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Cricket commentary

I've been fortunate enough to watch most matches of the recent Indo-Pak cricket series and the quality of the commentary has been apalling. Commentators today not only resort to pathetic cliches to describe the proceedings but quite a few of them can't even construct an English sentence. People like Waqar Younis (no questioning his skill as a cricketer) need truckloads of help with simple English pronounciation. "Thats an excellent shot" becomes "Thats an aiixcellent shot" with excellent being repeated several times over. Rameez Raja and Arun Lal are better but still leave a lot to be desired. They specialise in stating the obvious and their commentary is spattered with oodles of cricketing cliches. "When Afridi hits it, it stays hit", "That went like a tracer buller to the boundary".

Whatever happened to the days of Harsha Bhogle and Geoff Boycott? Even Navjot Sidhu is better compared to these buffoons. You don't need keen cricketing acumen (it helps, though) to commentate. An ability to speak English well is good enough.

yup, Michael Holding is good. Did you see the mauling we handed to Pakistan yesterday? Ultimate revenge :D.

They should follow the established US pro sports style for commentary. There are 2 guys: a play by play guy who essentially
describes the action on the field, and a color guy, who provides the "color", ie. strengths and weaknesses of players, shot selection and all that.
The color guy is almost always an ex-player (I've never seen a non-player do it), but
the p-by-p could be a general guy who knows some of the sport, and is a good public speaker etc.
Thus a team of Harsha (p-by-p) and Gavaskar (color) should in theory work
better than Boycott and Gavaskar.
- saurabh

Oh I miss Harsha Bhogle and Boycott. Most of the times these commentators make even me think that they are spouting stupidity.

saurabh - agree with you. though i think harsh could provide colour probably as well if not better than the play by play you suggest.

getafix: :D

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