The delay the authorities would take to address this issue, will do nothing but make cricket more subservient or a lesser important thing amid this relentless influx of ads. And furthermore the game will gradually transform into a different one that is not dependent on the masses but blatantly controlled by commercial forces.

Truman: [to an unseen Christof] Who are you?

Christof: [on a speaker] I am the Creator - of a television show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions.

Truman: Then who am I?

Christof: You’re the star.

Watching the recent Twenty20 World Cup live on television alarmed us on the tricky field of advertisements, and a possible future situation it would create, if not swiftly attended to by responsible authorities.

There were ads on player kits, on the playfield and around it. There were ads crawling right on top of the scoreline on TV, sometimes creating odd sounds disturbing cricket commentaries. People now call it with bitter sarcasm that we watched cricket intermittently while watching a grand advert show.

How can ads go completely out of control in an important social space? You can watch Ram Gopal Varma’s spectacular 1992 Hindi horror movie ‘Raat’ in an Indian local television channel. All those scary scenes are irritatingly made very dull due to the unending surge of ads (crawlers, pop ups, spot ads, you name it...) on the film frame. You can’t simply focus on the movie. The T20 World Cup telecast on the Eye Channel recalled that horrid experience of watching ‘Raat’ on TV.

Rigid control

It is time that the authorities should quickly intervene and make a certain policy where the advertisers and the TV cricket viewers could live in harmony. For that there should be a proper understanding on the basic rights of these viewers. In cricket coverage, the six deliveries in an over should be shown without any disturbance. The scoreline cannot be covered at any point and the running commentary must not be disturbed. There should be a strict policy on the size of the visual that we see and the amount of ‘disturbance’ that can be made to the live picture frame by way of pop-up ads.

The delay the authorities would take to address this issue, will do nothing but make cricket more subservient or a lesser important thing amid this relentless influx of ads. And furthermore the game will gradually transform into a different one that is not dependent on the masses but blatantly controlled by commercial forces.

Demarcation

It is of paramount need that the decision makers in the country should have a proper understanding on how to save sports, arts, culture, etc. from the unhealthy and uncontrolled waves of commercialism. An ample amount of smartness is needed in this endeavour as the same commercial forces are what you just can’t live without and, at the same time, are essential in present economic realities for the betterment of the above social structures.

Ads have to be given a clearly demarcated separate space on TV. Places where there is a harmful mix of ads and, in our case, cricket have to be quickly omitted. For example, announcers in radios are there to present programmes, not to promote products using their voice. But it’s happening now. There should be a separate space for ads.

Sport is there for a noble social cause.. So is arts. It is imperative for the policy makers to see that the age old connection between sports (and other predominant social fields) and society always exist unaffected.

Bogus Media worlds

Since the advent of mass production of commodities and the boost of advertisements in the media, the intellectuals, especially in the west, have warned about a future society disjointed from reality. A cricket sans a truthful human participation, and arts without genuine flesh-and-blood human experience. That could well be the end result of this media invasion if it is left out unattained.