Expected more

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Two cricket journalists - Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber - set out to see whether Test cricket has a future. In so doing they discover a conspiracy which starts at the highest echelons of cricket administration and politics. The conspiracy is borne out of self-interest and putting commercial interests ahead of the good of the game. This spells disaster for Test cricket.Well made documentary. Starts as a harmless examination of the future of test cricket and turns into a massive expose of the mismanagement of cricket by the ICC and BCCI. Some quite startling, and depressing, revelations.Fairly wide coverage of everyone concerned, from the top brass at the ICC, BCCI and ECB, to cricket journalists and broadcasters, to former players and current players. Having painted T20 and IPL as the threat to Test cricket, and international cricket in general, what was missing was interviews with players who are having to make a choice between playing for their country and playing for the money. We have an interview with Chris Gayle, but he is a cricket mercenary - he chose money over country in a heartbeat - so no soul-searching involved.The Ed Cowan angle was interesting - showing a journeyman cricketer making his way at the top flight. Not an established player, so not much room for him to have to choose money vs country, but still gives a perspective on why people play the game, and the trials, tribulations and triumphs of a cricket career. On a negative note, Collins and Kimber are no Woodward and Bernstein - they are cricket writers not investigative journalists, and it shows. Some of their investigations seem rather clumsy.Overall, a must-see for lovers of the world's greatest sport, Test cricket, and for anyone who cares about the future of cricket, in general.

Death of a Gentleman is a documentary by well-known cricket writers, Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins. They are quite popular writers for the followers of the ESPNCricinfo website and known for their video diaries as 'Chuck Fleetwood-Smiths'. The premise of the film is to point out the lack of governance and transparency in the ICC and the gross mismanagement which is threatening the health of the game loved by millions around the world. The film starts on a promising note, where the two narrators, look to track the rise of Ed Cowan into the Test team for Australia. It was an interesting note to start off on which promised a lot of interesting content to track the rise, fall and relevance of old school and gritty cricketers like him in today's context. It stays on that track for a while when contrasting his innings with David Warner's against India (Jan 2013). The autograph hunters seeking out Warner and ignoring Cowan is particularly poignant. But the film mysteriously changes track to focus suddenly on the fact India is losing the Test series and, therefore, assumes that no one in India cares about Test cricket. This jarring assumption then drives the whole film into a completely non-cricketing direction with Ed Cowan a forgotten sub-title, ironically a reflection of his Test career as well. Makes you wonder if the film would still have been made if India had won the series. The investigative part of the documentary, however, is impressive. The lengths to which the filmmakers have gone to help us understand the money-driven decision making at the helm of ICC is commendable. The IPL-bashing was expected and justified in the context of governance. But, is it a valid argument as a driver for the 'slow death' of Test cricket? And that is my only gripe with the film. The filmmakers present us with an unprecedented insight into the governance (or lack of) at the ICC, but what does that have to do with the 'death of Test cricket'? Their whole premise of no one in India cares about Test cricket seems half-baked. Would the film still be the same if it had been in March 2017 when India are at the top of the Test ranking, playing more Test cricket in a season than any other country? The governance issues and corruption at ICC is still making headlines. The money-grabbing, hard-nosed attitude of the BCCI still hurts the game where we almost lost India from international cricket for 8 years. The filmmakers have got a line-up of some impressive names to contribute to the film. Some extremely articulate (Gideon Haigh is brilliant) and some not. Ravi Shastri sounds like he is stuck in a dystopia where the whole world is an IPL commentary box. Arun Lal surprisingly makes a lot more sense when he is talking about cricket in the film than ever before as a commentator. Using Lalit Modi to justify the arguments for good governance reflects a sense of warped irony when we are talking about the ICC. Spoiler alert: The hidden camera conking out during the attempted sting at the ICC meeting lends an air of authenticity to the film. In summation, Death of a Gentleman is a fascinating journey for any cricket lover. The Fleetwood-Smiths are clearly cricket lovers who started off making a cricketing documentary but were dragged down into the dirty innards of the game that all of us keep wishing away. They ended up spending 90+ minutes on what is wrong with ICC but forgot all about Ed Cowan. Like all of us cricket fans!

Death of a Gentleman starts off as an observation of the health of Test cricket and segues into the murky world of its administration and administrators. Giles Clarke of the ECB comes across as an incompetent and arrogant man at best, N Srinivasan does slightly better than him but anyone following Indian cricket for long enough know about his shadow of murk. All this is sandwiched between a tenuous hook in the form of Ed Cowan who enters and exits international cricket. I felt the two different worlds, that of the cricket of the players and its fans and that of the political playground of the sport never quite gelled well enough (like in real life). While Cowan's story was an affecting one, it just feels too feeble because of the sinister machinations the films begins to follow on the side. Once Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber get into the investigative part of the film, there really is very little room for the emotional core. I also found the slight dramatisation of the nexus a bit weak and it is not too difficult to see why. The story of the boards need not be dramatised. It is very clearly a game of politics and manipulation at the administrative level. These are minor quibbles though. For someone who has known this game for most of my life, this came as a reminder of what is wrong with the sport. Clarke at one point hedges his bet on the sub-continent loving cricket in the future too. He, and administrators like him, are like ostriches with their head stuck in sand; except, they're also searching for gold at the same time. This film may have been made better had they planned for it, but I doubt it would have done any more than what it does now. This is film for every cricket fan to watch.

