Comment on commentary

From Ravi Kumar Putcha, Singapore
I recently had a rather "interesting" exchange of emails with a senior member of an eminent sporting website. At the centre of the argument was a comment I had made about the editorial policy of the website, to which the respondent was churlish to start with, mildly mollified subsequently, and eventually righteously indignant, though in all fairness it must be said that he may have seen my responses also along the same lines - as happens with any exchange of conflicting views. But this article is not about my email exchange at all. Rather, it is an attempt to build upon a well-thought out Inbox contribution by Andre Nash wondering if the comments of Martin Crowe on Sehwag's captaincy credentials showed the commentator himself to be ill-suited to the commentating role. It is not exactly call it a call for reassessing whether certain commentators are fit to hold that job, but it is pretty close to that.

There has been increasing discussion on several forums on the web, not least of which is the ever active rec.sport.cricket discussion board about the quality of some of the cricket commentators we seem to get on TV nowadays. The views expressed by most contributors are along expected lines with some commentators coming in for flak for reasons as varied as bias bordering on jingoism/hero worship/unbridled and mindless one-way praise, lack of clarity, sheer monotony of voice and pitch etc etc. And, in a way, it brings to mind the experience of watching India play Pakistan in the 1996 World Cup quarters at Bangalore.

India had run up a challenging enough target, and it helped that the rules then resulted in Pakistan having one less over to get them in, due to slow over rates. But it was a decent batting wicket - not one of those 435 ones, mind you, but decent enough - and in Sohail and Anwar, Pakistan had an opening pair who were every bit as destructive as the more celebrated pairing of that world cup, Jayasuriya and Kalu. So, when the local boys, Srinath and Prasad, opened India's bowling, it did not take Sohail and Anwar too long to have us, 40000 local boys/girls/men/women/children, watch in mute disbelief as the ball began disappearing faster than hot cakes. The image of a white ball disappearing into the crowd against the backdrop of a Bangalore night sky stands out - as does the memory that the intense internal tussle between a cricket fan, who would like to applaud good shots for what they were, and an Indian team supporter, who couldn't bear to watch the mayhem, was clearly being won by the latter. We found voice when Anwar and Sohail fell, the latter after the rather memorable moment of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between batsman and bowler, and things went downhill for Pakistan from there.

The point is that as fans, we probably have the luxury of harbouring biases and supporting our team, though I suspect that as self-proclaimed lovers of the sport, we have a duty to enjoy good cricket for what it is. However, it is not a uniquely Indian phenomenon, because I have watched - or listened with an ear cocked to find out - how Australian crowds reacted to India's performances in the 1985 "mini World Cup" (aka Ravi Shastri's tournament), in a match in which Australia were 37/5 even before we had shaken the sleep out of our eyes while watching it live on TV. And to my relief, the response was about as enthusiastic as ours was while Anwar and Sohail were on a rampage. I suspect, therefore, that unless you are faced with such glittering talents of the sport like Warne, Tendulkar, Lara, or from an earlier era Kapil Dev, Botham, Hadlee, Imran Khan, Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, to name a few, it would take a lot to get out of your supporter mind set and get into fan mode. But this is neither about fans nor mindsets, but about commentators.

When we first caught cricket on TV, it was amazing to be able to listen to the likes of Benaud, Chappell, Harvey, even Tony Greig, talk about the game as it unfolded. Here were people who you only saw on grainy black-and-white newspaper photos, or on the occasional newsreel. Unlike the radio commentators we were accustomed to, these people did not need to give us a blow-by-blow account of the game as it happened - they realised we could see that. But what was special was their ability to make an observation which captured the essence of the moment without being anywhere near as verbose as this piece. Sample, for instance, Chappell's "that could mean the match" when John Reid dropped a rampaging Kapil Dev off a well-disguised, well thought out Hadlee slower one, at a moment when New Zealand needed Kapil's wicket in the semi finals of the aforementioned Shastri's tournament - Kapil did eventually win India that match.

Unfortunately, those days seem to belong to an older, almost genteel era, when commentators knew how to appreciate the sport and the action, and all of its trappings. For all that, few Indian fans - self included - had heard of Henry Blofeld till he came along in a Sharjah tournament and went gaga over, of all things, earrings!! Most Indians probably remember him fondly for that, and that alone. Today, however, commentators are increasingly becoming as one-sided as the fans themselves. I was shocked, for instance, to hear that one Kiwi commentator, and ex-cricketer, thought that the home team should "crush India to dust" after running up 614 runs in the second test. And then there is this other commentator, who sounds English, and whose unbridled enthusiasm for all things Australian must be nauseating even to Aussie supporters. It is nearly as bad as listening to a current-day motorsports commentator and his eyes-only-for-the-current-world-champion-and-proud-of-it tendencies. Another once-eminent commentator, who we all loved listening to, has today descended to the level where all of what he does is tinged with an anti-BCCI flavour, though I am not sure he is alone, or without followers in that pursuit.

In conclusion, I think we all like our commentators to be observers of the game - people who can give us a view that almost shames us into appreciating the sport for what it is, and emerging from our "fan" cocoons. Unfortunately though, in this age of intolerance, these people have also become too intolerant to teach us how to enjoy the game. How is it relevant to my opening comment? I suspect that, like my email buddy and me, they too are over reacting to issues surrounding the sport, than to the action itself.