For this viewer, it was a one-night stand and neither felt the need to exchange numbers.
I stopped watching the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the same reason I stopped watching porn,” said a prominent Colombo radio sportscaster. “Same plot. Same actors. Only the costumes change.”He had a point. When I watched my first IPL game last Saturday, I was reminded of the first time I typed the word “sex” into a search engine. I had hoped for titillation but all I got was, well… tits.
I am no sports purist. My favourite teams have always been swashbucklers. The All Blacks, Newcastle United, Ranatunga’s world-conquering Lankans. So much so, that I stopped watching cricket 10 years ago when I grew tired of watching the Aussies win everything. So on paper, IPL should have been right up my street. But as it turned out, it wasn’t even in my postal code.
It took me exactly two games to figure out why. It had to do with our obsession with highlights. IPL assumes that the lure of sport lies in its highlights, in its goals, its tries, its sixers and its wickets. That a format that eliminates all the boring bits is somehow superior. This is nonsense. The beauty of sport lies in its subtleties. What makes a goal or a sixer or a fallen wicket special is that each is a scarce commodity. A format that offers you a six with every over is like a football game played sans goalkeepers. Or an NBA game with the baskets at shoulder height. It’s like trying to play carrom on a board filled with chess pieces.
I watched it on the Internet, which was a novelty until the commercials started. Having grown up watching cricket on Rupavahini, Sri Lanka’s national TV channel, I’m used to ads disrupting the spaces between overs. But these guys manage to squeeze an insurance ad into the time it takes for a bowler to walk to his mark. Even if that bowler is a spinner named Kevin Pietersen. There are powerplays and time outs and fielding restrictions and anyone scoring under seven an over is deemed a failure. So why wasn’t I entertained?
Maybe because I decided to support the Kings XI Punjab. It seemed a reasonable choice at the time. They were at the bottom of the table, underdogs worthy of support. They had among their ranks Sri Lanka’s two best batsman, Mahela Jayawardene and Kumara Sangakkara. In theory I should have been delighted when the Punjab Kings chased down 200 set by the…Kolkata Kangaroos, I think they were called. But sadly my pulse did not quicken.
Angelo Mathews, who was playing for the Kangaroos, was bowling to Mahela, who was on the cusp of a workmanlike century. I was cheering for Mahela (if raising an eyebrow at every boundary can be classed as such), but suddenly I badly wanted Mathews to destroy his stumps.
What had prompted this treachery? Was it because Mathews shared the surname the hero of my soon-to-be published novel? Probably. Was it because of Mahela’s century failed to raise my heartbeat, unlike that Aravinda de Silva ton in ’86 which actually gave me an erection. (It should be noted that such things are easier to come by at age 13 than they are at 35.) Answer: neither of the above. After two games of this IPL nonsense, I stumbled upon a fundamental truth. That I, a lapsed cricket fanatic and ex-porn lover, no longer gave a shit. I had no real affinity towards the Chennai Cheetahs or the Mumbai Monkeys or the Kings or the Kangaroos. I don’t live in India so why should I care if the red team beats the black one? I also had the sneaking suspicion that most of the players shared my indifference. That their allegiances were only shirt-deep and would last as long as their contracts. They were there to collect their cheques, smile at the cameras and find out which Bollywood party the cheerleader chicks were going to be at. This of course is a tad unfair — what did I have in common with Newcastle United, a team that I have followed for over 20 years? Truth be told, not much. But even though the EPL is as full of prima donnas and mercenaries as the IPL, the fact is affiliations, like erections, are instinctive. You can’t fake one and try as you might, you can’t force yourself to have one if you are not aroused.
It is then, while watching the Bangalore Bandits lose to the Delhi Dragonflies, that I realized that cricket and porn had more in common than I thought. At least in my uneventful life. I consumed both with vigour during my youth, but abandoned both as soon as I grew up. Why? Because unlike sixers in a 20/20 game, time is a truly scarce commodity, and these days, I need to choose my addictions carefully.
Losing my IPL virginity last week was not as painful as I describe. There were a few good whams and a couple of decent bangs and it was over in a few hours. But I’d be lying if I told you that the earth moved. It was a one night stand and neither of us felt the need to exchange numbers.
(Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman: The legend of Pradeep Matthews, a novel about Sri Lanka and cricket, won the Gratiaen Award in 2008. This feature is courtesy Random Reads http://randomhouseindia.wordpress.com)
