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blasphemy at its peak

by Ankit

Right from the day the tactical timeout has been introduced, it has been riddled with controversy. Rightly so, as pure money making opportunisms have led to teams getting an extra 7 and a half minutes to think about the game after 10 overs.

Whenever commerce has tried to meddle with the arts, it is the art which bears the brunt. The tactical timeout has changed the dynamic of the twenty20 game, with teams either bowling or batting themselves out of the game during overs 11 to 14. This is a cause of concern, as the continuity of cricket as well as a batsman’s right to benefit from his concentration are adversely compromised. Even a player of the calibre of Sachin Tendulkar has spoken up against this playing condition.

It seems that the only people who love it are the cricinfo text commentators. Good for you, guys. The timeout has been bagged by every cricketing expert, be it an expert worth his pinch of salt or an expert worth his weight in gold.

Lalit Modi is a very shrewd person, blah blah. Sir, you have gone wrong here. The people have accepted this as an aberration in a perfect television package, not a welcome break to attend to nature’s call or a little quickie.

Little Quickie…the double use of similar words reminds me of the way Mr. Modi has shrewdly manipulated the rule and today, he comes up with a proposed modification. He believes that if people do not like the 450 second timeout, why not give them two timeouts of 150 seconds each, totalling 300 seconds, and in turn squeezing in 75 extra advertisement seconds in each of the mini-timeouts. Smart? Stupid! Whatever. People will still take it as what it is, just this time the monster would grow an extra head.

by Ankit Mishra

7 comments:

pRAFs said...

it's about time, someone showed that airhead his place.
thank heavens he's not a part of the icc setup. he'd have introduced 15 minute breaks after 25 overs in odi's.

Ankit said...

if the ICC made any money, he would be there...

Bored Guest said...

i have shaved, showered, filled water bottles in various strat breaks. let me clarify, not all 3 in the same break.

achettup said...

If you read his blogs at t20 this would not come as a surprise. The break is here to stay, rather the extra space for commercials are here to stay. They have more to do with re-organizing the advertisements so that the broadcaster does not cut into play, say by showing 4 ball overs. By cutting it down to 5 minutes, he maintains the 5 minute break that they would have gotten anyway.

Interestingly, although this is a Lalit Modi idea, it has not yet been ratified by the technical committee...? Since when has the technical committee at the IPL had more of a say to his highness... or is it that the ad rates for the semis and finals are usually 4x the normal rates, and so the broadcasters would rather they did not "trial" this out then?

Anonymous said...

Seriously! I think the ad folks are being ripped off here - not to mention us the crazy folk who watch albeit in mute. I have sometimes resorted to switching chanels - reading the ticker on Star Cricket or maybe catch up on the news. It's irritating, but looks like we have to live with it.

If you ask me, why not run ads paralelly. Half the screen can show the match and the other half, some ad. Break the ad half into two ticker zones, and the middle zone where the advertisor has to pay the most. I could go on with this insanity.

RajaB said...

Let's all get ready to "Thank Sachin" if the timeouts go !!

Bhaskar Khaund said...

Hey does the india feed have many adverts during the break ? out here in the ME where they haven't quite sold enough inventory , the break is pretty much ad free , they show stuff like that T&A show (Ms Bollywood contest) and stuff....from an an ad professional pov, no advertiser wud wanna be in a cluttered break like this - in magazines they call it the "graveyard"section (the 1st few pages of the mag that has only ads)
Raja - LOL on your comment !:-)