It's high time sports writers learnt the new game

Indian sports is no longer a drab one-act play staged by cricket. It has seen new sports items Kabadi, Badminton, Football and the like rising up to claim the limelight. The television and online media played a crucial role in this. But, somewhere along the process, did sports writing lost its charm?

The originality of sports writing which once successfully conveyed the verve of a game to the reader without compromising on its essence and spirit,  the mastery of imparting the same thrill of a live game to a reader who is far off, have disappeared somewhere. The panellists, Ayas Memon, Dileep Premachandran, and MP Surendran also aired more or less the same opinion while talking about 'Does sports writing lose its relevance to the quick pace of technology'.

The influence of social media is quite visible in today's writings. They have to change the style of writing, its imperative, said M P Surendran. Ayas Memon opined that social media is opening up immense possibilities of writing. There were no limitations to the writing on social media.  He also asked the sports writers to acquire a sort of compatibility with visual media.

Not very long ago, just the knowledge of cricket was enough to pass you as a sports editor. But time changed. Now, Kabadi has become the most in-demand thing, after the gentleman’s game, all because of the TV shows that gave it a new lease of life. Now, football and badminton are following the path to glory and popularity in India, on the lines of Kabadi, Ayas Memon said.

In the coming years, mobile will transform into a full package. At the same time, sports writers are on the path to extinction. In Kerala and elsewhere, writers who specialise in sports are a dwindling tribe now and their number is going down each year. The main reasons for this trend are nothing but the ignorance of sports and sportspersons. 

The quality of sports writing has also taken a downturn, MP Surendran regrets. Earlier, reading a piece on sports used to give you a feeling that you are right there on the field and watching the game live.

Now, the writers seem to have lost that magic and creativity, he said, adding that the new crop of writers really needs to learn how to write sports. 

There was a time when it used to take a long time to make sure that the report you write reached the office the day itself and that it would get printed next day. Things were even more complicated when you go abroad to report a sports event. Filing the reports itself was a taxing endeavour. What more, calling your office and getting the line connected took hours in those days, Surendran recalled.

Then, the impatient wait for the phone call assuring that the filed story would appear in the next day's newspaper. The permission to publish, which came after such enormous effort was priceless. Because of this, the effort taken to prepare a report was also exhausting. 

Today, the game changed. Now, you are at the venue watching the programme and giving live tweet and face bok live from there and reports being sent to the office from laptop or mobile phone and the approval also comes in a jiffy.  It only takes less than an hour for all these. As it happens, much less effort is taken in preparing the report also. And the situation demands to file more stories. Today getting the stories is the difficult part of the game, Memon concluded.