I popped into my bank the other day with an account inquiry, but instead of getting an answer I got handed a telephone number. Which resulted in the loss of half an hour of my life, pressing all the option buttons from A to Z, and having a robot inform me about 59 times that my call was very important to them.
Eventually a human being came on the line, who, after advising me that I was through to the wrong department, and would now be connected to the right one, cut me off.
However, far from being a mildly irritating episode, the time simply flew by thanks to some thoughtful person at the bank arranging for me to be played half an hour of canned music. What kind of imbecile, I wondered, first came up with the idea that the customer experience would be enhanced by being force fed Greensleeves on a continuous loop?
It made me wonder why they never thought of keeping the crowd entertained by piping Slade’s Merry Christmas through the Lord’s tannoy back in the 80s while Chris Tavare was attempting to get off the mark.
I’m not entirely certain of this, but I think cricket actually beat the banks to it when it came to deciding that its customers were on no account to be left with long periods of having to provide their own entertainment. Beginning with the decision that no one-day cricket match would be allowed to take place until the punters had been treated to the largest scale parachute drop since Arnhem.
This was eventually reviewed after one or two of the sky divers ended up face down in a hot dog van, or were chucked out of Lord’s for parachuting into the pavilion without a jacket and tie, but they’ve since come up with newer and better ways to keep the spectator from nodding off.
To the point where you wonder how cricket ever survived years ago, when there was nothing more riveting to do during the luncheon interval than eat your sandwiches and discuss the morning’s play with the bloke in the next seat.
My own first recollection of spectators being force fed “entertainment” was during the 1990-91 Ashes tour to Australia, when watching the home side stuff the Poms on a daily basis was clearly considered too boring to be worth the price of admission. Ergo, during the intervals, they brought out a dog – “Please Welcome Geitas the Wonder Whippet!” – to gallop around the outfield trying to catch Frisbees. Sadly, Geitas was so useless at Frisbee catching it was a bit like watching Phil Tufnell circling underneath a skier.
I’ve lost count of all the different ideas they’ve come up with in Australia, the only common denominator being some tungsten-tonsilled MC shouting inanities into a microphone during such sideshows like “Dunk A Pom”.
This involved spectators being invited to hurl cricket balls at a dartboard style target, with a bullseye resulting in some pot-bellied chap wearing a bowler hat being catapulted from his seat into a paddling pool.
T20 is a fertile breeding ground for this type of thing, and finals day at Edgbaston this summer will presumably involve the traditional mascot race, when a mixture of bears, giraffes and chickens waddle around an obstacle course and generally fall over. Although T20 being T20, the crowd also have to be entertained during the actual cricket, with each boundary being accompanied by a group of girls in skimpy skirts jumping off a bench and twirling pom-poms. Which happens about five times an over.
The urge to turn everything into an American Football-style extravaganza is not quite so strong in Test match cricket, and instead of pom-pom girls and wonder whippets they’re trying to woo back spectators by giving these matches more context. But neither the idea of an official World Championship – twice returned to the drawing board after first being mooted in 2009 – nor the ICC world rankings has had any success in getting more bums on seats.
The current series between India and Australia has made for riveting viewing so far, and it’s this, rather than the fact that these two teams are Nos.1 and 2 in the rankings, that has made it so good to watch. The rankings are irrelevant, not least because no-one has any real idea how they’re worked out.
It would be a good bit easier to understand if there was a set number of points for winning a game. In soccer this amounts to three, but in cricket, with all the different teams playing a different number of matches in different time zones, and the need to recognise that a home win over Bangladesh shouldn’t count for as many points as beating India in India, it’s about as simple to follow as Duckworth/Lewis.
You can’t blame the ICC for trying, but what’s wrong with allowing matches, and series, to be enjoyable or otherwise for their own sake? Why do you need trophies and medals? There’s nothing tangible on offer for the Ashes – it’s a six inch urn that sits permanently behind glass in a museum – but it’s still big enough to spark off street parties, open topped bus rides and unauthorised irrigation of Prime Ministers’ hedges.
Maybe the ICC should sit down to consider whether artificial stimuli are quite as important as they seem to think. Or whether to recognise that you can still attract people to cricket matches without attempting to perforate their eardrums three times an over, or informing people that someone’s hit a six by flashing up “Six!” on an electronic scoreboard.
There’s a fine line between recognising the need to keep a product vibrant, and treating people like complete thickos. In fairness to the authorities, there was never any need years ago for Douglas Jardine to walk out to bat in his Harlequin cap to the strains of a musical ditty chosen by himself, and to walk off again to the Thirties equivalent of Bye Bye Baby.
Neither would the attendance have been boosted by the prospect of a teatime mascot race with EW Swanton doing the commentary. Although I’d have paid a lot of money to see both.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, March 17 2017
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