There would have been many nervous folks before the India Pakistan match, but few as worried as the person producing the Hindi feed where Amitabh Bachchan made his debut as a commentator. Giving the mike to a new commentator always feels a bit like handing the surgical tools to the hospital janitor, you never know what they will end up doing.
Amitabh started like any good opener should, circumspectly. But after a point he got a tad over enthused by the generous praise the other commentators showered on his cricket knowledge. Gems like “pehle overs main nayi ball thodi swing karti hai” did not add hugely to our understanding of the game. But honestly, as folks who regularly listen to Rameez Raja, we should have no cause for complaint.
There’s precedence
It reminds me of an Asia Cup tournament about ten years ago, where we decided to go for a proper Hindi feed for the first time. Pre-game shows, post-game analysis, even the graphics in Hindi. Also, we were clear about what our feed was meant to achieve. Anyone really into the game had the ‘purist’ English feed with all our pundits and a lot of graphics analysis. The Hindi feed was for all those who followed in game in terms of sixes, fours, wickets and the faces of the celebrities watching from the VVIP galleries. Basically, your typical IPL viewer years before the IPL started.
It made for interesting times as we had to move beyond the six or seven established English commentators to get new Hindi talent. Waqar Younus, Ayaz Memon, Vinod Kambli were all new to the game and even Wasim Akram was just one tour into his commentating career. The one trial that we had for them did not go promisingly. Most folks are not used to the producer talking in their ear and the players shied like frightened deer when spoken to by this disembodied voice in their head. And some of the language inadvertently used by Vinod in the trials would have made for interesting listening, years before the AIB roast.
Remember Shekhar Suman?
The man to host this all was Shekhar Suman, and while he was completely used to voices in his year, he had little idea of cricket commentary. And none whatsoever of the ‘hot ball.’ The ‘hot ball’ is the time when the actual delivery is bowled and the batsman plays or misses. That’s the only time that a commentator should be completely silent so you can focus on the action. Nothing is more disturbing than a voice droning away over a ‘hot ball.’ But getting a renowned television anchor to stop speaking at the right time was not the easiest of things.
It did not start promisingly. The first morning, I returned to the commentary booth from the broadcast truck to see one of our new commentators fast asleep under the table. One of the others told me that he had been married for a couple of years and his wife still did not know that he smoked or drank. So every time he came on tour, he would be completely plastered for the first couple of days. Not your best possible start, but we struggled on manfully. After a couple of sessions, things got better, and we actually started enjoying ourselves. It was fun and irreverent, and the “hot ball” was the only cricket convention we respected.
W and W
I particularly remember the India-Pakistan match. When India was batting , we decided to go with our best line up. It was spine tingling stuff, for the first time Wasim and Waqar together on commentary when Sachin and Sehwag battled Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Sami. The first two overs went brilliantly, and I was delighted when we pushed in our first graphic scorecard. It was in the Devanagari script and that was not the best time to realise that Wasim and Waqar might speak a similar language but both would never have read a Hindi script before. It was the toughest twenty minutes of commentary ever, and we were only saved because Wasim was an absolute genius at tracking the individual scores while speaking.
The pre-game show before the finals told you the difference between the two telecasts. The English telecast had a detailed analysis of where Jayasuriya made his runs and the lengths the Indians needed to bowl. We had a twenty minute discussion and a “Wanted” poster out for a black dog who had strayed in during the last India match and completely changed India’s luck.
India finally lost the finals, or as Vinod said on air, “hamari to lag gai.” And while the amount of angry mail was staggering, it was heartening to see how much people now appreciated the “vanilla” English broadcast. And the ratings did go up substantially for the dual telecast. It would be years before broadcasters went back to multi-language telecasts, but every time I see an Amitabh commentating on screen, I still think of “hot balls” and “lag gais”.
Before football and the IPL, Joy spoke to commentators for a living. He is a former executive producer at ESPN Star Sports.
Amitabh started like any good opener should, circumspectly. But after a point he got a tad over enthused by the generous praise the other commentators showered on his cricket knowledge. Gems like “pehle overs main nayi ball thodi swing karti hai” did not add hugely to our understanding of the game. But honestly, as folks who regularly listen to Rameez Raja, we should have no cause for complaint.
There’s precedence
It reminds me of an Asia Cup tournament about ten years ago, where we decided to go for a proper Hindi feed for the first time. Pre-game shows, post-game analysis, even the graphics in Hindi. Also, we were clear about what our feed was meant to achieve. Anyone really into the game had the ‘purist’ English feed with all our pundits and a lot of graphics analysis. The Hindi feed was for all those who followed in game in terms of sixes, fours, wickets and the faces of the celebrities watching from the VVIP galleries. Basically, your typical IPL viewer years before the IPL started.
It made for interesting times as we had to move beyond the six or seven established English commentators to get new Hindi talent. Waqar Younus, Ayaz Memon, Vinod Kambli were all new to the game and even Wasim Akram was just one tour into his commentating career. The one trial that we had for them did not go promisingly. Most folks are not used to the producer talking in their ear and the players shied like frightened deer when spoken to by this disembodied voice in their head. And some of the language inadvertently used by Vinod in the trials would have made for interesting listening, years before the AIB roast.
Remember Shekhar Suman?
The man to host this all was Shekhar Suman, and while he was completely used to voices in his year, he had little idea of cricket commentary. And none whatsoever of the ‘hot ball.’ The ‘hot ball’ is the time when the actual delivery is bowled and the batsman plays or misses. That’s the only time that a commentator should be completely silent so you can focus on the action. Nothing is more disturbing than a voice droning away over a ‘hot ball.’ But getting a renowned television anchor to stop speaking at the right time was not the easiest of things.
It did not start promisingly. The first morning, I returned to the commentary booth from the broadcast truck to see one of our new commentators fast asleep under the table. One of the others told me that he had been married for a couple of years and his wife still did not know that he smoked or drank. So every time he came on tour, he would be completely plastered for the first couple of days. Not your best possible start, but we struggled on manfully. After a couple of sessions, things got better, and we actually started enjoying ourselves. It was fun and irreverent, and the “hot ball” was the only cricket convention we respected.
W and W
I particularly remember the India-Pakistan match. When India was batting , we decided to go with our best line up. It was spine tingling stuff, for the first time Wasim and Waqar together on commentary when Sachin and Sehwag battled Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Sami. The first two overs went brilliantly, and I was delighted when we pushed in our first graphic scorecard. It was in the Devanagari script and that was not the best time to realise that Wasim and Waqar might speak a similar language but both would never have read a Hindi script before. It was the toughest twenty minutes of commentary ever, and we were only saved because Wasim was an absolute genius at tracking the individual scores while speaking.
The pre-game show before the finals told you the difference between the two telecasts. The English telecast had a detailed analysis of where Jayasuriya made his runs and the lengths the Indians needed to bowl. We had a twenty minute discussion and a “Wanted” poster out for a black dog who had strayed in during the last India match and completely changed India’s luck.
India finally lost the finals, or as Vinod said on air, “hamari to lag gai.” And while the amount of angry mail was staggering, it was heartening to see how much people now appreciated the “vanilla” English broadcast. And the ratings did go up substantially for the dual telecast. It would be years before broadcasters went back to multi-language telecasts, but every time I see an Amitabh commentating on screen, I still think of “hot balls” and “lag gais”.
Before football and the IPL, Joy spoke to commentators for a living. He is a former executive producer at ESPN Star Sports.
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