Cricket Commentary

Yesterday night I was watching India vs. South Africa match. Basically I was waiting for Laxman and Dhoni’s century. The commentators were full on with their analysis. On that time Laxman Shivaramakrishnan and Darrel Cullinun was in commentary box. Suddenly one small conversation caught my ear. It’s not word by word, but I am trying to quote them here.
Shiva: India is having so many support stuffs from South Africa. Gary Kirsten, Paddy Upton, Siemence.
Cullinun: Yeah. These two countries are in good relation for such a long time. Isn’t it? It’s around 150 years.
Shiva: No way, whoever are the support stuffs, its India who is playing good. It’s India who is at rank 1 and south Africa at no 2. Nobody cares support stuffs belong from which country
Cullinun: Hey am not saying that. I am saying relation between India and South Africa. Since Gandhi went there we are in good relation.
Shiva: Look, first test was all about your country. Now we are playing good. These guys are playing like champions.

Then Cullinun stopped talking on this topic. Shivaramakrisnan kept talking on the same line. Now can anybody relate Shiva’s comment regarding the statement Cullinun made? Is he dumb? Does he at all capable to sit in the commentary box?

Commentary in cricket is far far different than other sports. In a slow game like cricket where one can find plenty of time gaps between balls and over. So they need to utilize the time to speak something sensible and entertaining so that television viewers don’t lose interest in the game. Yes I am talking about television commentary only. Again it is different than commentary over radio. In TV everything is in front of you, the score, who is bowling from which end, how the shot is offered, how the players reacted. For radio, listeners look for every minute detail. If you ever listened to radio commentary you will find it is like “Dale Styne starting a new over from the pavilion end, bowling with 3 slips and one deep gulley…..he put the ball short….Dhoni goes for a pull…..but didn’t manage to connect it properly. Ball went to midwicket region, Kallis fielded the ball, and one run scored. India 556/6 after the first ball of 143rd over.”
Now days there are so many sports channels and so much cricket is being played, everybody started their commentary career. I feel in last 6-8 years the quality of commentary has deteriorated a lot. The guys who are good commentators are still doing good. But the new comers didn’t able to make any impact. Being a good player is not the condition to be a commentator. Look at Harsha Bhogle, without playing any sorts of cricket he is now an expert commentator.
Lets look into some great commentators. First name comes into my mind is Richie Benaud. His voice and style of talking is really soothing. There is no doubt about his game reading capability as well. That made him a copybook commentator. However still I think his genre is test match only. For ODI and T20 we need some exciting voice especially in death. Just like Tony Greig. I still remember his shout when Kanitkar hit Saqlin Mustaq for four to win the final against Pakistan in Bangabondhu stadium in Bangladesh chasing 314. Geofrey Boycott is another legend. How can I forget his exciting commentary in Taunton Cricket ground during 1999 world Cup. I like Ravi Shastri, Gavaskar, Holding, Harsha Bhogle and Wasim Akram’s commentary. Ramij Raja’s talking style is good but the problem is whenever Pakistan plays, he becomes partial. Whatever Pakistan does, appears good move for him. Same problem is there with Navojyot Sidhu with India. But When I see commentators like Laxman Shivaramakrishnan, Venkatesh Prasad, Sanjay Manjerekar, Ranjit Fernandez then surely I mute my Television set and enjoy the match. I can’t accept them as cricket commentator.

Phir mile sur mera tumhara

I remember when I was a kid; we did not have Television set in our house. Every Saturday and Sunday we used to go to my aunt’s house to watch movies in Doordarshan. On that time there wasn’t any cable channel available. After few years DD Metro came into picture, then one by one different cable channels came into market. In those days main attractions in TV were Ramayana, Mahabharata kind of serials. There was no commercial break in between movies. All the advertisements happened to be shown before start of the movies. Still people used to watch those commercials. In those days, each and every advertisement was great and touchy. “Hamara bajaj”, “Shan se bolo chal mere Luna”, “Gold Spot the zing thing!!”, “Mera Hamam” and many more. Along with these some non commercial advertisement were also getting broadcasted from State or Central Govt. The best among them was “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara” It was an audio visual which contained with a song in 14 different regional languages. Lyrics were pretty simple, a four liner message in different languages. It says about unity in diversity. The great singers and musicians of that era were involved in this 5:30 min long video. Along with them, famous people from bollywood, Sports, Literature field were also appeared in this. In this less than 6 minutes clip one could see the whole India our country, could feel our culture, and could learn our heritage. Yes the video was that rich. The message of brotherly hoods what they wanted to convey, was successfully conveyed.
This audio visual came in 1988-89. In 90’s many more other cable channels came into picture and we started to forget the old channels and old shows. But thanks to Internet and YouTube, this video again came into lime light along with some other old shows. This time the response was wider, it reached to more people, and it touched more hearts than the first time. With the increasing popularity of this video people started thinking on the line of business and decided to re make “Mile Sur Mile Tumhara”. The same production team started working for it and finally launched the new Video.
I started watching this video with mixed feelings. I was not sure if it’s going to worth or not. After the whole 18 min video I asked myself “What a crap is this?” It is no where near to the old one. In the new one, they are able to gather more famous musicians and film stars but they failed to create the essence. The secret of success in the old was there in its lyrics, but in the new they caped the lyrics their try to change the sur made the song worse.

If you see the casting of this video you can find every success people from bollywood appeared in this. The Khans, the Bacchans, Ranbir Kapoor, Shreya Ghosal, Shaan, Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik, Shankar Mahadeban, Juhi Chawla, Priyanka Chopra, Shilpa Shetty, oscar winner Rehman, Grammy winner Anushka Shankar …the list is long. But believe me Sharukh Khan with a same old and monotonous pose of stretching hand singing Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Deepika Padukan’s appearance with short dress, Shankar Ehsan Loy’s performance on dessert, Sonu Nigam playing with the melody of the song, Ameer Khan’s “kya bolti tu” remix, nothing could able to touch my heart. Shivamani playing with weird musical instruments can portrait his personal excellence but that wasn’t required here. Presence of the current bollywood glamour queens Aishwariya, Deepika, Priyanka, Shilpa was just for endorsing the song, nothing more than that. Here the people and performance in the song just had overridden the cause of the song. Everybody is there in the song, but I couldn’t see the Unity in diversity in it.
In the old one Amitabh, Jitendra and Mithun, the hit trio of that time appeared together but their singing with putting hands on each others shoulder was more touchy and meaningful than their stardom.
Still this song will be a hit because it will easily win the heart of fan clubs of each of the celebrity’s. This is nothing but a well planned fully commercial music video which is made to be popular and this doesn’t deal with any message or anything else. However the stage was all set to have something special which can unify us again. In the context of all the separatist issues like Maoism, telangana, Alfa, Ulfa, RSS, MNS, racism, terrorism, this song could represent our values, our ethics. It could show us the path of a better India, but it failed to do so. 10 years down the line this song will not be there as a single entity. Kisi ka sur kise se milte huye nahi dikhega.