Commentary

Watching the Champions League matches this week, I've realised that we in India get the worst telecast of all big sporting events. Ten Sports for champions league and the US Open, Neo for Cricket , Sony for the World Cups, and DD for the Olympics.

Hearing the TenSports commentary team of Joe Morrison(where the hell did they find him!!!??) and his co-commentator was painful. For some reason, they had decreased the volume of the crowd and increased those of the commentators. The result?? it sounded really artificial. The best part of these European games are the atmosphere and the crowd volume was so low that you couldn't even hear their various chants and boos and cackles, etc.
The United game was a thrilling affair, but these people made it sound really really boring. Even when a couple of goals were scored back to back there was hardly any reaction, and absolutely no trace of excitement or thrill in their voices. Contrast this to ESPNSTAR team of Andy Gray and Martin Tyler, who were literally on their feet and screaming, and you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The commentators are a much underrated commodity for any sporting broadcast. Most broadcasters feel that if the commentator has played the sport he is good enough. This is definitely not the case. The commentators should make you feel like you are part of the action and in the stadium and not as if you are miles away from the action, cocooned in your tiny little room. I don't mean that they must simply keep shouting all the time, but they must reflect the tempo of the game and if necessary attempt to change it.

A reason why cricket played in Australia looks so good is that they always have an excellent commentary team to backup the cricket. The entire package(forget the cricket) feels so professional that you don't even mind watching an Australia-Zimbabwe game .

Here in India we always seem to get second rung commentators like Laxman Sivaramkrishan, or Ranjit Fernando or Mandira Bedi or Novy Kapadia or Maninder Singh . Apart from ESPNSTAR all other channels have third rate teams.

Perhaps the people in charge of the sports should ensure that the host broadcasters provide a commentary team of a minimum ability when they give them the rights.