MxMIndia

Tag: Wankhede

  • Since the overall television ratings were on the lower side this year, it indicates a strong possibility of audience fatigue having set in

    Anil Thakraney: The IPL diary

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    The two month long drama is done and dusted. (I use the word ‘dusted’ hesitatingly… goodness knows if there are more skeletons waiting to tumble out.) It’s a good time to take stock of the IPL and make some suggestions for the next season.

     

    Since the overall television ratings were on the lower side this year, it indicates a strong possibility of audience fatigue having set in. My hunch is there are just too many matches in the tournament… the numbers must be scaled down. I think the IPL should be a one-month event, this would make sure audience attention doesn’t flag. And the tournament doesn’t lose its appeal.

     

    There have to be very powerful and effective mechanisms put in place to rid the tournament of all the scandals it’s associated with. Match/spot fixing, black money transactions with players, rowdy behaviour of some franchise owners, drunk players going berserk at the IPL parties, cheerleaders being hit on, crowd mismanagement at the venues, etc, etc. I don’t know if the BCCI is aware of this, but the IPL carries very little respect and credibility across the world. I was stunned by the constant allegations of match fixing on the social media right through the two months. Clearly that’s not good for the IPL brand.

     

    The auctioning process needs to be made transparent. And the fee paid to all players made public. (We still don’t know how much Sachin and Dhoni get paid.) Since the IPL is not a private party, its financial records must be made public. This will only help the tournament gain some much needed brownie points.

     

    There have to be clear guidelines laid out for all members who get free passes at the venues. On how they must conduct themselves, and the exact benefits allowed to them. The reason Shah Rukh Khan got into a skirmish at the Wankhede stadium is because no one told him he’s not allowed to take children onto the cricket ground.

     

    Navjot Sidhu, Ravi Shastri, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Danny Morrison and a few others should be given a break from commentary duty for a few seasons. And instead, some old boys and T20 misfits like Ganguly and Dravid must be removed from the field and brought into the commentary box.

     

    Lastly and most importantly, a separate contract needs to be signed between the BCCI and the Royal Challengers team owner, Dr Vijay Mallya. This contract should make it clear that throughout the duration of the tournament, his very bigda hua beta, Sid, shall be barred from tweeting.

     

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    PS: Speaking of the IPL, in case you missed it, here’s SRK’s fantastic speech at Yale. Full of beans and full of humour. This is not the SRK who landed up at Wankhede that night, and indulged in deeply vulgar behaviour. I guess basically he’s a cool guy. But is unable to exorcise theDelhimawaali who still lurks inside of him.

     

  • The dust is beginning to settle on both the above issues. But am sure the next scandal is just round the corner. What’s the IPL without some offline tamasha?

    Anil Thakraney: On the great IPL scandals

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    I had been traveling all of last week, but I kept track of the IPL shenanigans as and when I could. Since the news channels and the social media folks were busy discussing two sensational incidents of last week, allow me to add my two-bits. And I’ll cut to the chase, as always.

     

    Firstly, on the Shah Rukh Khan versus Wankhede security personnel battle. If SRK’s kids and their pals did not have passes to enter the stadium, the security guards had every reason to demand their immediate removal. Kids will be kids, and it’s highly likely that they would run onto the pitch. There have been allegations that the kids were ‘molested’. I think that’s utter crap. Had that been the case, garam khoon Mr SRK would not have settled for maa bahen ki gaalis, he would have dispatched a few souls to the nearby Bombay Hospital. Also, guards molesting kids on an open ground when the IPL office bearers and players are still at the venue is a preposterous idea to even imagine.

     

    Net net: King Khan’s fat ego (and maybe his booze-influenced head) got the better of him, and he lost control. Ergo, it’s correct that the MCA has banned him. Though given the star’s super heavy connections; that would soon be lifted. But, hats off to the security men who stood up to him. It’s very, very rare in a celeb and VIP obsessed India for lowly officials to take on a heavy weight. I think these guys should be bestowed with an honour.

     

    Next: The incident in Delhi where a drunken IPL player allegedly molested a lady inside her hotel room. That’s a criminal case, and we will have to leave the investigation to the local cops. No one has the right to pass any moral judgments. But Mallya Jr’s tweet was beyond disgusting. It not only denigrated the woman in question, his rant exposed the dude’s sick mindset towards women in general. If Dr Vijay Mallya is a good dad, he needs to send darling beta for counseling, ASAP. And he must also insist that the brat disconnects his twitter account. Junior is not just busy bringing disrepute to his family – he’s reflecting a very poor image of the entire UB group.

