had, until recently, Ashish Jha as his Covid-19 response czar

What if we rewrote the subtitle as this?

Indian cricket needs a performance?czar responsible for on-field results?

There. So much easier to communicate what Karim wants to convey with a simple word choice.

Of course, the word?czar?might not be familiar to everyone.

Maybe there is a different word which perfectly captures this idea of an individual responsible for a specific task which is also universally understood. If so, it is the journalist’s job to find the right term for it and introduce it into our bloodstream.

Word Pictures versus Broad Brush Strokes

Anyway, back to the English collapse article.

Ben Stokes?had been back in [the dressing room] for no more than 10 minutes before he decided to duck out, moving to the balcony to sit alone on one of the benches. He spent enough time in home dressing room to change out of his whites and into his teal training gear. As he sat there, bucket hat pulled over his eyes to cover the forehead frowns, it was clear he wanted time to himself.

It describes a scene — of a despairing captain — which sets the mood for the rest of the article.

Here’s the first paragraph of a 2022 article about Rohit Sharma’s frustration with injuries to leading players in his team.

Rohit Sharma, the India captain, has expressed displeasure at players pulling up injured repeatedly despite being passed fit. He hopes the National Cricket Academy, the body that monitors and rehabilitates injured players, can “get to the bottom of it” soon

There is no scene setting, no vividness in describing what Rohit Sharma looked like while expressing his annoyance at injuries, just a dry recital of facts.

It’s almost like Indian cricket writers are afraid to observe and interpret body language. Or are they incapable of it?

The rest of the article was more of the same -

Chahar ruled out due to injuries, Rohit himself missing a game due to a finger injury, something about Washington Sundar, and on and on and on.

Here’s Jeetan Patel talking about Moeen Ali’s recent finger injury.

It was pretty disgusting at the end of the Test…

Vivid!

Apparently, Moeen’s injury was due to the?prouder?seam of the Dukes ball and his lack of practice bowling long spells with such balls.

Moeen’s injury owed to the?prouder?seam on the red Dukes ball than the white Kookaburra used in limited-overs cricket, as well as the sharp spike in his workload.

The Moeen Ali story had a cause and effect arc. The story progressed from being a report on Ali’s injury to an explanation of why it could have happened.

The Rohit Sharma story did not even try to similarly inform and educate its readers. For example, it described the usual protocol of what happens when a player is on the selectors radar.

At the moment, players on the selection radar are asked to report at the NCA for a?fitness assessment, following which a?detailed report?is submitted to the team management. The trainer then charts a?workload management programme?for the players in consultation with the support staff.

If a player is injured, they spend a?prescribed time?under rehab after a detailed investigation into the injury and its causes are conducted. The final step of their recovery includes a?detailed fitness assessment?before they’re given a green signal.?(Emphasis mine)

What does a fitness assessment look like? Can ESPNCricinfo publish Chahar’s actual fitness assessment? Or even a sample fitness assessment from published by the BCCI in some player handbook? What does a typical workload management chart look like? What types of experts and professionals are involved in assessing a prospect’s fitness? What were Chahar’s metrics like before he was cleared for selection which led to his latest injury?

Like I said, I learnt absolutely nothing new from reading the Rohit Sharma article except that he was upset about important players constantly getting injured.

Why is this the case?

It can’t be that all Indian cricket writers are just unreadable with no hope for redemption. Something, somewhere is broken.

Are they being hamstrung by BCCI’s inane and insane rules about what can and can’t be said out loud in order to better serve the Team India brand?

If so, BCCI, tasked with nurturing cricket, is instead having a chilling effect on it.

Or could it be that Indian writers just don’t know how to write a gripping story?

Chilling Effect

We all know commentators covering Indian matches are kept on a tight leash by the BCCI’s media arm.

Commentators are so scared of losing access to the money trough which employs them that they have completely forgotten their duty as commentators — to commentate, educate, and inform.

Don’t get me wrong. Commentators are only doing what they need to do to earn a living and stay connected to the sport which has defined their lives.

This chilling effect on commentary is fully and squarely BCCI’s fault.

It is sucking the life, the zest, all the color out of cricket in order to protect the brand. As a result, we, India’s cricket loving population learn nothing, expect nothing, know nothing about the people we see on our screens.

My question is simple.

Why hire all these former cricketers to commentate if they can’t speak their mind and shed light on what could be happening on the field?

If all we need is a bland description of the unfolding action, we could just as well read ESPNCricinfo’s ball by ball coverage. At least they use evocative words like?smeared?and?nurdled?and?walloped?to describe cricket shots instead of drowning us in shots traveling?like tracer bullets to the boundary?(? Ravi Shastri).

Instead, Indian cricket writers suffer from this chilling effect in two ways.

First, no says anything revealing to them and second because they too fear losing access to cricket’s elite if they ask uncomfortable questions or lob truth bombs.

Unimaginative writers and Uninquisitive readers

While BCCI’s chilling effects are easy to blame, we must confront the possibility that Indian cricket writers and readers are responsible for the state we find ourselves in.

Go to any discussion thread about cricket. Every country, except India of course, has a brand of cricket it epitomizes.

England has already reinvented itself in limited overs cricket and is upending Test cricket with Bazball. Australia has its “tough but fair” shtick. Pakistan is “passion and expecting the unexpected”. New Zealand are “overachieving underdogs”. West Indies used to be “flair”.

What is India’s brand? Why have our journalists not reflected on the Indian way of playing cricket and filed it neatly under a recognizable label?

Bat Deep — or Dhoni’s ? idea of taking the game as deep as possible to force mistakes under pressure from the other team — was the last and only time our cricket had an identity.

We have had two (three if you count Hardik Pandya) full time captains since Dhoni but no identifying labels for our cricket. Talk about unimaginative journalists!

English newspapers have conducted sting operations exposing spot fixing by international captains and rookie bowlers.

Australian newspapers tore into Steve Smith and company after SandpaperGate.

Can you imagine Indian cricket journalists sticking out their neck to expose the seamier side of cricket? It is not for lack to stories to dig into — Harbhajan Singh and MonkeyGate. Sachin Tendulkar caught ball tampering. ICL vs IPL and BCCI’s anti-competitive stance on Indian cricketers participating in foreign leagues. The growing trend of T20 franchises “owning” rights to a player’s services ahead of that player’s home country.

There is so much to explore and explain but we are stuck with unimaginative journalists who are happy to repeat talking points published by the BCCI. This leads to an uninformed and uninquisitive population which does not even know what it does not know.

To be clear, this is a limitation of Indian cricket writing.

Our writers have to realize that they have a duty to educate and illuminate. Their audience deserves to get a 360-degree view of cricket and not just the glamorous parts sanctioned by cricket’s custodians.

Maybe we need an Indian CLR James to explain to us where cricket sits in society. Or a Gideon Haigh to write about cricket with dispassion but eloquence.

What Should Indian Cricket Writing Look like?

First, Indian cricket writers need to realize that they have a responsibility to their readers — they owe their readers insights and the truth.

Second, they have to cultivate curiosity and be curious about the ecosystem inside which Indian cricket operates. They should obsessively ask “why?” or “why not?” until they get to the bottom of a situation. They’ll have to reflect on what they don’t understand, then seek to understand and share it with us readers.

Third, they will have to be fiercely protective of their sources. People within cricket have to first trust them before they come forward to share bombshells with them. This can only happen when they see journalists doing their utmost to protect their sources.

Conclusion

Indian cricket writing needs to elevate the level at which it operates. Indian cricket is far too important to the world to let the fogeys at BCCI set the storyline unchallenged.