Explained (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 11 - Cricket - full transcript

[narrator] Cricket is
an old British sport.

Very well played, sir.

Cricket... of course,
doesn't even have rules.

It has laws.

And that immediately strikes some people
as pompous and self-regarding.

[narrator] Those laws were mostly written
in 19th-century London

at a pitch still considered
the home of cricket

called Lord's.

[newsreel narrator] For this is Lord's:

deeply rooted in tradition
and in the ritual tradition brings.

You know, God bless cricket.



It has a tea break in the game.

[Brian Lara]
It's definitely a test of attrition.

A lot of people can't get
their mind around,

"How do you stand out there
for five days?"

[narrator] But cricket has changed.

There's a new form of the sport

That's bringing in more money,
fans, and a different style of play.

But one thing hasn't changed.

[Kimber] It's complicated.

It is one of the most complicated sports
on Earth.

It's totally wiggly.

It doesn't even follow
any apparent obvious reason.

[narrator] That didn't put off
the one billion people

that were estimated to have watched
a single cricket match in 2015



between India and Pakistan.

That's one in seven humans.

So how did this confusing British game

become one
of the most popular sports on Earth?

[newsreel announcer] And here's
the England side coming into the field.

[crowd cheering] [newsreel narrator] A subtle battle
between a slice of willow

and a round of leather.

[man shouts] Yeah! Got it.

[crowd cheering]

[announcer 1] West Indian skipper,
Brian Lara.

[announcer 2] What a great victory.

[announcer 3] Unbelievable scenes
here at the World Cup.

[announcer 4] This is certainly not
an Englishman's game anymore.

[theme music playing]

[Mandvi] Two teams of 11 play each other

on a field shaped like an oval.

The batting team has two players
on the field at a time

on either end of the pitch.

They're trying to score runs,

while the fielding team
is trying to get them out. On each side of the pitch is a wicket.

The wicket is three stumps
topped by two bails.

A batsman stands in front of a wicket

trying to hit the ball
delivered by a bowler

from the other end of the pitch.

If the batsman hits the ball,
they score runs

by exchanging positions
with the other batsmen.

Each exchange equals one run.

While they're running,
the fielders try to get the ball

and hit one of the wickets
before a batsman gets there.

If they don't make it before the ball
knocks the bails off the stumps,

they're out and the new batsman comes in.

If the batsman hits the ball hard enough,
they won't have to run.

If they hit it to the boundary,
it's worth four runs.

And all the way over the boundary...

that's six.

If a fielder catches the ball,

the batsman is out.

The bowler can also get a batsman out
if their delivery hits the wicket,

knocking the bails off the stumps.

A batsman can choose not to swing

or swing and miss the ball,

and he won't get out
as long as the wicket is safe.

The bowler, however, can only bowl
six deliveries at a time.

That's called an "over,"
and it's really important.

After each over,
a teammate takes their place.

When ten of the 11 batsman are out,

it's called an "innings"
and the other team bats.

In traditional cricket, each team
has two innings in the match

and the team
with the most runs at the end wins.

If they haven't finished after five days,

the umpire calls a draw.

Technically there are ten ways to get out.

But if you ask someone to explain them,

cricket can get very confusing
very quickly.

Leg before wicket, one of the ways
someone can be out

and the nature of the umpire,

the nature of fielding positions:

silly mid-on, silly mid-off,
extra cover, third man.

It's all very coded and peculiar, cricket.
I suppose that's the problem.

[Mandvi] The British didn't just write
the rules of cricket...

they spread it around the world

by taking it to their colonies
in the 18th and 19th centuries.

British soldiers played it,

and the local people
either took to it or didn't.

In Canada, they didn't particularly.

A bit cold.

So they went to the ice hockey instead.

But in the warmer countries,
it seems obviously to have taken off.

[Mandvi] Even the United States played

before baseball
became the patriotic pastime.

America decided
cricket smacked of colonialism,

and therefore,
they were not going to play.

[Mandvi] But in other colonies,
playing cricket was an opportunity

to beat the colonizers at their own game.

And the English began inviting teams

to come test their skills
against them in England.

The competitions were called test matches,

which is what the long form of the game
continues to be called.

Most of the countries
and the top countries that play the game

has that little element
of wanting to get back at the English.

[Mandvi] And the colonies
got a new opportunity

to do that starting in 1975,

when cricket got a World Cup.

Without the World Cup, cricket
would still be a gentlemanly agreement.

"Oh, yeah, we're free at that time of year.
We'll come over."

Whereas the World Cup gives everyone
the chance to prove themselves.

[Mandvi] In order to play a tournament,
matches needed to be shorter

and end with a winner and a loser.

