First, I must confess I didn't pay that much attention to the IPL last year. As a result, I loved this series because I genuinely did not remember how the Mumbai Indians did in the tournament and needed to keep watching to find out what happened to them. We get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the team's inner workings and follow them match by match as they strive to get into the playoffs. The filmmakers were extraordinary lucky because the 2018 season was filled with twists and turns and proves to be a nail-biter until the very last episode. The second episode of the show is a masterclass in the art of creating TV for a binge watch, because when it ends, you will be screaming at whoever holds the remote to press "Play Next Episode" immediately. I already love the adrenaline of watching a close match in the IPL, but it turns out when you're showcasing these matches for a TV show, you can add tense music, amp up the stakes, have long pauses, and fade to black at exactly the most excruciating moment for maximum impact.
The edited cricket matches are fun to watch, of course, but only because of the fantastic background the documentary crew provide prior to each match. There are interviews with each of the players and some of their family members, carefully doled out over the course of the series so you only hear from them right when the team needs them to perform the most or they are facing a debilitating injury that could ruin their prospects for the rest of the season. And you get to hear from the coaches, who are ensuring individual players are fit, both physically and mentally, whilst also thinking about how to get them all to cohesively perform as a team. Head coach, Mahela Jayawardane, is constantly see-sawing between rallying the troops and telling them to go out and have fun, and then berating them after a crushing defeat and feeling increasing panicked. Captain Rohit Sharma is out to encourage him team whilst simultaneously dealing with his own poor batting performance. And physiotherapist Nitin Patel is my particular favorite, a go-between who has to have both the team and the players' interests at heart, which can mean telling someone not to play when they really want to, or gently nudging them to ignore the pain in their wrist because the team really needs them to open the batting order. It's a delicate tightrope to walk before every match, and as the team win and lose and the stakes keep getting higher, the mood keeps schizophrenically swinging from jubilation to despair and back again.
However, this series isn't just about the players and their coaches. We also get to see mother-son team owners, Nita and Akash Ambani in action. This is Akash's first year officially managing the team; he was previously sitting on the sidelines as an awestruck teenager, watching his mother rally the troops. Now he's making more decisions, and while it's clear that Nita is still the one who delivers the rousing (or crushing) speeches, you can watch the rich kid live out his childhood fantasies and enjoy some schadenfreude as he experiences some stresses in his otherwise privileged life (yes, I feel bad for judging, but come on, the episode where you go inside the Ambanis' home and view the ridiculous pleasure palace they've built for themselves in the heart of Mumbai makes it very hard to feel sorry for them). Of course, they are very media-savvy and you're not going to see anything in this series that they didn't sanction - in fact in one scene, Nita rather stridently tells Akash to stop talking because the cameras are on. Nonetheless, the filmmakers have done an excellent job of capturing the dynamics between the team and the owners and the sometimes tense relationship between people who just want to play cricket versus the people who hold the purse strings.
Finally, this is also a series about the fans, the people whose enthusiasm for the IPL is responsible for making it a lucrative global event in the first place. Every match features interviews with ordinary Indians providing their opinions on how the tournament is going, how the team's doing, who should be the opening batsmen, what the right number of runs would be on this wicket, etc. As the matches progress, every shot and wicket on the field is accompanied by a shot of a fan either cheering or crumpling up in horror. At one point, we see some men in a barbershop getting shaved while watching the match and they seem in great danger of getting nicked if the team loses another wicket. We also get more insights into the infrastructure built around this tournament with interviews with sports journalists who analyze every move the teams make, as well as listening to the the glorious DJ Rohini, a local radio DJ who offers up commentary about how each match went and calls out the hopes and dreams of the entire city across the airwaves.
You cannot watch Cricket Fever without being swept away in the love for this sport. There are so many different angles from which to appreciate its complexity - whether it's a conscientious nutritionist who is trying to force Ishan Kishan to go to bed at a reasonable hour, a translator trying to convince the team's sole Bangladeshi player to go out more, or Akash Ambani insisting on wearing red underwear because it's lucky for his team, there are so many different factors that affect the success of this team. By the time I finished, I wished I had twenty more episodes to watch, but I will definitely be re-watching Episode 2 to relive the excitement of its final frames. And then I will be cheering on the Mumbai Indians in the current 2019 season. This series is an excellent piece of propaganda, and I was completely bowled over.
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