Pick your team

IF you are looking for relief from the grimness of the present and happen to be a cricket buff, you could escape into the world of fantasy cricket which made its debut in India last week. And if you count the TV-Internet-newspaper linkages being packaged by ESPN and Star Sports, then the concept is a first anywhere in the world. This is a fun game, made possible by computer software and the Internet, and happily indulges cricket buffs who think they know better than the selectors. If you had to select a team whom would you select? Whom would you later drop, what substitutions would you execute?

On TV it is a game show called "Super Selector" simulcast on both the sports channels, where Naseeruddin Shah gets to have the time of his life, discussing ongoing cricket matches and previewing imminent ones with Sunil Gavaskar, Geoffrey Boycott and Navyjot Singh Sidhu. Because this is from the Star stable and cross promotion of shows and channels is the order of the day, they throw in music channel veejays and actors and actresses from ongoing soaps like "Kyunki ..." who pick their own dream teams during the episode. Geoffrey Boycott cheerful declared himself bowled over by veejay Malaika Arora during the shooting of the first episode.

The show last week was the only one this month, thereafter each month there will be two shows a preview and a review whose dates and timings are yet to be announced. Right now the place to find "Super Selector" is on www.espnstar.com which went live on Friday. This is an interactive game show whereby you register and carefully select your team from listed players participating in matches that month somewhere in the world, and all of them are given weightages. You have to stay within 1000 points, so you cannot pick a whole lot of biggies. They would add up to too many points. Boycott advises, "If you are going to pick a good side you have got to use your head not your heart. Do not just pick your own country, put some thought into it." His secret team, he added, had only one Yorkshireman on it.

To do the weightages the channels employ an advanced software which takes into account team strengths, player strengths and weaknesses, pitch knowledge, playing conditions, quality of umpires, etc. You have to choose five batsmen, four bowlers, one all-rounder, and one wicket keeper, and their performance in the actual matches being played that month determines what they score at the end of the month on your dream team. You can make substitutions in your selected team till the 21st of the month, depending on how those you have picked are faring in the matches they are playing. So you need to follow the actual matches, and watch this TV show on which the likes of Gavaskar and Boycott will preview upcoming matches, and review played once each fortnight.

According to the director of the show, if they were three matches being played a month there would be 170-180,000 possible outcomes for the game. With five matches being played there could be a million different outcomes. The player whose dream team scores the highest on their actual performance in October (one point per run scored, 25 points per wicket taken, five points per catch held, and so on) will win an all-expense paid trip to South Africa, and join the expert team in the commentary box.

From November the tie up would include India Today which will carry forms for the game with each issue. As will other newspapers in the country, by and by. ESPN-Star Sports have every intention of spinning this out till the World Cup is over. Every month, you select afresh based on the matches scheduled for that month.

Naseeruddin Shah who hosts this show is a short, wiry, lovable addition to the cricket fraternity on the box. He is a marvellous actor, but we will have to see how he will do with unscripted patter. Why is he there? Let me pre-empt the question, he said at the press conference, "Cricket and acting are the only two professions I ever considered. I deeply love cricketers. For me this is like a dream come true." At this point Sunil Gavaskar weighed in with an endorsement of the wonderful job he had done in hosting the show. This is not Shah's first bash at TV anchoring. Remember "Turning Point" on Doordarshan? But it is likely to be his most lucrative.

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Last fortnight CNN discovered how incredibly efficient the Internet rumour mill can be. The liberal intellectual fraternity across the world was busily delighted re-posting a mail that originated from a student in Brazil. (Yours truly got three forwards - from Bangalore, Mumbai and Kathmandu). It was titled "CNN Using 1991 footage" and had the instant effect of making the reader sit up. What it said was that the pictures CNN was using of Arabs showing delight at the World Trade Centre strikes was actually taken from 1991 footage of Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait.

Said the student, "A teacher of mine, here in Brazil, has videotapes recorded in 1991, with the very same images; he has been sending e-mails to CNN, Globo (the major TV network in Brazil) and newspapers, denouncing what I myself classify as a crime against the public opinion." Well, it went down famously. Amazing how few people stopped to think that even if they did not put it past CNN to be a propagandist in the American cause, the channel was unlikely to do something quite as outrageous as this. Finally CNN got its act together, contacted the Brazilian campus from which the e-mail had originated and put out a rejoinder. Calling the allegation ridiculous and baseless, it said that the footage shown on CNN was shot in East Jerusalem by a Reuters TV camera crew on September 11, adding that Reuters TV was prepared to confirm this.

It also got the University to issue a statement which said that the student who had authored this e-mail had clarified that he had got the information verbally, and that it related to a tape a professor on another campus allegedly possessed. He then put the information out on a discussion group e-mail list. When the list showed instant interest he contacted the person who first gave him the information and then it turned out that the professor in question denied having any such tape. The student claims he sent out a clarification immediately, but obviously it did not have the same dissemination success as the earlier message.

Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post put out a story saying that though Associated Press had extensive footage of Palestinians celebrating last fortnight, it had come under threat from the Palestinian leadership for distributing it. The Palestinians, the story said, were alive to how poorly such scenes would be viewed abroad and wanted it suppressed.

A very different twist to the same footage.

SEVANTI NINAN

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com

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