Spot the match between the ads

I have come to the conclusion that watching a cricket match is the ultimate test of a person’s patience. By that reasoning we might as well be a nation of a billion monks. But I am not referring to the highs and lows of a cricket match that goes down to the wire. It’s those wretched advertisements that raise my BP.

Seriously, the number of advertisements during a cricket match may actually be the reason behind the increasing number of bald men in the country, who tear out their hair in frustration every time an over is interrupted by an ill-timed ad, usually of a cricketer selling us a pen or something.

Imagine Yuvraj just getting out to a yorker. As you wait with bated breath for the replay to vent frustration at the batsman, you are suddenly assaulted by the same Yuvraj exhorting you to consume health supplement capsules. The channel then jumps to live action just as the bowler is approaching the crease. Whatever happened between those precious few minutes is lost forever, relegated to the hard-drives of sports channels, not considered important enough for us dim-witted viewers.

Advertisers are now coming up with new and innovative ways to seek our attention. Gone are the days when the camera would pan during the change of ends to show the fielder digging his nose or the batsman indulging in some barely legal ‘excavations’ into his groin area. Now, even the single being taken is shown in a smaller window, with the rest of the TV showing a ‘mini ad’.

Even the radio is not immune to the vagaries of the ad world. Tune into a live broadcast and after every boundary you’ll hear something on the lines of “yeh laga ‘idiot cream’ chauka!” It’s as if the boundary wouldn’t have come if the cream company hadn’t paid for it. What’s next? Soon we’ll have companies queuing up to sponsor every single moment on the screen. If a player sneezes on screen, an inhaler ad could pop up and when a player does an itchy and scratchy display, the relevant ointment could make an appearance.

In the midst of all this madness, it’s the viewer who suffers (unless he has an itchy groin). Take Sachin’s Hyderabad epic. He spent hours on the field during that breathtaking knock but we may have ended up seeing more of Dhoni, Yuvraj and Shah Rukh Khan selling us everything from mobile phones to chyawanprash.

I know that ads are not something we can do away with. But my question to the broadcasters is, do you really have to ruin the match experience for us? Not that they are listening. But since cribbing is a national pastime, it’s not going to stop me from complaining. I think the only option now is to run an ad to protest the deluge of ads during a cricket match. It’ll need to have some cricketers though, to grab viewer attention.