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A story that needs to be told

by Homer

From the Hindustan Times

Photojournalists and the Indian cricket team have always had a love-hate relationship but things became a bit explosive before the start of the Nagpur ODI.

All cricket stadiums allot specific vantage points for photographers to set up their elaborate equipment in order to capture on-field action.

On Thursday, before the match began, a few players chose to warm up right in front of the space allotted to the picture men.

Ordinarily that would not matter except that one of the balls smacked by Amit Mishra knocked down a laptop.

Thereupon the players were requested to go through their moves some distance away; after all they had the whole ground at their disposal. That did not go down too well with two players in particular – Virat Kohli and Praveen Kumar.

They chose to make their displeasure quite clear through a heated exchange and aggressive gestures. Not just a gentleman’s game anymore, is it?

More grist to the juniors who think no end of themselves, have their head in the clouds, lack professionalism or commitment, value the IPL over the India cap etc etc... You have heard that before, haven't you?

Now, same incident, different newspaper -
NAGPUR: It turned out to be a wicked Wednesday for Virat Kohli. The Delhi middle-order batsman not only had to sit out of the second ODI after doing reasonably well in the first match at Vadodara but he also got involved in a fight with photographers at Jamtha just before the match started.

After the toss, Kohli, Munaf Patel and Praveen Kumar were enjoying their own little game of cricket along with some local boys near the pavilion. When Kohli was knocking, one of his shots went through the hands of a fielder and almost hit the camera of one of the photographers who were sitting with their equipment behind the advertisement hoardings.

As soon as the ball went past the lensmen, a concerned photographer shouted and asked Kohli to practice at some other place. When Kohli refused to pay attention, all the photographers started abusing both Kohli and Praveen Kumar, who was asking the mediamen to calm down.

Stunned by the abuse, Kohli and Praveen too started using foul language at the lensmen. The situation became tense at one point when Kohli came within the handshaking distance of the lensmen as exchange of abuses continued.

Just when the situation looked to be getting out of control, Praveen and some Vidarbha Cricket Association officials, including vice-president Rajeev Gokhale, rushed to Kohli and helped in cooling down the tempers.

The incident certainly made the Delhi youngster furious as he thought he was doing nothing wrong in knocking the ball around with the local boys. On the other hand, the lensmen insisted that the cricketer had no business knocking near their expensive equipment.
I wonder how there can be such remarkably dis-similar narratives of the same incident.Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

12 comments:

Thiru Cumaran said...

Hehe....isn't that what the Indian print and TV media is all about? How abt the match-fixin allegations against Younis? :S

BTW, that CHEteshwar Pujara pic is really funny! =D

Mahek said...

And I thought the whole ground was for players to practise their trade. Apparently it's more important to have laptops and cameras on the field.

straight point said...

apparently one was the cousin of kohli and company...

Mahek said...

How exactly is one of them a cousin of Kohli and company? And what difference does it make as long as they were playing cricket on the ground? As far as I'm concerned, players should have dibs over everyone else when it comes to using the ground. Tomorrow you'll have the production crew create a ruckus if a bowler broke the stump cam.

straight point said...

yaar mahek are you serious...? the joke was on journo not on you... :)

Homer said...

Mahek,

While it may be true that the ground is available for the players to ply their trade, it wont stop the media from using this incident as further proof of how pompous, over confident, arrogant and any other adjective you can think of to describe excess the new crop of players are.

With every passing day, I am more convinced that the biggest bane of Indian cricket is the Indian cricket media.

Cheers,

Mahek said...

SP,

Blame it on the late hour here :)

Homer

The media is the bane of pretty much everything it covers. But then news isn't news anymore, it's entertainment. It's upto the people to use their brains instead of blindly believing what the media tells them.

Homer said...

Mahek,

Read and weep

http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/cricket/2009/10/29/indians-get-a-bad-press/

Cheers,

Mahek said...

It's so obvious every media entity would side with their peers. Maybe we should get present and former cricketers to write about the press. I bet that would be more fun to read than the rubbish we have to put up with day after day.

Homer said...

I second that Mahek.. Although blogs will be the only way for them to present thier point of view.

But they then run the risk of being hounded by the so called "media elite".

Cheers,

Mahek said...

Barkha Dutt seems to think any disaster is a reality show and she's the host.

Homer said...

rofl :)