Fanning the flames

One of the biggest problems facing cricket these days is the one that is least publicized - the increased marginalization of the spectator at the ground.  Writers use the lack of spectators as a way to gauge the "popularity" of the sport whereas the irony is that the number of people watching a match is a fraction of the total number of people who eventually watch it.

And how do we treat them?

(Outlook India 2006)

TV dictates a lot of things in our lives, and cricket is no different.  Consequently, the spectator at the ground gets the short shrift for no fault of his own.  When was the last time you heard an administrator or writer talk about the improvements being made for spectator comfort at the ground. Those articles are few and far between.  We are more likely to hear about the glitzy corporate boxes, the improved media center, the cheerleaders, and the special sections for celebrities.

Should the spectators have the temerity to come onto the field to get a closer look at the players, they can be expected to be treated no worse than a herd of stampeding cows would.

(Sulekha.com)

Andrew Miller expands on this theme on CricInfo.

Who’s the most important person in cricket? I’ll give you a clue. It isn’t His Modiness. It isn’t Freelance Freddie, Lord Sachin or even Jowly Giles Clarke (bless him). Geoffrey Boycott thinks he’s quite important. But he isn’t.

It’s you. And me. And everyone else who spends their spare sofa time gawping at Cape Cobras versus Delhi Daredevils or sitting on a plastic seat in the drizzle, watching Leicestershire’s middle-of-the-table tussle with Glamorgan. Without us, buying our match tickets, cable subscriptions, biographies and IPL-themed underwear (Kolkata’s gold-lamé knickers look particularly alluring), there would be no cricket.

But the game’s upside down right now. Players are at the top of the tree, and then come administrators, franchise owners, television executives, coaches and commentators. We plebs are at the bottom of the heap and we have to like what we’re given. So we get major international tournament finals on a Monday, we get players hiding in the dressing room because it’s a bit wet/chilly/slippery/bee-infested, we get pay-through-the-nose match tickets, we get inane television commentary; and we get adverts, endless bloody adverts on top of exorbitant satellite subscription fees.

And if being treated as a cash machine, a sack of disposable income or an economic unit isn’t bad enough; those above us in the cricket food chain always seem to know what’s best for us.

(...)

But we don’t count. Our job is just to appear in cutaway sequences, to make television producers’ lives easier by turning up in wacky costumes, waving badly spelt banners and sometimes setting fire to effigies. Oh and we just happen to pay for the whole thing. So why do we get treated like peasants? Because no one in the game has taken the time to understand us. Players think it’s them we love. Commentators think we need them to explain the game to us. Journalists think we’re too stupid to do what they do, and administrators think we’re too lazy to climb the greasy pole.