Meeting Mr Miandad

Half term coincides with the start of the Cricket World Cup in India/Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This means that I shall get to watch a bit this week, (am sat watching England play the Netherlands as write this).

The thing that has so far made me laugh out loud on occasions is the music being played at the stadiums over the public address system.

Twenty/20 cricket has changed cricket in many ways, some good, some bad. One of the first changes was that batsmen couldn't walk to the crease only to the sound of generous applause from the crowd. No, now there had to be loud, at times deafening, music played, initially when batsmen were out ( and therefore the new one came in|). That soon changed to playing the music whenever there was a gap in play, i.e.at the end of the over, a drinks break or the aforementioned wicket falling. Then some bright spark had the idea of letting the incoming batsmen choose what music was blasted at the unsuspecting public while there hero walked to face his first ball.

It's fairly well known that footballers have fairly dodgy taste in music and cricketers are not far behind!! This therefore led to all sorts of RAP, R"n"B and dances tunes making octogenarian members of the home club spill large quantities of gin and tonic as for example The Black Eyed Peas let everyone know "tonight's gonna be a good night".

The 2011 Cricket world cup is taking this use of loud music to a new and all together confusing area. This I shall call "Bollyrock" Imagine the Deep Purple classic "Smoke on the Water" sampled to just the main riff (beloved by aspiring guitarist's) mixed with a "Bollywood" style" dance background! Or try Queens "We will rock you" with the main chant repeated ad nauseum, with the guitar riff then sampled in to give light and shade!!!

Yesterdays game between Kenya and Australia had a medieval  flute interlude, which sounded like Robin Hood was about to appear, followed by live Indian drumming, which on occasions sounds like someone has dropped the drums down a long flight of stairs.

I never thought that I would look back fondly at 10cc's Dreadlock Holiday being used in cricket coverage, but it appears that I do!