Kekille Kricket

Like any other country in the Indian sub-continent the Sri Lankans are also a nation who is cricket crazy. At the same time, people in this tiny cricket loving nation are highly literate and what is written or given in frozen action on the subject is quickly devoured with great enthusiasm and that has been a great passion of them.

However it is sad to note that Cricket Australia has made an attempt to rekindle the deep rooted anti-Australian fervour especially in a cricketing sense by using the current Lankan series as a Guinea pig in their quest to pile on more dollars into a coffer that is already rich and fat.

The rot set in a while ago when the International Rugby Board got a little too greedy and decided to impose the same sort of media alterations for their own gain, but at that juncture sanity prevailed and the media got the coverage rights just 90 minutes before the games got underway.

In the IRB effort, they were trying to milk the press in a global event where there was too much tension and attention. But, taking the IRB cue did Cricket Australia take the Sri Lankan series as a bar because it will not make a huge global impact, only a deprivation of a basic human right (right to the access of news) of the people of a small nation. In short the impact will only be felt in Sri Lanka and would the people in other cricket playing nations complain if they miss a picture of the first Test between Sri Lanka and Australia? The answer is a huge ‘no’. So cricket Australia is in a great position to take the bull by its horn and try to teach the fourth estate some modern day commercial theories.

Following is a short description of the fourth estate: The term Fourth Estate refers to the press, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political and other social issues. The term goes back at least to Thomas Carlyle in the first half of the 19th century.

Novelist Jeffrey Archer in his work The Fourth Estate made this observation: "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estate General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all (Google)”. Ironically when one takes this assessment with the yardstick of a commercially pregnant world, would this ethic hold any water? Well …..may be to their minds that statement was made ages ago

The Sales and Marketing Director Agence France-Presse Erik Monjalous comenting on the current heart burn of the press says “We want to alert you to a potential non-coverage by the international news agencies (including AFP) of the first test match between Sri Lanka and Australia starting on 8th November in Brisbane, Australia. Your organisations should have received a client advisory this morning but this is to give you some additional information.

The background of this dispute is the fact that Cricket Australia's accreditation terms contain a provision which says that it owns all the intellectual property rights in the text, data and photographs taken inside "their venues". They are now insisting that they want news agencies to pay a licence fee to be able to distribute news photographs to their client newspapers and other news media as they "own the exclusive rights to control the exploitation of all photographs generated from within their cricket venues". This is unacceptable to us as it amounts to paying for news reporting.

This row follows the dispute in September between media and the International Rugby Board (IRB) which threatened coverage of the rugby World Cup. The IRB tried to impose restrictions on media, limiting photos and video on the Internet. This prompted the leading international news agencies and a 40-strong world news media coalition to form the News Media Coalition and boycott the build-up to the World Cup. An agreement was reached hours before the opening match.

AFP, AP, Getty and Reuters are again working together as a part of the News Media Coalition to resolve this dispute but there is a chance this may not be solved in time for the first test match and our journalists will not be accredited. Enclosed is a news article by AFP on this subject.”

At the same time if cricket Australia was going to take such a step they also should have made provisions to take their own photographs and send them through to the Lankan media as Sri Lanka too is playing a part of this series and the people of that country should have the right to have action photographs printed in their newspapers.

While blaming Cricket Australia we take this opportunity in pointing a finger at Sri Lanka Cricket too. Prior to all this, and when things were brewing at that end we asked the Lankan authorities if they were manned out there with a troubleshooter at that end. The answer was negative. Now Sri Lanka boasts about having a chance of pulling off their first Test win Down Under. At the same time the Lankan Champion off spinner Muttiah Muralitharan is only a few wickets away from becoming the greatest wicket taker in the annals of Test cricket. However we are hung with a news blackout of the series as the media giants have opted not to bow down to the CA greed. Where do we stand?

PS: Note to Cricket Australia. Please don’t let this virus spread. It will be bad for sport in general.