Previously (April 25th 2008) I wrote
Were cricket a foodstuff then Twenty20 would have to be the Pot Noodle of the food spectrum.
I’d have to say that Twenty20 generally would have to be the Bombay Bad Boy or the Doner Kebab variety of that foul creation that is Pot Noodle. I should say here that there is a valid reason for my loathing of Pot Noodle. It was responsible for triggering off a bout of IBS that even now, some eight years later, is still occasionally (and far too much for my liking) raising hell in my stomach.
Worry not, I’ll spare you the unpleasant details.
If you like Pot Noodle then may your god(s) and/or goddess(es) go with you and may they have mercy on your guts.
Please be clear that I am not tarring Nissin’s Cup Noodles product with the same brush. Cup Noodles are a product I can enjoy safe in the knowledge that the toilet roll does not need to be stocked to surviving a nuclear attack levels and stored in the fridge.
Anyway, we’re not here to discuss my guts and things that make them play the 1812 Overture. We’re here to discuss another excellent piece about the IPL by Neil Manthorp. He writes about the IPL and the attitude of its people:
What they [the South African cricket community] have never experienced before is being ‘used’, certainly not in the way the IPL have used them. The Rajasthan Royals, as one example amongst dozens, formed a “strategic alliance” with the Cape Cobras in Cape Town and asked for an office at Newlands for the fortnight before the tournament and then its duration. Within days, the IPL franchise had spread like bacteria in a petri-dish leaving local staff without a desk, literally. One infuriated employee found himself evicted from his office without notice, apology or explanation after arriving at work. “There seems to be a ‘right of entitlement’ that exists amongst these IPL people. Give them a finger and they bite your arm off,” he said.
Go and read the rest of the article. It’s very enlightening stuff. One of his last points reflects something I wrote (my emphasis):
The IPL is a fun tournament and will make excellent wallpaper in sports bars around the world in years to come. But South Africans are already beginning to see it for what it is, rather than what it portrays itself to be. It is an entertainment circus, rather than a sporting one, designed primarily to enable a very small number of fabulously wealthy people to become even wealthier.
Entertainment circus reminds me of professional “wrestling”, or as it prefers to be known these days “sports entertainment”. Mentioning that I wrote recently:
Then there were the almost contant advert breaks. What hasn’t been sold as part of this “product”? How long before “Coming into bat, sponsored by Citizen, Adidas, Burton menswear, Vodafone and Hugo Boss, Kevin Pietersen”. By that time he could have run into bat, been out first ball and be heading back to the dugout! Or how about stage names or nicknames and gimmicks?
Why not? Already WWE “wrestling” uses nicknames and gimmicks. Who would be the cricketing equivalent of “The Undertaker”, “Stone Cold”, “Brutus The Barber Beefcake”, “The Honky Tonk Man” and “Macho Man”?
Suggestions for nicknames and gimmicks welcome.
