Getting cricket to millions of viewers through television screens is an uphill task
Televising cricket from the Caribbean is a hazardous exercise at the best of times but when an Icelandic volcano erupts and spews its wrath over Europe’s skies, thereby putting the world on hold, you begin to realise the enormity of the task in getting a cricket event onto television screens in households across the world.
The ICC World Twenty20 Cricket starts in Guyana on April 30, just days after the completion of the Indian Premier League, and then the leading cricketers of the world traipse all over the islands of St Lucia and finally Barbados before the ICC World T20 Final on May 16.
The size of the operation and the manpower required for the television production is a conservative number of around 170 people. These are the producers, directors, directors’ assistants, production managers, satellite operators, vision mixers, editors, loggers, riggers, runners, cameramen, audio engineers, slow motion replay editors, graphics designers and editors, statisticians and Hawkeye experts, who all work behind the scenes to ensure that a game of cricket being played in Guyana can be watched on a television set in India.
These behind-the-scenes personnel are all flying to the Caribbean, mainly through London, from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, England, Pakistan and India. India will be supplying at least 30 highly-trained personnel for the tournament, second only to those making their way from England.
Whisper it gently, but in a case of emergency — as this past week has proved to the coordination of the ICC World Twenty20 — an Indian cameraman gets priority on an aeroplane before the likes of Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri. Great cricketers they both were, and great contributions they make in the commentary box, but their skills are a secondary requirement to those of a cameraman, without whom there would simply be no picture.
Because of the proliferation of cricket in India in the past decade, the status of the Indian cameraman has been enhanced to a specialist’s role. He is worth his weight in gold because he points his camera at the world’s leading cricketers more often than any other cameraman in the world.
Furthermore, with the escalating costs of cricket’s television broadcast rights and the need to have major sponsors endorsing the events with their products, you begin to understand that the visual requirements of actually seeing the event on a television screen is more important than anything else. More important than having a commentator out there.
With Europe’s skies being polluted with volcanic ash this past week, there were even plans to charter special planes to get the most important personnel out of India first, so that the production of the ICC World Twenty20 could go ahead. The Indian “techies” would be first in the queue to get on any emergency plane.
Consider the sheer logistics of trying to rebook flights from all over the globe, to organising entry visas, to sorting out hotels and changes of dates etc, and the exercise becomes a platform for a valium sponsor to be on board.
In this instance, I am one of those who will be last in the food chain and rightly so. Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Harsha Bhogle and I can wait our places in the queue. I understand the priority of production. I also know just how hard production personnel work in setting up broadcast facilities at a cricket ground and I have the utmost respect for those people you never see on screen but without whom there would be no cricket match for you to watch in the comfort of your homes.
Once all these personnel are on site the next batch of problems is to set up the ground for broadcast. This would make a fascinating television programme in itself I assure you. Miles of cables will be carefully laid around the boundary ropes (usually out of sight) and every one of these cables has to be plugged in somewhere. You have a problem setting up your DVD recorder at home, just imagine the complexity of the task in coordinating over 30 cameras at a cricket ground and beaming those pictures from Guyana, St Lucia and Barbados thousands of miles over satellites watching our very existence on Planet Earth.
It is a mind-boggling scenario and one which never ceases to amaze me but which, in a way, we all take for granted because we are now so used to seeing world events on our television screens in the comforts of our homes. So next time you want to switch off your television set, just spare a thought for the people who work so hard to get you those pictures in the first place. Now, as for turning down the volume because you don’t like the commentary…well, that’s another story!
ALAN WILKINS is a TV broadcaster for ESPN Star Sports. His column Inside Edge appears on this page every alternate Sunday