So they played a one-day form of the game

that limited the number of overs
faced by each team.

[crowd roaring]

The first two World Cups
were both won by the West Indies.

My mother was jumping in the kitchen
when the West Indies were winning.

Did she care about the game that much? No.

Did she understand the game that much? No.

But cricket meant
a lot to us as West Indians,

and not just in the Caribbean.

[Mandvi] In the third World Cup,
England didn't even make the finals.

They had lost to India,

a team playing against the West Indies

after having won a single game
in the first two World Cups.

In the final, nobody gave India a chance.

They were like interlopers.

On the day of the match,
the feeling was,

"Who are these people?
Why are they at Lord's?

Why isn't England at Lord's?"

[Mandvi] But on the turf
of their former colonizer

and with odds of 66 to one,

India won.

[Bose] In '83 was, for the first time,

Indians at home
watch their team win abroad.

[crowd cheering]

This is a new India emerging.

I mean, the economic prosperity of India
came a decade later.

But if you think, that marked
the moment when India was confident.

[crowd cheering]

We played like winners.

Throughout the game,
throughout the series.

Everybody fight for their lives,

and they said, "We will do it."

Nineteen eighty-three,
that generation began to feel

they didn't look to have
a merit certificate from England

to feel that they were good enough
to compete in the world.

India, for the first time, began to show
that a country of that size,

if it has prosperity,

if it has television reach,

it can play an enormous part
in reshaping cricket, which it has done.

[Mandvi] Four years later,

India hosted the first World Cup

outside of England.

[crowd cheering]

There's an Indian word called "tamasha,"

which means fun, excitement, glamour,

uncertainty all rolled into one.

And one day cricket
became instant tamasha.

[crowd cheering]

-[whistle blows]
-[cheering continues]

[Fry] You just are amazed

that something that was
started on green turf

at the site of an English church,

and, you know, polite applause

and, "Well played, good fellow,"

becomes this screaming
religious ceremony.

-[crowd roaring]
-[announcer 1] Pakistan win the World Cup.

A magnificiant performance
in front of 87,000 people.

Imran Khan is waiting inside.

[crowd cheering]

[announcer 2] McGrath wide on the crease
and that goes for four.

And the crowd loving every minute of it.

[announcer 3] Could be caught...

Is caught.

Sachin Tendulkar celebrates.

[Kimber] Political power then became

that the World Cup
was worth so much money

and that India and Pakistan
were bringing in so much of that money,

that the sort of democratization
of the game,

and it went from being England
and Australia running the game

to a more global thing.

[Mandvi] In England,
domestic cricket was losing fans,

so something was done
to save the sport at home,

but it would only accelerate
the power shift to Asia.

In the early 2000s, a British TV Network paid for Stuart Robinson
and his marketing team

to research what the problem was.

The key word that came out of that
was cricket was "inaccessible."

It was a sport for the posh.

[Mandvi] Robertson had an idea: an even shorter form of cricket

limited to just 20 overs for each team

that would last three hours.

[Robertson] And we asked those people

if we introduced a game of cricket
that lasted less than three hours,

would they come to see the game?

And all of those people who were indexed

as never having come
to a cricket match before,

they massively over indexed in saying,

"Yes, we would come to that."

[Mandvi] They called the new format
"twenty20,"

"T20" for short,

and pitched it to the heads
of English cricket at Lord's.

We were arranged around
this enormous table in alphabetical order.

So it started with Darbyshire,
then Durham, Essex,

and it went all the way around
to Yorkshire.

You know,
the 60-year-old white males

who had loved their traditional cricket,
don't particularly like change.

Then the vote went up,

started counting the hands
as quickly as I could,

and we realized
that it was 11-seven in favor.

[Mandvi] The next summer,
T20 made its debut in England.

The guy on the P.A. system,

at start of the game, he said,

"Welcome to the future of cricket."

And it was amazing.
It was a great statement.

[Mandvi] Not everyone agreed.

I still remain... to be sold on the idea.

I don't like the razzmatazz
that's going to go with it.

[Mandvi] The rest of the world
got their opportunity

to judge the new format in 2005.

[announcer] We welcome the world
into Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand,

the first ever Twenty20 international
in the history of the game.

New Zealand against Australia.

It felt a little bit like they
weren't taking it very seriously.

[announcer] And here they come.

Look at Hamish Marshall in the background.

-[laughter]
-Goodness me. What is he on?

Or a lot like they weren't
taking it very seriously.

They were all but drinking
during the game.

And that tells you
how serious the game was.

Oh, my heavens!

