Voice and wisdom

SO, AT the final whistle, India blew it vs Sri Lanka last Sunday! `Overday-and-night', trust India to snatch defeat from the paws of victory. That is what Sourav and his boys (refusing to be men sans Sachin) managed to do last week-end. So that today is just another day-match unless, day-before-yesterday, we turned the lunch tables on John Wright's New Zealand. Talk of the coach's problems having, ironically, begun against his own Kiwis and then having crystallised against the same New Zealand! The `Colombounce' at the Premadasa, it was just right, last Sunday evening, for our team to strike out for a 222-run win vs Sri Lanka. ``But India are always a few runs short when they are chasing!'' as Geoffrey Boycott so succinctly remarked once. The six that Suresh Perera pulled off to reach 28 (off the very next ball after Sameer Dighe - till then `keeping so well - had goofed stumping him) thus made the precise run-difference between triumph and tragedy. Outcome - the Coca- Colandscape is quite daunting as we run the gauntlet of Sri Lanka, yet again, this Saturday morning. How Sourav (belatedly 69 off 105 balls: one six and 7 fours) has lived and learnt about the kind of lethal leveller the game of cricket could be! That his vice-cap, Rahul, hit not a single four (leave alone a six) during his otherwise Herculean rearguardian 81-ball 49 (in last Sunday's see-saw vs Sri Lanka) says it all in the end-result.

Thus it literally is a toss-up who wins today (India or Sri Lanka) after the five-match buffeting that the Premadasa star- dust bowl has had. What the telephoto looks like this morning is something better imagined by Navjot Singh Sidhu than described by Ravi Shastri. The Premadasa, remember, is where Sanath Jayasuriya came up with that world record-targeting 340 in Sri Lanka's all- time total of 952 for 6 during the first Test in the opening week of August 1997. That prepared the ground, nicely, for Sri Lanka to turn Colombo into India's Waterloo. ``It's all happening here!'' Sidhu was sadly reduced to exclaiming, after having vainly ventured to play Tony Greig at his own commentary game. Sidhu sounds great when India is winning. But Sourav's India is not winning all the time. And there's the white-ball Rahul rub.

Restraint is of the `VVSnce' when just 17 runs come from 29 balls off even Laxman's blade (in an exemplary attempt, at long last, to discipline `Hyderbadi' batting). Was Laxman (as one who can't say bo to a goose) guilty of dissent as he stood his ground, for just a while, upon being ruled out, caught behind by Romesh Kaluwitharana off Dilhara Fernando? If Laxman at all invited good old Cammie Smith's attention here, he did so in a much less conspicuous fashion than he had done just before India's first innings folded up, during the Tuesday of March 13, 2001, for 171 (in response to Australia's 445). This upon Laxman's being declared caught (off the glove) by Matthew Hayden in the slips off Shane Warne for 59 in the milestone Eden Gardens Test. In that core Test of the three-match series vs Steve Waugh's Australia, as Laxman thus earned the elegant elevation to the no. 3 India position with which he is still seeking to come to international terms, VVS was vividly viewed to point to the Warne ball's having brushed his glove rather than his bat - even as the `elitist- panel' umpire, Peter Willey, put his finger up. Laxman invited no dressing- down that time `out', probably because the match referee, too, had written off India, 274 behind, in the turnabout Eden Test. Now, it is rewarding to see Laxman getting his head down even while keeping his chin up - as the Roundhead first, the Cavalier after. International cricket - Laxman looks anew to have realised - is all about taking Kangaroot, there, for 651 minutes through 452 balls for those 44 fours to flow in the Eden-landmark 281. That one-day international cricket, too, calls for a certain application Laxman learnt the hard way as he held firm for 60 off 102 balls (with just 5 fours) in a total of 127, when VVS's was the lone hand in India's going down to New Zealand (by 84 runs) during the Premadasa Friday of July 20, 2001.

As Sourav's India was thus `tossed out' of its very first encounter in the Triangular Series now heading for a showdown, Navjot Singh Sidhu came up with the deadly observation: ``Wickets are like wives, you never can tell which way they will turn out!'' That was a spot reminder of what Khushwant Singh would do each time I entered his editorial cabin. The girl already sitting in Khushwant's sanctum had necessarily to be pretty to have got there. Plus, if she was a comely Sikh, Khushwant would unfailingly introduce her as: ``Meet my niece!'' So I say to Navjot: ``Wickets are like nieces - you never can tell which way they will turn out!'' Sidhu, by now, is his own judge as to where he draws the firing line in the litmus-testing art of telecommentary. Sidhu might have looked to be bang on the ball as, upon Sourav's striking a sizzling four through the covers, he exulted: ``The Prince of Calcutta on fire!'' Ganguly was soon gone for 5, caught by Harris off Tuffey. Commentating foresight lies in revealing the insight to allow for the morrow. Jonathan Swift had a word of spot advice for telecasters the world over when he noted: ``As learned commentators view in Homer more than Homer knew.''

