Shortly after Chennai Super Kings beat Rajasthan Royals at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Sunday evening to keep their play-off hopes alive, a 20-second reel was posted on ‘Zero Level Creativity’, an Instagram handle. In that video, Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s Virat Kohli could be seen talking to someone on the phone, with the background dialogue, ‘enna da nadakuthu anga? Oruthanum phone eduka matreenga.. Ulla vanthavana mudichingala, ilaya? (What is happening there? No one is picking calls... did you guys finish off the guy who came in?)’ from the teaser of the latest Rajinikanth-starrer Coolie. The dialogue runs with clippings of Rajasthan batters getting out of the game, followed by a momentary silence.
Then comes the voice of Rajinikanth, saying, “Mudichudlama? (Finish once and for all?),” with the visual of CSK captain Ruturaj Gaikwad standing at the crease. It all happens in the first five seconds of the reel. For the remaining part, it is just clippings of Chennai batters hitting fours and sixes and the points table where Chennai went back to third place with Anirudh Ravichander’s mass number from Coolie teaser running in the background.
If you are yet to understand the context of the reel, Dhasvanth R, the person behind the edit explains, “I actually had something else in mind if MS Dhoni came to bat. But he didn’t. At that time I was listening to that Coolie song and got this idea. Chennai losing to Rajasthan would have been in favour of RCB, but that was not to be. So I thought about how Kohli would ask, and edited it.”
In about 20 hours of posting it, the IG reel has 72.5K views, 7.9K likes, and 813 shares. It is one among thousands of fan-edited concept videos made after almost every IPL game. Like meme pages, fan-edited sporting videos are a machinery in itself. So much so that, if you want to know whether a cricketer has captured the streets, all you have to do is go to YouTube and check for edits. If there are videos of their batting/bowling with mass songs/bgms or narration of a movie storyline that suits their career arc, they have arrived.
The fascinating aspect about it is how quickly the creators come up with ideas, pop culture references and put their content out. Most of the short clips have to be put out an hour or so after the match while they take time to create long conceptualised edits. For Dhasvanth, a 19-year-old engineering student from Namakkal, it has completely changed the way he consumes movies and songs. “When you listen or watch a scene or song, I look at it in a cricket-oriented way and see how I can sync it. If I listen to a line in a song I will think about who it will suit. That is how I listen to songs. Same for the scenes too. How a particular scene would sync with a certain cricketer... that is how I ideate,” he says.
Dhasvanth, who learnt video editing during the pandemic, got inspired by another content creator Manoj Kumar K, and has been putting out his cricket edits for over a year now. Manoj runs a page and YT channel called Manoj Maddy Edits. He is known for his cricket edits over the years. An IT professional from Chennai, he has been creating such edits since 2015-16. Manoj was creating memes when he was in college. That is when he tried his hand at video editing. He too admits that even while watching movies or listening to songs in the car, he would get an idea and jot it down. “It changes the way you look at movies. You look at it as an editor. That is how we do it now. You watch everything minutely and take note of it,” he says.
While the majority of the content is dominated by the three biggest stars of Indian cricket — MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma — edits for other players too have their space. The next on the list is RR captain Sanju Samson. “Apart from the big three, any video on Samson gets a good response. And Ruturaj after becoming captain, has good reach. It is all about timing. The edits on (Punjab Kings’) Ashutosh Sharma, Shashank Singh after their individual performances in a match, Australia’s Glenn Maxwell after his double century in the World Cup, they do well,” says Manoj.
The other factor that determines the reach of an edit is the type of music/dialogue used. With both Dhasvanth and Manoj getting into it because of the Tamil songs and lyrics, they cater to an audience who expect the same. Most of their edits are based on Tamil songs, background scores, or a character arc of a protagonist in a movie. One of Manoj’s biggest hits is where he used a clip of director Lokesh Kanagaraj explaining the plot of the Kamal Haasan-starrer Vikram with a return of an old lion to the jungle after being tamed in a circus for years. Manoj had used the audio to narrate the career graph of Kohli when he made a comeback in late 2022 after going through a prolonged lull phase. Such was the reach of the video that Kanagaraj spoke about it while coming as a guest during the Tamil broadcast of the 2022 T20 World Cup.
However, the language acts as a barrier too with a significant chunk of the audience in other parts of the country not understanding the context. “When I post videos, a lot of people message me ‘Please make the video in Hindi’. Like I made a Suresh Raina edit with a song from Leo, they asked me to do the same. And reach is better if you do it in Hindi. But I don’t know the language. Lyrics are everything. When the lyric matches with an athlete, you get goosebumps. Even when I edit, when you know it works, the feeling is something,” says Dhasvanth. “One of my edits where I used an Ilaiyaraaja directing how to play a violin note of Mella Mella song (an 80s Tamil song) to sync with Dhoni hitting yorkers was a massive hit. I saw it on at least 35 other pages.”
Manoj often tries to use pan-India movies like KGF, Salaar, and Pushpa for better reach. The edit he made after CSK won the title with KGF music and storyline hit 1 million views in a day. But it was taken down soon because of copyright issues. That is perhaps the biggest issue for most editors. With the digital and broadcasting rights for the cricket matches sold for thousands of crores, others cannot use the footage on any medium. And multiple strikes would lead to the page going down as it has happened with both Dhasvanth and Manoj. Which is why many creators take down the video from Instagram themselves in less than two days after posting.
“We should not use copyrighted content. I lost three pages which added up to five lakh followers. This is my fourth page so I do not take any risk. Automatically it gets detected and you get a warning. You are not getting any profit from it. It is just to showcase your editing skills. In cricket, this is a big issue as they have bought the rights. Football also a little bit, but other sports like basketball not so much,” says Manoj.
While he has not gotten any direct monetary benefits from the edits, the consistent content Manoj put out led to other opportunities in the Tamil film industry. He was a promo editor for Captain Miller, Thunivu, and Leo. Dhasvanth, meanwhile, still looks at editing as a hobby. “I don’t do it expecting any reward. When you get an idea, you do not want to waste it. When I get an idea about a song, it keeps running in my head until I do the edit. Whether it gets reach or not, I want to do it and put it out. It is a way of expressing my creativity. I am still a student. I am not thinking too much about making it a profession. In future if something comes my way, I might take it,” Dhasvanth says.
Even official handles of the franchises are in on the trend. During Punjab’s game against Chennai, their official X (formerly Twitter) page took to describing the entire match via Tamil movie memes. Chennai themselves have indulged in story-telling via memes and other forms (go through their Insta page).
When it first emerged, fan-edits were firmly linked to the IPL. Now, it’s around the year. After the IPL finishes, Dhasvanth, Manoj, and scores like them will switch their attention to the upcoming World Cup.