They look like a psychedelic funk band

from Chicago in 1975.

[Mandvi] That reputation stuck,

and when the format got its own World Cup,

the advertising made it clear
that T20 cricket was for...

[man] Party people!

The ICC World T20.
From 11 to 24th of September

it's off the hook!

India were like, "This is stupid.
We've already got one-day cricket.

We're more than happy.
We don't need this other stupid thing."

T20 cricket was an English invention.

India was almost dragged

into the World Cup of 2007
in Johannesburg.

They were were virtually dragged there.

They sent over a young team.

That happened to be
the best thing they could've done,

because a lot of the old players
didn't really understand T20 cricket,

whereas the young players
kind of understood

that you had to go as hard as you could.

[announcer] Yuvraj goes into the crowd.

That's massive.

Of all the teams that India were playing,
it was Pakistan.

They were going to lose
to Pakistan in the final,

and then Misbah-ul-Haq, just as he's
about to hit the winning runs,

hits the ball straight up in the air.

[announcer] In the air, Shrijan takes it.

India wins!

[Bose] The Johannesburg miracle.

And, as a result of that,

India said, "Oh, this is T20."

If one day cricket was tamasha,

this was super tamasha.

[Mandvi] In 2008, India launched
a new T20 tournament

called the Indian Premier League.

[man] Indian Premier League, say!

[Mandvi] In the first two years,
the IPL doubled in value.

And in the decade since,

it has developed
a unique brand of cricket

that combines entertainment
with fast-paced action

and attracts players
from around the world.

[crowd cheering]

[narrator] Team owners
include Bollywood stars

like Preity Zinta and Shahrukh Khan,

who take an active role
in promoting the league.

India, cricket, and film is a religion,

and blending the two is quite a mix.

It's quite exciting.

With IPL, the Indians finally discovered
a three-hour Bollywood movie

which is actually live cricket.

It is player number eight.

[Mandvi] Every season opens
with the auction

where celebrity owners bid for players.

Teams also create their own anthems,

like this one promoting
the Kolkata Knight Riders

and featuring Bollywood star
and team owner, Shah Rukh Khan.

-♪ We're too hot ♪
-♪ Too hot ♪

-♪ We're too cool ♪
-♪ Too cool ♪

♪ Kolkatta Night Riders ♪

♪ We rule ♪

The Indian Premier League version,

with its extraordinary
made-for-television excitements

and these wonderful sort of routines

and dances and flames going up.

They've brought in American...

What do you call them?
Not the can-can girls.

The American cheerleaders.

Cricket has never had
a prime-time TV product

that we can put on
every night of the week.

And that is essentially
what has turned T20 in

from being a very good game
for crowds to go to

to being the number one thing in cricket.

There's no turning back.

If the sponsors are telling you

this is where they want
to put their funds, and the spectators
are coming through the gates

and the TV rights are huge
in T20 compared to other things,

then you've got to run with it.

[Mandvi] The number
of international matches

of one-day cricket
has declined over the last decade,

while the number of international T20s
has increased.

Over a century after England introduced
test cricket to the colonies,

this new form of the game
has spread outwards from India.

India has given a model
for other countries to follow.

When the IPL was successful,
all these other places went,

"Oh, we'll set up our own leagues
and we'll try and be successful."

The difference is
that the money and the TV

is just not as strong
in some of those other places.

So the BBL in Australia
is very successful league.

It just doesn't have
a billion people willing to watch it.

Now it is IPL
is where they earn the money.

All the cricketers from this country
want to go and play in IPL.

[Mandvi] When international cricketers
were asked

if they would consider rejecting
an opportunity to play for their country if they were offered more money
to play professional T20,

half responded, "yes."

People will develop an opinion

that some players don't like
playing for their country.

They're just running the money down,

but sport is about money, you know?

You have to make a living.
You're a sportsperson.

This is entertainment.

And you can watch it every night,
and there'll be an unfolding narrative.

And that's what sport is at its best.

I've got no problem with that.

If cricket
isn't trying to entertain people,

I'm not really sure why we're playing it.

The game has evolved.

And, again, entertainment is key.

So even though I have a great appreciation
for test cricket

and my career was spanned over the period
when test cricket was strong,

I still have an understanding of where
the game has to go,

where it has gone,

and there's no turning back.

[Mandvi] And wherever the game goes,

it won't be decided by British gentleman
sitting in a boardroom.

[kids shouting]

The power of cricket has shifted
from England to India.

There's no question about it.

Why Lord's is still seen
as the home of cricket?

That's the symbolic home of cricket.

It's like seeing Rome
as the great capital of the world.

That was a long time ago.

You know, that is in history.