So far we understand that Mr. Tendulkar is a good batsman with an impeccable on-field behavior in short a good sportsperson. The problem starts when he packages himself to sell products. Here they focus on his personal attributes-which is constructed as the situation demands, more appropriately the market demands. It is also that the Market capitalizes (or packages) the image he- media, has created. Since media is extension for market it means the same thing. This is where they play with the emotions of people. People like-adore Sachin because he is a good sportsperson. Now the construct is Sachin likes-adores Coca Cola (or say a brand of bike) so since people adore Sachin they should also adore the product. Adoration here is now constructed as ‘buy it’. The last part is implied-this is where we get to acquaint subtlety in crass world of Market. The role of Sachin is to emote, to authenticate this liking. This is where the issue of cheating comes since he is emoting to capitalize the emotions of the people for his cricket playing skills into hard cash for the company. This blogger however fails to understand what kind of fool will be influenced by ads when making choices of such costly products. It is ridiculous but then Sachin is so admired by many they can be unreasonable. It is also a different matter whether Sachin has ever used that brand of bike or has done a comparative study with other brands. Most importantly who is he to tell people which brand to buy. He is only a cricket player not a bike expert. Clearly they are playing with emotions of the cricket lovers for shubh lab.
Sachin Tendulkar is just an example this true about all sportsperson around the world, but Indians make it big because of population rather than competence. Now the question is since they made millions out of people’s emotions what happens when they break people’s emotions or don’t fulfill the expectations-further hyped by market???. People will give it back in the same coin. They attack their property and abuse them……well this blogger has absolutely nothing against people’s emotional outbursts. Fans are expected to behave that way particularly when they are being cheated, or sold big dreams by mediocre. In Indian context it needs to be particularly vicious, since we are not living in decent world why always expect fans to be decent (offcourse most ridiculous fan reactions are media managed-no rocket science there). When selling product they target people’s emotions but when they fail in the game they tell people to be rational and blame the fans for irrationality. You invoke their emotions and make money and now tell them to control themselves when at receiving end, quite strange!!!. This blogger also feel that the fan’s reactions has been quite subdued, they need to go step further particularly in case of players who come in ads. They should make them live in fear. So that next time they take an ad assignment they need to understand what they are getting into. Licking into people’s feelings can be dangerous. Shubh lab comes with strings attached dude.
Post script: The above piece was written before the Indian cricketer’s disastrous performance at the “world cup” (sure there is world out there!!), I was ambivalent about publishing this in my blog. The suggestion of this blogger (who has no love for cricket but is very concerned about Marketers exploiting people’s emotions, also since every moron in the town has an a suggestion why not me!!!) to BCCI would be to make an obligatory clause in the contract with the players to avoid endorsement and ads. The argument that players are doing this in ‘free time’ is rather juvenile since they are exploiting people’s expectations and emotional association with the game and are therefore very much responsible for inactions on the field. This blogger suggest the players to go for a long walk during ‘free time’!!!. Also the contract should ask players not to indulge with Media (essentially bunch of monkeys desperate for big money) nor should the board members, the media need to be dealt with press releases- that is asking for too much when people are jostling for eyeball space.
Greed comes from insecurity. Insecurity is an illness of mind, they reflect this when they play the game and refuse to take risks as they don’t want to loose money from endorsements. They don’t mind working on their own image (creating records another passion around here at the teams expense -remember that fellow Ravi Shastri-who just wanna have Audi car babe-he does come in with his expert comments nowadays, he surely can coach team on matters commercial!!. The point was not whether India won the match but whether it was right for Tendulkar to miss double century!!). Image building therefore takes precedence over team or the game. Thus we have more ‘Stars’(Digaj kiladi) than players. The reality was shown by few teenagers from Bangladesh!!. Then they say that Bangladesh played well (no Indian ‘stars’ never play badly- they are part of cosmic reasons). What Bangladesh team was all about was shown by Sri Lanka. The reality is far from the hype the monkeys are creating. How about not keeping record of players score???. This will make matches immensely interesting.
In conclusion this blogger feels that only player worth mentioning would be Rahul Dravid. He has been impeccable. Quite an inspiring fellow, I feel sorry for him. I guess the Market hype did his team in (it can be quite disconcerting when millions of people are watching and have opinions). The ‘stars’ in his team forgot they are to play cricket and not represent Pepsi-Coca Cola (Champu Khan did his patriotic puppetry bit). The tragedy was already written on the wall if anybody had time to read.