Most players
seem to be losing their engagement with the fans. They arrive at grounds lost
in their headphones, alighting from swish coaches making a brief walk to the stadium
door seeing only be-suited security managers and a Sky TV cameraman, and never
a single supporter. I would once have criticised them for avoiding the very
people who pay their wages but that’s no longer true; it’s the TV companies and
sponsors who do that. Fans are just people who cover up the rows of seats to
make the TV pictures look more interesting. If a supporter tries to contact such
a sporting celebrity, at best he or she may pose for a selfie, more likely be ignored,
and at worst, if it’s Jamie Carragher, get spat on.
However, I am
beginning to see the same principle affecting cricket, if not the beautiful game then the aesthetically
pleasing and polite game. I sincerely hope we don’t get to see mobile footage
of someone like a Flintoff, Holding or Slater gobbing over an Aussie wind-up merchant gloating
over the Ashes or a T20 defeat, but who knows?!
A lot comes
down to what we as cricket supporters see on the pitch. I’m no devotee of Twenty20 but it does at least bring
players down to the pitch in full view of spectators and TV viewers instead of
hiding behind glass up in the dressing room, swigging sponsors’ beer or poring
over a laptop. In the past week, we’ve had De Kock clashing with Warner and, on
the pitch, Kagiso Rabada spoiling his electric eleven-wicket haul at Port Elizabeth by deliberately barging
Steve Smith, a second boorish offence resulting in a deserved two-Test ban.
Some decry the punishment for seeking to quash natural aggression and passion
for the game. Nonsense! Like footballers or pundits propelling spittle at other
humans, swearing and charging has nothing to do with passion, only disrespect.
It certainly has nothing to do with promoting fun.
In a sport
where there’s lots of ‘down’ time – between overs, wickets, sessions, rain
delays, etc, much entertainment has to be provided by fans. The chants by
dreary drunks can be dull as ditchwater but when I go to a game I always keep
an ear out for a witty barb and an eye for a costume worn not necessarily to
attract the cameras but for the sheer hell of it. You don’t get that in a
two-hour high-pressure cooker of a football match.
And yet of
course the players do have a role to play. It’s not just the matter of superb
strokes, brilliant bowling and fabulous fielding but the interaction with
spectators. It doesn’t matter if there are a few hundred elderly boater wearers
and Telegraph readers or twenty thousand pint-wielding twenty-somethings, we
all love it when someone patrolling at third man or deep mid-wicket exchanges a
few light-hearted quips or gestures with someone the other side of the
boundary. Even if the Indian skipper responds to fans singing “Kohli, Kohli,
give us a wave” with a simple raise of the hand, it means more than a million press
conference interviews.
That’s the
fun factor - and heaven help cricket if it disappears.
