Commentators

Staying with cricket, let's talk a little about commentators. In the days when watching cricket happening outside India on TV meant waking up early to see and hear Kapil Dev disturb Keppler Wessel's (he was playing for Australia then) stumps. White ball, color clothing, stump microphones, Nivea lip-guard and cameras at both ends of the stadium at a time when even BBC had a camera only at one end - That was Channel 9. Being too young to comprehend the finer details of commentary, a typical "In the air!.... and dropped!" (from this, i coined the term 'bowled in the air' and made it popular in my street) from Tony Greig was enough to excite our yound minds. Richie Benaud saying "Gavashkaar" added more respect to the already respected name.
When it comes to the present, watching cricket on TV can often be a drudgery interrupted by some spells of good cricket and insightful comments from good commentators, who are a breed getting lost in the numbers. Even Mandira Bedi's boob-show cannot stop this drudgery unless the action on the field and the box make it possible for us to live through all the anal-yses and ad-breaks.

Coming to my favorite commentators, Richie Benaud and Ian Chappel are the evergreen gods. If Benaud is economy of expression and brevity personified, Chappel is intelligent, informative and insightful. They don't bore us with a second-by-second description of the action on the field. Nor do they suffer from talking disease - I like Harsha Boghle as a commentator and as a columnist but he runs in verbose mode all the time. When Benaud says "Now, that...... ishh a shtraight droive!" [Sachin hitting Warne straight down the ground for 4 at Sharjah, 1998], he says it all. 6 words. Superb!
Ian Chappel was the ultimate when it came to going beyond the obvious in any cricketing situation. He would invariably start his sentence in such occassions with "Not only has the batsman succeeded in ........". He always found two outcomes for a given action. And praise, when it comes from Chappel (or Benaud, for that matter), is really very well deserved.
1998, India vs Australia at Chepauk - 2nd innings. I was watching the match in the M.A.C. Rahul Dravid was struggling against Warne and the pitch was doing all kinds of things. When Sachin came in, the match was poised on a needle. I was too tense to even cheer 'singam' properly. That phase of the match was unbelievably intriguing. Later, at home when i was watching the highlights, it was Chappel in the box during that period and he was spot-on in his assesment of the situation. It's a pity that he is not in the 'experts' panel in the World Cup and infact, i don't think he's even part of the commentary team.

For sheer entertainment value, none can be better than our Bill Lawry. "It's all happening here at the Gabba!", "Dear oh dear! Can you believe it??" - can't have enough of 'em. I wish to get a DVD of the Australia-South Africa '99 WC semi-final, just for Bill Lawry's commentary. Tony Grieg is dumb but provides good entertainment value. As Selvakumar writes in the comments of the previous post, "It is hard to forget the kind of intro he gives for every player. Be it a player from a Kenyan team or a Dutch team".

Apart from these behemoths, the 'box' has also benefited from the likes of Harsha, Michael Holding, Ravi Shastri, Boycott and Barry Richards (if you can excuse the annoying accent).

P.S: Have Srikkanth and Sivaramakrishnan been eliminated by a one-man terrorist squad - Amir Sohail?