My High Fives! Oops! Low Fives!. Review on Five Worst Cricket Commentators

I know that the cricket season is yet to start off but then who can stop me from writing upon these delightfully wonderful cricket commentators? I can say for sure that if you want to have your share of fun even when India is losing every match, you should listen to the commentaries of these delightful gentlemen. A word of caution in advance: these choices are entirely my own and I reserve my copyright with regards to the things I have to say about them. I know that you all cricket buffs will have your own choices which will not match mine but then do we really need to match our choices? We can instead just keep on adding to the ever growing list of worst cricket commentators. Without any further delay, I hereby present my high fives: -

Krisnamachari Srikkanth

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Some months back, in my review on Fair and Lovely Fourth Umpire, I had described Srikkanth’s language skills as Mumbaiya tapori language with a South Indian accent. This particular line had made that review of mine an instant hit and I got rave comments about it. Later on, my friend and fellow member nikamma1112 added his own version of dhagadhag-dhagadhag in his review on Srikkanth. Nikamma1112 seems to have been highly impressed by Srikkanth’s connotations of Sehwag’s batting as going dhagadhag from one century to another, almost implying that Sehwag goes non-stop like the Rajdhani Express between Delhi and Mumbai. Ladies and gentlemen, I think I don’t need to say anything more given the way the two of us have dissected Srikkanth’s commentary.

The Sardar twins – Siddhu and Maninder

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Imagine yourself watching a match live simultaneously on ESPN and Doordarshan, with the commentators Siddhu and Maninder doing their commentary in English and Hindi respectively on both the channels. Picture a scene where Sehwag comes down the pitch and hits a Muralidharan delivery for a six. Now imagine how these two commentators will describe it:

Siddhu – And here comes Sehwag dancing down the track lifting his bat higher than the moon and coming straight at the ball and hitting it over the mid-on fielder. The ball is flying… flying… flying like the Ostrich and oh my god! It has crossed the boundary rope. Oh wait a minute! I can still see the ball high in the air, almost as big as the basketball of Koi Mil Gaya and it has finally hit one of the buring bulbs of the stadium floodlights. Mr. Sehwag! You will have to pay for this my dear friend!

Maninder – Aur yeh Sehwag tezi ke saath pitch ke beecho-beech aa gaye aur apne balle se gend ko utha diya hai aur yeh gend bahut unchi ja rahi hai aur mid-off, maaf kariyega, long-on, maar kariyega mid-on ke sir ke 1 mile upar se guzar kar boundary ki or ja rahi hai aur yeh chakka!

Do I need to say anything more? I would have loved to do a live show for you, but it is a pity that Mouthshut does not allow us to upload files to their server, else I would have uploaded my imitations of both of them for you all to hear.

Michael Holding

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Carrying on in Srikkanth style, this energetic speaker from the West Indies has a Mumbaiya tapori English with a Barbadian accent! Why do I call him an energetic speaker? Well it’s very simple. Your television screen will be showing the score as Australia 230/4 and still Mr. Michael Holding will tell us the score, almost as if we cannot read what’s written on the screen. At times he speaks unnecessarily. Cricketing connoisseurs would like to compare him with David Gower or Ian Botham, both of who do commentary with Holding for Sky Sports. The differences would then be obvious.

Ranjit Fernando

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Okay, this time I am not going to make any fun of his accented English. But then he looks like the sub-continental version of Michael Holding. His cricketing days were short-lived at the top level of Sri Lankan cricket, so maybe he is trying to make immense by gracing (oops! Ruining) the commentary box. In the days gone by, I have listened to him doing commentary with Ravi Shastri. Who scores? It’s anyone’s guess! He too goes on dhagadhag-dhagadhag whenever he starts speaking and the viewers are glad when Shastri interrupts, only to announce the score and go into a commercial break! These channelwallas make weird combinations, pitting the best and the worst commentators together, so that the viewers can’t even mute their TV set, in the hope of listening to some quality commentary from the experts!

I wrote this review to make two announcements. The first announcement is that I have decided to reserve my nonsensical sense of humour especially for my reviews on cricket and related topics. My reviews on Fair and Lovely Fourth Umpire and Bangladesh Cricket Team are examples of that.

The second announcement is that like lallupanju, I too want to become a star-writer :-)

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Gotcha!!! I’m just joking. I am happy not being a star writer. I am here to enjoy my time and I know how satisfying it is for me to write reviews and interact with members of Mouthshut, and for doing that, I don’t need the tag of a star writer!

I invite readers to add their own favourites to add to my list of worst commentators. See you in the comments page, cheers!