Page 203 - Sport Culture and the Media

184 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

game usually involves a careful jockeying for initial advantage), which make it
less likely that an ambitious, big-hitting batter will be caught in the ‘deep’;
operating a quota for the number of overs allowed to be bowled by any one
bowler, in order to give batters the opportunity to face some less specialist
bowlers and so score more runs; applying a much stronger test to the assess-
ment of ‘wides’ and ‘no balls’, the illegal deliveries that must be repeated and
are penalized by the awarding of extra runs. Such tailored changes to the game
(no doubt unfathomable to those who do not have an intimate knowledge of
the game of cricket, but the source of endless disputation for those who do) are
designed to ensure that the televised one-day cricket match is fast and furious,
encouraging high scores and high drama.
Harriss (1990) has observed how making cricket more television friendly
through these changes aligns it with the dramatic form (even before the contri-
bution of commentators and producers is factored in), so that in ‘the age of
late capitalism based on mass consumption, cricket becomes a postmodern,
decentred spectacle that emphasizes a glossy surface without depth’ (p. 118).
The introduction of coloured uniforms in place of the traditional stately white,
and of day–night matches under floodlights to accommodate the audience’s
work and TV viewing schedules, have helped turn a notoriously staid game into
a fully integrated leisure package. The World Cup of cricket, held every four
years and most recently in 2003 in South Africa and Zimbabwe (in the latter
case somewhat controversially given the state of its domestic politics), creates
a definable world one-day champion cricket nation as opposed to the winners
and losers of sundry bi- and tri-nation series. Television is seen here to be both
cause and effect of the transformation of cricket (and, no doubt, other sports
like tennis and golf) from the controlled and stately progress towards victory
based on a rationalized ‘cost–benefit analysis’ to a much flashier spectacle
dedicated to instant gratification by seizing the ephemeral attention of a media-
saturated and more diverse audience:

The one-day spectacle is packaged in much the same way as a one-hour
television melodrama. There is some variation in each individual episode,
but the conclusion is inevitably a hectic chase sequence. The paradox of
one-day cricket is that, like the television melodrama, while it emphasizes
action it does so only within the framework of a formula. Also like
the television melodrama, the plot of each game is circumscribed by the
structure of the series as a whole. This eliminates complexity and allows
the viewer to be immersed quickly and easily in the immediate plot.
(Harriss 1990: 118)
It might be suggested that the kind of melodrama described by Harriss is much
more action dependent (in the manner of TV shows in which social order is