IPL 2011 Roundup Part 2: The Coverage

As the fourth edition of the IPL comes to its (long overdue) end for the season, it makes sense to look back at the event as a whole and determine what worked, what didn’t and what can be done to improve the viewer experience for IPL5. Yesterday, we looked at the tournament atmosphere and how it has changed from last year to this one. Today, we will look at the tournament coverage and how it measures up to expectations.

1. Coverage channelsThis year, the tournament was presented on a wide variety of coverage channels. There was the TV coverage on Set Max of course, but if you did not like sitting through the ads and did not mind getting the action 5 minutes later the IPL youtube channel was present. In addition IPL set up their own Twitter and Facebook pages where you not only got coverage of matches but also got to chat with other fans.In addition to these official avenues, sites like cricinfo and cricbuzz provided play by play of the matches along with intelligent commentary on each happening in the match. Granted, the fights between fans in the shoutboxes and on twitter got a little out of hand, especially when fans started abusing other fans on the basis of where in the country they are from. But seeing how that is part and parcel of cricket, the coverage channels were ubiquitous and there was almost no way you could not keep up with the matches and the scores.

2. PresentationThe presentation on TV was polished in every single frame. This was doubly so in HD. The cameras were brilliant and production was top notch. For me, one specific moment stood out in the IPL coverage – it was when Pollard decided to try and clear the boundary off Vettori’s bowling in the MI vs RCB semi. He hit the ball so high that the primary camera lost it due to the roof of the stands coming in the way. Immediately, they cut to another camera which showed us the MI dugout clearing, Abhimanyu Mithun looking at the ball (which we couldn’t see) in full concentration and then grabbing a catch out of thin air. This instantaneous production decision to forget about the ball and instead show us the fielder’s reaction was inspired and is one of the reasons why the production values this year were really good.Some other things I liked were the Spider-cam shots, the super slo-mo (which looked divine in some settings) and the scorecard at the bottom of the screen – it was clean, crisp, told you what you needed to know and never obstructed our view of the action. Full marks to the presentation of the tournament

3. CommentaryWhere do I begin? Sidhu jumping around like a madman during extra innings made me skip that show throughout the tournament. The few times I did watch it, I felt that the show had potential, but Sidhu single handedly dragged it down. Everyone may not feel this way, but I just couldn’t stand him in this tournament for some reason.In the actual commentary team, I feel that some new blood is desperately needed. Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar have got so stale that I can predict what they will say before they say it, and half the time it is a cliché which they utter.Harsha Bhogle provided the actual commentary with analysis, anecdotes and play by play mixed in and Danny Morrison showed us how to properly do colour commentary. These two were the best in the team IMHO.Also, having Ravi Shastri pretend that he know what twitter is was just laughable, his talk about hashtags and handles made me literally fall from my chair laughing

4. Reaction shots

You know the ones, the shot after the fact. The team has pinned their hopes on a player and they need 6 off 4, the player goes for a six and is caught in the deep. The replays then show us not just the catch but the reactions of the player, the team, the bowling team and the crowd to show us how that dismissal affected each of them. IPL4 provided us a plethora of them, although crowd reaction shots could have been better, but I felt like I actually understood how much a wicket meant to a team or how bad the player felt for losing that wicket. You felt like there was a clear story being told on screen and that kept me hooked.

So there we have it, on a whole the coverage of this IPL was really good provided you could watch it on mute, no offense to the distinguished commentary team, but I may be time to have some new blood in there.

Tomorrow, we will take a look at the matches in IPL4 and how they compare with previous IPLs along with my list of the Top 5 matches.