Oh My Word!

There is way too much cricket happening these days. And obviously there are way too many people talking about it. Commentary has become a long forgotten art, simply because of the fact that the wrong people are talking. People who could still be playing are talking and people who should be talking are playing. Sigh.

But one of the worst commentators of recent times has to be Wasim Akram. He wins with an overwhelming majority. Yes, even Ranjit Fernando doesn’t stand a chance. Wasim Akram stands apart in the over-crowded group of mediocre yappers.

What makes Wasim bhai unique in this is the fact he remains, to this day, the greatest bowler ever to have adorned the game of cricket. He wove magic with the ball, make no mistakes. My memory of Wasim is that of him, screaming down the pitch at a dropped catch, screaming down the pitch after cleaning up the batsman, screaming down the pitch after the batsman gets beaten off a peach of a delivery. But, alas, this was to change. And how!

The first instance where my image of a screaming Wasim was to change was with the Shaz and Waz show. Here was the greatest bowler discussing girls in the crowd. And trying to flirt with them. Overkill, Wasim bhai.

Mention must be made of his prowess with the words. His vocabulary would make a third grader go “Mom, I can be a commentator too!!”. He gives you numbers – “This is the third over for XXX. He has seven overs left. The score is 125 for 2. The man on your screen is yyyy. He is great batsman. One of greatest. My favourite. He plays awesome straight drive. Required rate is 3.45. Current rate is 2.34.” And then some commentator will save us from further misery by cutting in. Notice the complete absence of articles. Fair enough, he was playing cricket from the age of 5, so he missed all the classes.

But these days its not just Wasim bhai. The whole standard of commentary is going down a lot. There’s Arun Lal ( he says “I have never seen anything quite like this” in every match), there’s Laxman Sivaramakrishnan (would jump out of his chair with excitement everytime someone hits a boundary), there’s Navjot Singh Sidhu ( I won’t say anything here ). And then of course, there’s the legendary Ranjit Fernando ( this crikat is being played on a good wikaat ). Goeffrey boycott, please come back!

Commentary as an art should be minimal. Words should serve a purpose. They should create an image. Richie benaud managed that. No one to my memory has been able to quite do that these days. My experiences are obviously only restricted to TV and i haven’t really touched upon radio commentators because i simply don’t know. But still i feel there is a huge scope for improvement among the present lot.

And finally i’ll leave you with an amazing piece of commentary by Wasim bhai in today’s CB final. Have a good laugh.

Rohit Sharma plays an expansive drive and gets beaten. Wasim goes – “Now, Sachin should use his experience. He should go to rohit and say “ok guy (sic), you played well so far. Now don’t play anything. Just make runs.”

Long live wasim bhai!