Commentary and IPLnama!

Those were the days when the whole of India was excited about cricket and why not? India had just won the World Cup and had created a whole generation of cricket followers like me who would do anything to watch Indian stars play. Kapil, Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Madanlal and Binny were our stars. My idol then was Roger Binny, who despite being a star of India's '83 World Cup win, was a perpetual under-performer. But as a Karnataka cricketer, he always used to be a source of pride for us.

But the most striking feature of India's cricket following in those days was the live telecast of matches on national television at the cost of every other program on Doordarshan (not that there were too many good programmes produced by Doordarshan in those days). Cricket legends (mostly discarded) of yester-years like ML Jaisimha, Dilip Doshi, Venkataraghavan and Farooq Engineer used to drawl along on inconsequential happenings (mostly irrelevant to the match) in the guise of expert comments on Doordarshan cricket telecast. Ferven De Vetre, Anupam Gulati and Dr. Narottam Puri were equally adept at boring the listeners to ennui if not death. Lot of these first generation commentators didn't exactly understand the difference between a radio running commentary and television commentary. Television commentary in those days was nothing more than the verbalization of what everyone could see on the screen.

All that changed with the advent of Satellite television and Star sports. A host of intelligent and articulate former cricketers donned the cap of commentators. Harsha Bhogle, Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri happened to Indian commentary at the same time as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly happened to Indian cricket. Commentary became more anlytical and insightful in nature, what with the most successful cricketers of Indian cricket growth sharing their experiences and compelling thoughts on players, match conditions, opposition teams and the general direction of cricket. These commentators in a way contributed to the overall popularity of cricket in India.

Pan to Circa 2010 - IPL3 Tamasha: Commentary today has turned into a perfect art of advertising. Commentators today are more than willing to adlib and babble the well-rehearsed ad phrases tutored by their paymasters. Gone are the days when even talking accidentally about a brand used to be considered unethical. It is a tragedy today that even the great Sunil Gavaskar doesn't mind churning out the names of the big brands at the drop of a hat...or is it the drop of a ball. Sample these:

Citi Moment of success: Every wicket is invariably followed by this phrase

Karbon Kamal Catch: There are as many catches taken as they are dropped in every match. Karbonn has those many opportunities to get commentators to spell out the brandname. This is repeated even when the ball harmlessly flies from the bat.

DLF Maximum: Every six and every missed six invokes this from commentators.

MRF Blimp: We all know that MRF is the leading tyre manufacturer in India and it runs a pace foundation that has been producing eccentrics like Sreesanth for the last 20 years. But why is MRF floating in the air in a bloated balloon when its products are designed for the ground.

Maxx Mobile strategic TimeOut - Maxx has an opportunity to be projected on the giant screen for at least 5 minutes in every match apart from the innumerable number of references to this timeout by the commentators in the guise of advising the already overburdened contingent of team coaches on the future strategy.

Ad-between-balls: Ads in between balls within an over to maximise profits for advertisers and IPL. Commentators again are more than willing to talk about the brand this nuisance represents during the match.

IPL painting: Even a painting created by a non-descript Bengali on the IPL cricket makes its appearance twice during every match and there is a prompt commentary support by our eminent panel.

Modi the He-Man: If this was not enough, the biggest brand endorsement of them all -- Lalit Modi gets mandatory coverage by the god-knows-how-many cameras positioned all around the ground and commentators make it a point to tell us who he is.

The deterioration is so complete that the hapless viewers are fed this commercial propaganda without their knowledge. Isn't this worse than subliminal advertising?

Jai IPL!