Cricket has always been a passion whether playing , listening , watching or
reading about it. Was recently listening to test match special
on the BBC being streamed on the internet .
It took me back many years when you could only get a glimpse of the
action on the field by listening to the commentators on the radio describing it in vivid
detail. The rest of the cricketing
action was completed by reading the report in “ THE HINDU’ next day .
The earliest I listened to a test match which I can
recollect is the 80s when you heard Anand Setalvad on the radio. His voice was pleasing and distinctly Indian
and ideally suited for a broadcast on All India Radio. But the charm of hearing
the British and the Australian broadcasters was different. Native English speakers could do immense justice to
the language and their use of niche words gave the match a new meaning. In fact even when DD started showing matches
, many of the cricket telecasts were incomplete , interrupted by news
broadcasts if you belong to non metro cities and this made me often resort to
radio broadcasts as the only way of keeping in touch with my favourite
game.
Some matches which I remember listening were actually test
matches played over 5 long days , India’s tour of Australia in 1980 (where you
had an injured Kapil Dev running in to
bowl at Melbourne with very little to play and India winning despite a very
good Australian batting order), India’s
tour of West Indies before the World cup ’83 ( even radio commentary was
deferred and broadcast at a time convenient for Indians and a lot of people
used to tune in to listen to it ), the Berbice one dayer which was the stepping
stone of belief for Kapil’s Devils . While it was listening to a young Tony
Cozier from the West Indies in the dead
of the night , Radio Australia early in
the morning or the BBC’s test match
special team in the late evening, they all made it a special treat though many of the
matches were not featuring India. It was
a great feeling to switch on the radio either in the early hours of the morning
or late in the night , sleeping , suddenly waking up when a wicket fell. The description of the field placings , the
stands , the weather all made the match
worth remembering for a long time to come and anything but dreary.
Today we keep in touch with cricket through cricinfo where
the commentary is typed in by people taking turns watching TV which still it
doesn’t give you a lucid account of what a radio commentator would give any
time. Perspectives , expert opinions are
all extra either before the match or after the event and the commentators on TV
are less verbose and restrained by the audience’s ability to see what is
happening on the field. Technology has changed so much that internet
and TV have contributed to the death of the radio but if you have listened to a
radio broadcast of a test match which ended in a tie you would probably fish
out your old radios from the old trunks and tune in to Radio Australia or a BBC
who make the test matches truly SPECIAL !!