‘Balla Ghooma Stadium jhooma’: Shifting discourse of cricket commentary in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Broadcasting commentary has developed a unique relationship with cricket wherein it performatively mediates the changing discourse that surrounds the game. Although, the social history of cricket in India has gained a considerable academic space, the cultural history of cricket commentary in India remains a fairly uncharted territory. The paper by placing it within the cultural studies framework attempts to trace cricket’s auratic presence in the popular imagination. Cricket’s acculturation in India is unique to its radio sonic mapping, televisual spectacle and its experience with modernity. It argues how the cultural economy of cricket through radio and television commentary, covering cricket’s varied format over the years constantly informed and negotiated its linguistic, cultural and economic registers. The attempt is to foreground the ways in which its distinct structures of listening experience uniquely fostered decolonisation and indigenous appropriation of the game. Above all, interpreting the materialistic aesthetics of the broadcast medium, the shifting trajectory of cricket broadcast delineates how IPL’s subcultural sporting codes challenges the discursive ‘Englishness’ of cricket. What anchors in IPL through the playful transaction of the contemporary cricket culture, especially, through commentary, is the tension between global cultural reproduction and the forces of indigenisation at work.