Cricket is turning sideways: how the dominance of phones will make us all into ‘swivel-eyed loons’ | Adrian Chiles

The whole world is warping to fit the screens of our mobile phones. I'm bracing myself for a wave of dramas set on ladders and staircases

The phone is king. We are its subjects. Phone screens are vertical, set up for portrait mode, and our world must change to fit that frame. Cricket, of all things, is leading the way. The World Cup is presently being televised longways, so to speak, so you can watch it on your phone like you might watch TikTok. This offering comes to us courtesy of the streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar. Zeebiz.com says this feature facilitates a one-handed viewing experience, aligning with the way most users consume content". Makes it sound a tad smutty if you ask me.

To be fair, cricket does lend itself to portrait mode because the action is generally shown from behind the stumps, so the wicket fits the up-down format. It is the same with tennis. Lucky for cricket, lucky for tennis. But whither football, which is televised side on? Radical change is necessary. To optimise phone viewing in portrait mode, we must move the goals from the short sides of the pitch to the long sides, and televise it from one of the short ends. The new playing area will be very short and very wide. The corner kicks will have to be more like goal kicks and keepers will be well within shooting range of the other goal. Chaos. But football must change or die.

Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist