Cricket, Commentary, and Cliches

Perhaps, with advancing age, I'm becoming less and less tolerant. These days, everytime I watch a cricket match on the idiot box, I find myself gnashing my teeth at the 'commentary'. Commentary, my eye. It's an unending stream of cliches, delivered with monotonous, clockwork regularity by the so-called experts. A few, one can put up with. They can even serve to spice the discussion. It's when they replace the discussion that the whole mish-mash becomes intolerable. Barring a few honourable exceptions, most of these 'commentators' could be replaced with a tape-recorder.Who would know the difference ? 'The pitch looks like it may do something early on', 'Concentrate on line and length', 'He needs to play himself in for a few overs', 'Running between the wickets is the key', 'Catches win matches'...I could go on and on but I need to go and puke.
These statements may all be true but every toddler in the country knows them by heart by now.That's not what you are being paid a packet for, guys. Could we have some insight, some analysis of the state of the game, the play, the players, please ? Yes, as I mentioned earlier, there are a few exceptions, a few who stand out in this morass of mediocrity. First, Richie Benaud - he defines, for me, what television cricket commentary is, or should be, all about. Sharp, witty, analytical and to the point. Geoffrey Boycott (barring his soft corner for Saurav Ganguly) - unafraid to call a spade a spade. A typical Yorkshireman with no patience for niceties and diplomatese. Michael Holding - once one get's used to his West Indian accent, his grasp of the finer points of the game, his strength-weakness analysis of the players and his in-depth knowledge of the art and science of fast bowling is impressive. Ian Chappel - a no-holds-barred Aussie who tells it the way he sees it. A shrewd cricketing brain combined with a very Australian in-your-face attitude, no respecter of reputations. Sunil Gavaskar makes it to this list - just ! He has everything going for him - knowledge, vast experience, clarity of thought & the ability to express himself well. He suffers from two major handicaps, however. One, he never forgets that he is Sunil Gavaskar and, consciously or unconsciously, this egotism seems to permeate and colour his obiter dicta. Secondly, he has a huge blind spot where Sachin Tendulkar is concerned, a fault he shares with over 90 % of Indian cricket-lovers . While this may be acceptable in an ordinary spectator, a commentator must be able to put his personal prejudices aside. Barry Richards - I've only heard him a few times but, on those occasions, his commentary seemed as classy as his batting used to be.
Those were the Oscars. Now for the rozzies. And the winner is ( no prizes for guessing correctly, I'm afraid.) - Ravi Shastri. The unquestioned, unchallenged king of cliches. What ails the man ? He was a fairly good player ( despite the golden Audi, I refuse to rate him any higher), he understands the game well, a fact which manages to sneak through his volley of cliches sometimes, he's good-looking with a personality to match, and fluent in English with the sort of rapid-fire, error-a-minute convent-educated fluency that passes for good English in India. Yet all he can produce is cliche-laden verbal garbage masquerading as expert analysis. Could someone take him aside and tell him that verbosity is no substitute for intellectual rigour? While you're at it, please, please tell him that the correct phrase is 'Rest assured' and not 'Be rest assured' ? In fact, ask him to give that phrase a rest altogether. In each fifteen minute stint of commentary he must be using it at least ten times, if not more. Skip it, Ravi, please. Now for a few others. Arun Lal - a more colourless commentator I've yet to see. A man who has nothing new to say and says it ad nauseum.
An unctuous, oily man who has no business being where he is, who spends his time with the microphone toadying up to Pawar ("Yes Sir, Yes Sir, You're absolutely right, Sir ", So nice of you to be here, Sir",We're deeply grateful to you, Sir"...) and to his white fellow comentators. L.Sivaramakrishnan - listen to him and you get the impression that's he's speaking in BLOCK CAPITALS all the time. Lighten up ,Siva. The Lankans - to a man the Sri Lankan commentators are biased, apart from being cliched, of course. The same can be said of the Pakistanis, barring Imran Khan. Rameez Raja has his moments. The others can be safely ignored.
Finally, I would like to clarify that all the above applies and refers only to ex-cricketers who have now turned to commentating and not to professional commentators (e.g. Harsh Bhogle) who are a breed on the road to extinction anyway.