Expectations:Very high. Jarrod Kimber is one of the finest cricket journalists going around, everything he seems to write is a must read. It also deals with a subject I spend altogether too much time andenthusiasm on - cricket. While I had read about this movie when it was produced and released in the UK about a year ago, I would've liked to watch it earlier. But its only got an India release on a niche content platform TVF after a long time.If I were to sum up my experience with this documentary of sorts in one word, it'd be 'disappointment'. And I'm disappointed that I'm disappointed (if that makes any sense at all) because I really would have wanted to have come away richer for this experience or time invested, which did not happen. I'll try to outline the reasons here:Firstly, what's the target audience for this documentary? Is it the casual cricket fans who watches whatever is going on on the television? He (or she) who has a predilection for the T20's and IPLs over the real deal as Kimber and Collins would rather have it? If it is these folks then the movie probably serves its purpose - it's an educational one. However for the hardcore fan, for those of us who follow cricket off the screen as well, who read about the boardrooms and the dressing rooms - this is a recap exercise. It essentially sums up what's happened over a 3 year period listing out the usual problems and issues which have been debated to the moon and back - test cricket is dying, too much money in T20, generational shifts, corruption in the boards who govern world cricket...yada yada yada. This comes to us from the duo, from cricketers, from administrators and many many experts, broadcasters and others - the who's who of cricket coverage really. Unfortunately though, there's nothing new!Secondly, and this is related to the first point - what exactly was Kimber & Collins' role in here? Were they the one's responsible for the exposé as they call it? If that is the case, and it is thanks to them that we were able to read about the Big 3 takeover, the shamelessness of the likes of Srinivasan and Giles' - then it doesn't come out strongly enough. However it they're just part of the universe of cricket journalists who're deeply concerned about this and are choosing to highlight this - well (1) they're a bit late and (2) again, they don't tell us anything from behind the scenes that we don't know. Thirdly, the biggest issue I felt was that the movie was still to vague.I understand they started out with a vague idea of what to do - but, they needed a solid 'problem statement' as an MBA would call it. And I understand this would keep evolving, but here it also seemed liked it kept changing. And so we went from Ed Cowan's story (where we were led to assume he would be the pivot around which this story would revolve), about the joy's of test cricket, to the evolution of T20 and why it's more popular, to how revenue is distributed in cricket, to how cricket needs to expand and the importance of the Olympics, again back to boardroom politics in Dubai, to the Srinivasan-Modi war and then strangely back to Cowan. And some of it seems - excuse my presumptuousness or cynicism - pointless. I mean what were they hoping travelling to Dubai for a meeting shrouded in mystery from stakeholders who they'd already met before? I'm sure investigative journalism is based on hunches and arduous journey's like this where you often find out something just because you're in the right place at the right time, but there're bound to be more failures in that method than successes. What exactly was the point of the Cowan angle - especially his way out?It's not all disappointing though. The USP of this movie-documentary is the exclusive interviews with Giles Clarke and Srinivasan. Clarke comes off looking like a total tool, an absolute caricature of the rotten politician. Srinivasan starts of OK, but then gets more and more sillier with the kind of statements he make. Which is of course a function of what he's done as well. Haroon Lorgat, David Becker, Lalit Modi also give their bytes to this exercise which give it more credibility. Some of the vignettes and montages that they've put together are quite fabulous. And the editing, the cinematography and the feel of the movie is really professional and classy. But there're lots of misses as well. One day cricket is not mentioned. None of the other leagues mushrooming across the world, which by 2014 when this movie was being filmed were in existence - the Big Bash, the CPL, the Natwest Blast at the least are even referred to or their impact in adding money independently of India to their game. There is very little effort to get a wider view of what some of the players who've been positively influenced by these tournaments around the world is who may never be able to make it as an 'international' test player. And why, why in this time and age does this get a release in India, the biggest cricket market almost a year after it was released outside when it's eventual release isn't even mainstream? A lot of bridge has flown under the water since then, and for sure the relevance has been diluted.I really really like and respect Kimber for his works - he comes across an intelligent young man, with integrity and a genuine willingness to positively save the game. I just don't think Death of a Gentleman is going to do this beyond educating a mass audience out there. And if that's the aim, it needs better distribution - not slipping it in on a platform like TVF.