AS Snow White as Walusha setting off that Usha Fan spot does DD, Dud DD, prime itself to be. How old-maidish DD is we are right now rediscovering as we go along with its set mode of commentary sounding as update as the dinosaur in full cry. Dinosaur Park ourselves in front of the set we still do only because we have no go. The tone now set by our 'Hindustaniat TV' needed no Ma Prem Rithambara to foretell - DD never did believe in playing its cards so close to its chest as to show a bit of Karen cleavage! Wage a war, incidentally, against this Mock Trendy Sony Brigade we do anew as the Feb-Mar 2003 World Cup approacheth. Standards once SonyMax lowered stay fatally TVIP-pulled down for espnstar. This Waugh Twin channel, wonder what it is going to do to be in RD remix tune with 'O mere Sony re Sony re Sony re' - come December and our tour of New Zealand.
The Chatshowy Charu Rubycon we have willy-nilly to re-cross once the World Cup arrives as the Greatest Wow On Earth. SonyMax it is then going to be afresh - providing the 'contrast' in 'remote' to the 'two-language policy in commentary' having been first implemented at Chepauk on the Tuesday of September 11, 1979. In the series opener between Sunil Gavaskar's India and Kim Hughes' Australia. The dodo-dead DD, therefore, is on home ground as it proceeds to Chennai Test us -- now in Hindi, now in English! Viewing it all, Chennai laidback, amazing is the rapport the Ayyangarrulous Kris struck with Sony Natter Ruby. This is the dot point about the each-ball scoring Sri - that he jells in any grouping. But the kind of Manjrekaramat Sanjay performed, to crashland in such elitist telly company, had viewers pondering how on the elitist panel of umpires, side by side, did this technician's technician remain equally well versed to speak.
Just rewind to the paparazzi poise with which Sanjay sidelined the 'newsy' Ravi on the Mini World Cup scene. How Ravi here 'dated' right in front of Amrita's eyes! Shastri urgently needs to rework his telecasting mould to be in sync with the Sony synergy. Or should Ravi remain the no-nonsense Ian Chappell style of commentator he still is? Always on the MRF ball in telling Steve and Sachin apart, impliedly dismissing the CCIcon comparison between the two as 'Kissa Dungarpurana'? To think that the Shastri Boy's Channel [V] Veejay-Mentor Ruby should have materialised as the cricketing debutante so lingeringly late in Ravi's life. 'Rubyahoo' the Bhatia Girl now only the younger commentating SET may. Seeing how Ravi is already into his 8th year as a satellite TV heavyweight.
As for the Saharampant Kapil Dev, he falls into a World Cup all by himself, scrupulously speaking only Wisden English. How many great cricketing points Kapil Dev makes - only to be undone by the Esperanto he employs to communicate with the world! What still endears Abs Fabs Kaps to viewers is that, even today, so wide-eyed he is when glad-eyeing - Garam Dharam style - one well-upholstered film heroine after another. Indeed Kapil Dev has found his Hinglish niche on the SonyMax screen where dames are so many 'domes'! Brazen as they come, these youthful sex symbols and our yesteryear cricketers look made to reach for each other.
In this context, it was all very well for Sourav to 'bare and dare' on Sky. It is on SonyMax his rugged masculinity will be on ODI test if Sourav ventures to come up with a football-win encore here. One encore we do not want to see is Sourav overdoing opposition baiting. As ruefully viewing Indians, diminished and diminished did we feel as Sourav came to be twice summoned by Umpire Steve Bucknor - once all the way from first slip - to be told where the Indian captain got off the high horse on which he had come riding to Sri Lanka. Sourav, as we know, is toying with the name of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi to head the Cricket Players Association he is in the process of fashioning. Let me, in this 'Forever Amber' light, commend to Sourav what the Junior Nawab of Pataudi wrote in 'Tiger's Tale'. Observed Tiger: "I have always made it a point never to betray emotion on the cricket field."
Our Tiger skipper's point here was that, if he himself joined the field-shouting fun, who was there left to control the players under him? Never again do we want to hear our captain challengingly telebellow - a second time - "How's that?" standing at first slip. In fact, we cannot stand our captain at first slip, no appealing telly sight is the awkwardly diving spectacle Sourav presents here.
The Bucknorm should be for Umpire Steve never again to need to give the 'Souraving' Ganguly a dressing down. Yet again do I note - for the Bengal Tiger to absorb -- Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi writing: "Cricket is a hard game, to be played hard by men using a hard ball. But it is only a game, not war."
Not all the warpaint the SonyMax babes brought to the game alters its basic Tiger character by which Sourav finds Mansur insisting in writing: "I want to win just as badly as anyone else - within the written laws of the game and the unwritten laws of sportsmanship." The sting is in the Tiger's tail as Mansur Ali Khan concludes: "Winning should not make anyone arrogant."
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