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Abstract
In the run-up to the cricket One Day International (ODI) World Cup played on the Indian subcontinent in the spring of 2011, an interesting fact emerged, albeit one not directly related to prospective events on the field of play.
Notes
1 The IPL tournament which took place in India between 8 April and 22 May 2011 was the fourth iteration of the brand.
2 Times of India, 19 Feb. 2011.
3 Said by Vishnay Sharma, director of L'Oreal India's consumer products division Times of India, 14 Jan. 2011.
4 Marico is a leading Indian Group in consumer products and services in the global beauty and wellness industries. Marico's branded products are sold in Bangladesh, other SAARC countries, the Middle East, Egypt, Malaysia and South Africa. The overseas sales franchise of Marico's Consumer Products (whether as exports from India or as local operations in a foreign country) is one of the largest among Indian Companies and is entirely in branded products and services.
5 Sony Entertainment Television, commonly known as Sony TV or SET, is one of India's most popular urban Hindi-language-based general entertainment channels. Based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, it is owned by Multi Screen Media Pvt Ltd (MSM, formerly SET India Private Limited), a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment since 1995
6 For example, the television figures for the 2010 Champions League Twenty20 held in South Africa have been released, with the tournament pulling in a 36% increase in the global audience. ITV's coverage of the Indian Premier League has been hailed – at least by ITV and the Indian Premier League – as a success. ‘We've got 10 times last year's audience in the UK,’ presenter Ravi Shastri said on commentary, and a high-water mark of 400,000 viewers does sound impressive.
7 CitationMahan and McDaniel, ‘The New Online Arena’; see also CitationAxford and Huggins, ‘The Telemediatization of Cricket’.
8 CitationHorne, ‘Cricket in Consumer Culture’.
9 CitationHorne, ‘Cricket in Consumer Culture’ 1550).
10 CitationMehta, Television in India.
11 CitationMehta, Television in India
12 CitationBourdieu, The Logic of Practice; CitationTomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 2008.
13 CitationCallois, Man, Play, Sport.
14 CitationCrawford, ‘Is the Game of Cricket a Model’.
15 Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed; CitationLury, Consumer Culture.
16 CitationBarber, Consumed; Klein, No Logo.
17 See for example the Australian domestic competition, run since 2005 under the crowd-pleasing label ‘Big Bash’; the England and Wales Cricket Board's continued tinkering with the format, to be changed again from 2012 under the title ‘Friends-Provident Twenty20 competition’; and Sri Lanka's. attempt to launch its own version of the IPL.
18 Axford and Huggins, ‘The Telemediatization of Cricket and Shulz’; Mazzolini and Schulz, Hjavard, ‘The Mediatization of Religion’.
19 Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed; Axford and Huggins, ‘The Telemediatization of Cricket’; CitationBerker et al. , Domestication of Media and Technologies, 2010.
20 Although not a strict definition, and one that is increasingly problematic, ‘new’ media are generally taken to comprise digital media and, for our purposes in this article include a variety of ‘social media’: inter alia, texting, blogging, tweeting, online proto-‘communities’ in the shape of social network sites and even the worlds of online gaming and in-game betting.
21 Axford and Huggins, ‘The Telemediatization of Cricket’; CitationCastells, The Rise of the Network Society.
22 CitationFoucault, Discipline and Punish, 142.
23 Axford and Huggins, ‘The Telemediatization of Cricket’.
24 ‘Fun games and Money: special report on the sports business’ The Economist, 2 Aug. 2008; see also 2010 statistics available at http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php.
25 For example, Sky Mobile TV is available as an app on Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad while video-streaming sites such as the BBC's iPlayer, Hulu, YouTube and Facebook all report significant growth in the numbers of videos watched, and the same trend is observed for sports games which can be played on mobile phones.
26 CitationWellman, ‘How Does the Internet Affect Social Capital?’ 2003.
27 CitationAxford, ‘The Transformation of Politics’.
28 Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 131.
29 Tomlinson, The Culture of Speed, 81. ‘Old’ media are characterized by networked television, national audiences, limited broadcast frequencies, robust print media in the shape of viable commercial newspapers and swathes of regulation. ‘New’ media culture comprises de-regulation, frequency abundance, the secular decline of print journalism in its traditional formats and the global spread of communication by way of digital technologies.
30 Gruneau and Wilson, Citation Hockey Night in Canada , 137; Horne, ‘Cricket in Consumer Culture’, 1553.
31 CitationKnorr-Cetina and Bruegger, “Inhabiting Technology', 83.
32 Of course such concerns are not confined to Twenty20 cricket. The famous cricket writer Neville Cardus thought of cricket as a pure art form and along with avid supporters and acerbic critics of change, such as C.L.R. James (James, C.L.R Beyond a Boundary. London: Stanley Paul/Hutchinson, 1963.) he lamented the more abrasive and commercial spirit abroad in the game.
33 Axford and Huggins, ‘The Telemediatization of Cricket’.
34 CitationEco, The Illusion of Transparency, 19.
35 CitationRoel, ‘Audiovisual Digitalization in Spain and Italy’; CitationGhosh, ‘Television, Nationalism and Indian Cricket’.
36 NationMaster, 2010.
37 Hot Spot and Hawk-Eye are infra-red imaging systems used in cricket to determine whether the ball has struck the batsman, bat or pad.
38 All of which raises interesting questions about just how far a self-consciously non-national tournament, made up of multi-national, maybe even cosmopolitan, teams, put together on a franchise basis is actually capable of producing a post-national cricket utopia.
39 The Times, 2011.
40 A signal success of the IPL was to persuade the International Cricket Council (ICC) to keep a window of opportunity open each year to allow the league to schedule its matches. Other factors aside, that freedom of manoeuvre is much less available to other national boards anxious to get in on the lucrative action.
41 CitationBauman. Liquid Life, 83–4.
42 CitationBelk, ‘ Materialism’, 265.
43 CitationVeblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class.
44 CitationBarber, Jihad versus McWorld. Barber refers to the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity, that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers and fast food, None of this is intended in approbation.
45 Barber, Consumed.
46 CitationMathur, ‘Shopping Malls, Credit Cards and Global Brands’.
47 CitationLipovetsky, Hypermodern Times.
48 Servaes and Liu, 45.
49 See www.crickeTwenty20.com
50 See www.ecb.co.uk
51 See www.canadiancricket.org and www.kncb.nl
52 See The Independent, 2 April 2010.
