Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Shortcuts


Listen to any cricket talk and you hear the same phrases again and again. Whether it is the commentator or the winning captain or the man of the match.

It feels good to be “among the runs”. The pitch was “doing a bit”. “The boys”, it is always the boys. We needed “a partnership”. We have to “stick to the basics”. Go out and play my (his) natural game. I “concentrate on line and length”. The ball was “coming on to the bat” nicely. He was going through “a bad patch”. All he needs is one good innings. No footwork. Head not steady.

The list is quite long.

This gives me an idea. The ICC should publish a numbered list of such phrases. The post match interviewer would then ask his questions in numbers. The interviewee would reply in numbers too.

The players, tired after a hard struggle, would surely welcome this shortcut.

The newspapers will translate these numbers into words since you can’t expect all of us to have a copy of the ICC handbook.

We can even envisage a day when the newspapers will claim that so-and-so said such-and-such and that so-and-so will claim that he was misquoted or quoted out of context. He actually said fifteen and the journalist mistook it to be fifty. Or that a particularly inefficient journalist was in fact referring to an earlier edition of the handbook where as the interviewee was referring to the later edition.

Howzzat?

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:53 pm

    :-) That was a good one!!

    Guess you can extend that logic by having a prematch release and later compare it with post match numbers!!

    Cheers
    mohan
    http://kingrooster.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:45 am

    Jargons are part of every game.. given the athelete's limited vocabulary (in most of the cricket talk shows its the players who are blaring out these cliches)...

    Take the example of the NBA in the US.. talk to any player and you will hear things like "God Given Talent", "I thank my mom and dad", "I was just using my athletic abilities"... etc

    ReplyDelete