At Culture11, Michael Brendan Dougherty has a fine piece on how the people who run sports are more interested in catering to people who don’t like sport than for those who, like, actually do. He’s writing about the modern baseball experience but everything he says also, of course, applies to cricket. Especially Twenty20 cricket:
Like so many modern stadiums, the Nationals Ballpark experience doesn’t trust the show it is ostensibly putting on: a baseball game. It partakes in the sensibility the brain-zapped sensibility that’s come to dominate live sports. That’s perfect for the jerks who don’t care for the sport. For the rest of us, though, it’s disheartening. The operating philosophy is that no one could possibly enjoy our national pastime without slathering it in techno-pizazz. Gone are the little moments that make the game unique: the superstitious gestures, the punch of the ball into an outstretched glove, the strange diction of the umpire, the din of a crowd punctured by cotton-mouthed vendors.
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