Watching the IPL matches from home

 IPL is back. For the next 2 months there is ample entertainment as long as one enjoys the game and is able to quickly mute the TV when the ads come on and unmute when the game is telecast.

Watching the match from home has a lot of advantages. One can sit in the comfort of air conditioned environment; go to toilet any time without requesting people to give way; criticise any player or team without the worry of one's neighbour giving one a nasty look or worse till beat one up. But the most important advantage is that at any stage one can stop the play by the simple press of a button. One does not want to continue to watch when the home team is losing. In addition at crucial moments, it is easy to take an ostrich approach and not watch the match and return to the room after ensuring that the home team has indeed made it to home safely. During these times dinner is consumed in the living room by default- a luxury often denied by the disciplinarian spouse.

However, not all is hunky dory with home watching. For one your spouse who does not like cricket may find some excuse or other to disturb you- especially when you wanted very much to see the replay of an excellent catch. Your friend and his family choose this inopportune time to visit you. Some are so thick skinned that even if your eyes keep darting between their lips (since the match is on, one is hardly likely to concentrate on what that guy or his wife is saying) and the TV screen, they do not seem to get the hint. Having dinner while watching IPL match also has its down side too. The food may slide down from the plate in the lap on to the floor or worse still onto the carpet. You may bite on an especially spicy green chilli with your eyes off the plate and glued onto the screen. 

But the most important negative feature is the scourge of advertisements. While it is a necessary evil in the interest of commerce, I feel that the kind of advertisements one sees with IPL matches have a negative effect on the product. In the first place one does not know what product the advertiser is promoting? Seriously does one believe that they want us to drink packaged drinking water and munch elachi by the tons. I am sure the sale of these products must be a small percentage of the company's portfolio which perhaps includes items banned for advertisement such as hard liquor, cigarettes and pan masala. Just imagine all your favourite actors actively campaigning (actually jumping around) for you to eat a lot of elachi (you may end up with gastric ulcer due to hyper acidity) and drink packaged water while the unsaid part is what the advertiser is actually interested in. 

It takes a lot of tolerance  to keep watching these ads being repeated ad nauseum almost at every break. Try telling your own child repeatedly what should be done- 4 times in 15 minutes. You can expect a cryptic and caustic retort. The ads in IPL match go beyond that- they hammer you senseless. Hence the need to keep the TV remote handy and mute the ad at least if not blank the screen. One also fails the logic in the advertisements. I can understand exaggerated ads meant to tickle the funny bone but one cannot understand why one should be an acrobat and jump of hills in order to consume  a soft drink or why one becomes a fighter jet pilot immediately after consuming a special elachi!  I look forward to a day when one one develops an AI soft ware that detects ads and blanks the screen- I am sure this person deserves a Nobel peace prize.

Logic also seems to be missing when one watches these matches and react instantly to a dropped catch, a sixer or a wicket based on which team one is supporting. It does not matter that the players change teams each season and have no issues with loyalty but the spectators seem to be fixed on their home team even if none of the players are from that state. Perhaps the best match we can enjoy is one where we have no vested interest. 

Long live IPL. For 2 months it successfully converts me into a Zombie for the last part of every day. A zombie with a difference because it jumps, shakes its head and claps while watching the idiot box while all the time the brain is shut down completely.