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inane annals
Subjection and Subjectivity: An Object Analysis
by Asya Anderson | 16 Oct 2006, 0:00

India vs. Pakistan:
First One Day International Cricket Match

I know next to nothing about cricket. I mean, sure, I've heard the analogies to baseball, I've seen and even held a cricket bat, but the rules and practicalities of the game are entirely lost on me. The biggest mystery is the referee, who seems to be dressed as an American park ranger, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and stiff collared shirt. In particular, I wonder why he is wearing this hat and at the same time carrying a very similar hat. Why does he need two ranger hats?! Later I realize that the ranger occasionally gives the hat to a player, and then takes it back. I'm still not sure why. This is the first detail that strikes me upon watching the all day cricket match between India and Pakistan, and I find this troubling. My notes from the game attest that I am clearly more concerned with the fashion of the players than the content of the match.

There is a certain joy in the discovery of the rules and terminology of the game. The moment I realized what the wicket was (the poles on either end of the rectangular square of dirt where the players bowl and bat), or what it meant to "go over" (to have the ball batted over the rope ring at the outskirts of the pitch) were points of satisfying clarity. But over all, the simple unintelligibility of the game compelled me to consider the aesthetics of this cricket match and its production, rather than the match itself.

The recording of the March 12, 2004 cricket match between India and Pakistan in Kirachi on two DVDs seems to be a bootleg copy of a broadcast on "Dish Network," complete with the ads and technical difficulties of this cable channel. The cover of the DVD box is a pixilated image of India's and Pakistan's flags and the DVDs themselves have simple, white, homemade, labels. The quality of the video is about what one would expect from a television recording onto a VCR. Though the quality is at the low end of the spectrum, this is not a home recording, but rather one that is meant to be sold (though notably, as I will discuss later, not in India).

The various forms of advertisement seem to be playing a very particular role in the match. Not only are there ads which interrupt the broadcast seemingly at random, but the players, stadium, cricket pitch, and aforementioned park-ranger-referee are plastered with endorsements. The one day international match is called the "Samsung Cup" and Samsung's logo is emblazoned on the field in various places. Pakistan's uniforms endorse Pepsi, while India sports a "Sahara" emblem. The referee's shirt reads "Fly Emirates," the cricket bats promote Honda, and the usual banner endorsements of anything from Strepsils to Manikchand flank the stadium. Although the appearance of endorsements and advertisements at the sites of sporting events is far from new, this quantity seems excessive and unusual to me. Who gets the money for these endorsements? Does the ref get paid directly from Emirates, or is he just directed to wear the uniform? And if his salary is, directly or indirectly, paid for by the airline, does this have any implications in how he calls the game?

Though the game is held in Kirachi, Pakistan, this recording seems meant to originally air in India. The advertisements which punctuate the match are repetitive and explicitly geared to an Indian audience with very specific cultural values. One ad claims that that Western Union is "the fastest way to send money to your parents in India," emphasizing the role of the good child as one who repays his/her parents for all they have done. Another ad for a matchmaking website shows a reluctant Indian daughter coming home with her father to a mother busily matchmaking on the internet. The final shot of the ad shows the family laughing and joking as they gaze at the daughter's hands which are hennaed for marriage.

Since the broadcast seems meant to air in India, and India eventually wins the match, a curious question arises as to why the DVD is not to be sold in India. This directive is printed on the back of the DVD box, in small font at the bottom: "NOT FOR SALE IN INDIA." Before watching the match I assumed there must be some deep political reason for this, old enmities and a deep cricket rivalry, but now it seems that the producers of the DVD merely fear piracy charges. Who even holds the property rights to this game? The "Dish Network"? The cricket teams? Samsung? These kinds of questions lead a viewer to wonder what exactly is being sold here. Is it a television recording, or a game of cricket, or something else entirely? Since the DVD is a taping of a single television broadcast, complete with that broadcast's advertisements and logos, I believe it is the broadcast, and not the game that is being sold here. This might be different if the DVD were of someone's handheld recording of the game from the stands, or an edited compilation of the game broadcast as it was broadcast on various networks. In these cases, the majority of the labor of the recording shifts to the producer of the DVD, rather than the television network. (At the same time, something must be said for the labor of the cricket players themselves and the labor of those needed to put together the infrastructure of the game itself, e.g. the stadium, the inventors of cricket, and who knows who else.)

The very format of the recording, raises issues as to how one goes about watching a taped sports event. The experience of watching a sport on television is radically different than watching a sport in person. The sensory experience of being at a cricket game with the fervor, excitement, heat and humidity of the Kirachi air, concession stand food, weariness of being in the sun for long hours, and the smelly man sitting to your right overwhelms that of watching it on a screen. My own experience watching the match, more than two years after it occurred, took place on the twelve inch screen of my laptop in my apartment in Long Beach, California. My own battle was not with a reckless fan nearby, but with my cat, who I struggled to restrain from pouncing on the keyboard and turning off the DVD program. Although I was forced to experience the game through the television broadcast format, complete with commentators, computer simulations, and instant replays, I paused and fast-forwarded the match at will. In this way I watched the game through the double lens of the television broadcast and temporal distance and distortion of the event.

The framing of the game within the broadcast is particularly difficult for me. Perhaps some of the unintelligibility of the game to me was simply this frame. I am unable, for example, to follow a game of American football on television, though I am perfectly able to follow it if I am personally at the game. The ball, moving through the air framed only by a small patch of ground around it fully muddles my sense of direction. I am unable to tell the players apart. I can't tell which side of the wicket I am looking at at any given time. I don't understand the relationship of different parts of the field to one another and after a short time, I give up trying to arrange the full view of the field in my head and I am much more amused by criticizing the batter's bionic gloves or admiring the way the bowler pushes back his hair before pitching the ball.

Is this my own incompetence and limitations? Of course, but more than anything, this experience puts me in my place as a writer and commentator on this game, and rarely is it so clear to me how much I must insert myself into this meandering essay in order even to justify my own analysis. I would like, for example, to discuss the political implications of this match. I only have the vaguest notion, however, of what these might be. I seem to recall that India and Pakistan are cricket rivals, and of course there are political rivalries at the level of the states' governments, but the symbolic implications of a sport as the playing out of an enmity between states are unclear to me without any research. The effect of this analysis, I fear, tells the reader far more about my own inadequacies as a writer and the gaps in my knowledge than about the broadcast of a game of cricket.

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