All this brings home, visually arrestingly, how there has been an ocean change in the lexicon of commentary by the U-turn of the century. It is all of 75 years since C.P. Scott came up with his famous point in the Manchester Guardian: ``Comment is free but facts are sacred.'' Facts are no longer all that sacred on a TV where the frenetic pace is set by Tony Greig. The height of hype is what the tall-talking Tony represents, so that he could string you along without your being even aware of it. Navjot, therefore, is best counselled to keep his mike at arm's length when in Tony Greig's intimidating company. Sidhu has stepped into the box-seat almost from the theatre of action in the middle. This places Navjyot in a unique position of vantage, I feel, as a commentator. It is for Sidhu, now, to turn this happening into his priceless telecasting asset. Having been the nation's opener till the other day, Sidhu has the kind of ringside view that no other Indian commentator enjoys today. As a movie song-buff, Vani Jairam's ``Bole re papihara'' is, I know, a Navjot pet. As ``Hyperbole re papihara'' never must it be hummed.

I myself have been through this seat-occupational hazard, so I instinctively know how tempting it could be for a fresher- commentator to superimpose a pre-prepared text on the playing scene. Such an approach to `live' commentary could become a dangerous fixation. ``We are all Adam's children!'' is a turn of phrase that should spring from the play. Repeated more than once, it loses its edge. Acknowledged that Sidhu's strength as a commentator lies in emotion and passion. Yet the alert commentator never commits himself to a set sentence in advance. In fact, the norm, for the practised commentator, is to wait for two-three seconds before making his pinpointed observation. There are ways and ways of ensuring that such a calculated-commentary pause remains a significant one on TV. See how Sunil Gavaskar delivers after a pregnant pause! By now, Sidhu and Gavaskar have jousted sufficiently often, on TV, for us to comprehend the nuances in their antithetic attitude to the mike job in hand. Navjot is not expected to be Sunil. Navjot must remain Navjot. And, within that ambit, devise a telly idiom ensuring that the commentator does not have to eat his words before lunch.Sidhu's command on the language is obvious. His gift of expression is what one would expect from the son of an Attorney General of Punjab. For all his polish here, Sidhu wears his heart on his sleeve - a sleeve of which his bat was but an extension. But even that six-happy Sidhu willow discerned, after the consecutive 1987 World Cup run of 73 vs Australia, 75 vs New Zealand, 51 vs Australia and 55 vs Zimbabwe, that it needed Mohinder Amarnath, at the other Test end, to guide it on stroke selection! Sidhu speedily learnt to adapt his `stroking' technique to the situation centrepitch. So should he now evolve a commentary vocabulary ringingly remote-controlled. If Ravi Shastri continues to be current TV coin, it is because he has, by now, brought a certain temperance to his tele-appearance. `Idiot Box-Office' it looked as Ravi Shastri and Trevor Quirk came up with that back-to-back gimmick, on TV, during a Test series, at home, between India and South Africa. Ravi has travelled a long way since - to evolve as `live' TV competition to Sunil Gavaskar. Moderation is not the essence of modern-day television commentary, I know. Otherwise, Tony Greig would not still be where he is. But Tony slips into a saddle all his own. Tony is what I would call the dangerous model. In fact, commentators as a tribe know that they have to be ultra-watchful when they are doing duty in Tony's provocative company. Seasoned commentators like Ian Chappell and Michael Holding have turned, into a fine art, the craft of neutralising Tony Greig. In a sense, Tony Greig has been even more tough for Sunil Gavaskar to take on than Geoffrey Boycott. Geoffrey might make his point pungently. But he still functions within the orbit of cricket.

In the case of Tony Greig, there is no knowing when he will drop a clanger. And that, as co-commentators well know, is what accounts for Tony's longevity in the box. Tony `caricatures' the game. That is his very special punchline. He is not to be emulated. He is baiting fellow commentators all the time. The thing to do is glibly to sidestep him - all the way down to the barbed wire. For that is the emotionally sensitive boundary-line of the game from where Tony, subtly and impishly, endeavours to take the commentator, seated by his side, for a joy-ride. This rollercoaster is best shunned on TV. Navjot Singh Sidhu projects a persona that is telegenic enough already. All that he has now to learn to do is to be `mikogenic', too, for the voice to blend bountifully with the vision in the world's most demanding medium - TV, unlovely TV.

RAJU BHARATAN

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