     

    It’s Sunday evening as I write this piece. The dust is beginning to settle on both the above issues. But am sure the next scandal is just round the corner. What’s the IPL without some offline tamasha? Aisa mauka aur kahaan milega, bhaiyya?

     

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    PS: “If You’re Not Pissing Someone Off, You’re Probably Not Innovating.” An interesting read from the Harvard Biz Review. On what innovation really means and how marketers must do things differently in order to make a real impact.

     

    Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/if_youre_not_pissing_someone_o.html

     

     

  • In Freaking News, which appears every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] TV journos prove Katju is right

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Journalists have evidently signed a pact to prove Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju right – 90 per cent of Indians are idiots. There seems to be no other reason for this enormous media reaction to the late night fracas between film star Shah Rukh Khan and a security guard at Wankhede stadium two nights ago.

     

    Of course, the shenanigans of film stars are exciting and when they behave badly it’s even more fun. But is there anything to justify front page headlines and TV debates for two days? What exactly is there to debate? Khan arrived last the stadium around the time Kolkata beat Mumbai, with a bunch of kids. The kids ran into the field. A security guard stopped them. Khan intervened. Words were exchanged and some apparently not very polite ones and then Khan left.

     

    For this, the world has come to an end. We are discussing politeness, propriety, banning, apologies, role models, respect for the uniform, high-handedness, diplomacy, official inefficiency, entitlement or the sense thereof, protection of children and the decibel level of whistles.

     

    If we went to war with China, I cannot imagine more being discussed on television. The journalists on TV cannot seem to distinguish between a security guard and a policeman. Rahul Kanwal almost burst a blood vessel when on Headlines Today veteran adman Prahlad Kakkar tore into the behaviour of security guards: “You have to respect the uniform”. I would really like to know how any of these TV guests react when faced with the officiousness of a security guard.

     

    Kakkad was a rare voice of sanity as was Rohan Gavaskar who said: “Banning Shah Rukh Khan from Wankhede is like banning Sachin Tendulkar from PVR”. Meaningless, in other words. Except for Arun Lal on Times Now, no one wanted to discuss whether officials of the Mumbai Cricket Association, who called for a ban on Khan entering Wankhede, were not over-reacting. Lal said it’s a question of contesting fiefdoms – with Khan as an IPL team owner against MCA officials with their hurt pride at being event managers rather than stakeholders.

     

    The levels of self-righteous on Times Now were staggering, with anchor Arnab Goswami, veteran columnist and author Shobhaa De and not-so-veteran columnist Simi Chandok leading the way. Goswami kept bringing up police action against Hollywood stars Nicholas Cage and Russell Crowe, again unable to distinguish between security guard and a policeman. (Hint: different uniform.)

     

    Former Mumbai police commissioner MN Singh tried to point out that criminal charges against Khan were not possible and this led to him being dragged over hot coals by Goswami. When the nation wants to know, let no man or woman try and douse the fire.

     

    Commentator Charu Sharma however poured cold water on Rahul Kanwal’s spectacular rage – mainly it seemed because uniforms were not being respected, apparently a prime concern in his life – by forecasting that an amicable resolution would be reached and the incident would soon be forgotten. The truth is that everyone knows that that is what will happen.

     

    As a matter of interest, after all the hot air expended over the fight which Saif Ali Khan had in a restaurant at the Taj a few months ago, can anyone remember the names of those self-righteously hurt complainants from South Africa? Hmmm.

     

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    On NDTV, I watched another somewhat circular debate over whether PA Sangma could become the next president of India. These speculative discussion with weak premises only illustrate our emptiness of thought. I greatly admire Divya Marathi editor Kumar Ketkar for his fortitude and level of tolerance as he sits through so many TV debates these days, trying to inject a little sanity into proceedings.

     

    It seems amazing to me that no TV people seem able to realise that all this political hoopla over the next president is just a diversionary tactic from all the political problems this country is facing.

     

    Goswami even wants a debate between Sangma and Vice-President Hamid Ansari, since he possibly believes that India has a presidential form of government. Contestant 1: I will plant 400 varieties of roses in the gardens. Contestant 2: I will conduct the tours of Rashtrapati Bhavan myself. Contestant 3: I will never build a large retirement home for myself. Contestant 4: I will never bore school children with my poems and ideas.

     

    Please, somebody, save us!