THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS FULLY DEDICATED TO THE TEST MATCH SOFA TEAM.
i could also name this article – “thick South African cricket board” or “rich board can’t fork out small change for cricket”. But I didn’t. The reason solely being that this blog is not about unbiased and totally called for allegations.
There I was yesterday, listening in as usual to Test Match Sofa, the alternative cricket commentary, that a thought crossed the beautifully skewed mind of Daniel, one of the commentators.
“Why the hell are there no hotspot cameras around?”
A very valid thought indeed, Dan.
Hell broke loose when someone suggested, and I agreed that it costs millions of dollars. Arguments arose from thin air – arguments ranging from “is that millions of rupees, or millions of rand”, to “this is pure bullshit. The most expensive of cameras cost not more than 50 thousand pounds.”
For the sake of argument, all of them were valid points. For the sake of truth, if anyone cared about the truth, they were as crap as their assumptions.
When the storm settled, everyone got to their resources, trying to find out how much exactly does a hotspot camera cost and if Cricket South Africa could indeed not afford it, what with all the money being secretly diverted to the Football World Cup Secret Fund?
Hour by hour, people were poring into the depths of the internet, hoping to get a clue.The clues did come eventually, but it wasn’t easy getting people to talk, as if this was some secret nuclear weapon plans we were talking about.
Channel 9 of Oz refused to divulge any details. The way they exactly did it made me wonder if they even had a clue about what they were talking about.
Sky didn’t respond for some reason, maybe they were too busy screwing up the coverage in South Africa
The first real piece of information came up in the fact that it wasn’t a camera, it was just an add-on for a camera. “Ah!” murmured Dan. “It can’t cost a million now, can it Paddlesweep?”
Being mocked on air felt strange in a way, but I had it coming. Cricket being a game with everything to do with numbers, most of them with a currency symbol preceding the number, there is little margin of error for getting them wrong. Unlike the margin of error a certain Mark Benson enjoys at this point in his career.
The entire process lasted about 3 hours when finally a breakthrough emerged. South Africa were losing wickets fast, and the happiness which that entailed was shrouded in the anticipation of what the cost of the hotspot would be. Interesting times. Suddenly, a guy from probably a camera company told Tom(the producer) saying that there are a lot of expensive thermal cameras around, the most expensive of which costs about 80,000 GB Pounds.
Not a million dollars from any point of view.
Several minutes passed. I had been proved wrong. We thought the suspense would last for a couple of more hours till we knew the exact figure. But voila, the next minute, we knew.
The actual cost of a camera with the hotspot add-on is about 20,000 GBP. Certainly not a million dollars on any planet where cricket balls are played with.
20 Grands.
So is the South African Cricket Board too thick to afford a hotspot camera? You decide.
This is the point where I tell you that I might be wrong. Neither me, nor do the test match sofa team take any responsibility for the correctness of this info. If you know better, do let me know…
PS: There is a donation drive on currently. All those interested to gift cricket south africa with a hotspot camera, send in your donations to the paypal id: ankit88@gmail.com. If we reach the required amount, we will courier a camera to Jo’berg. If not, I will courier the money to test match sofa.
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