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IPL 2011: The commentator’s curse

Commentators play a big role in the entertainment quotient of IPL.

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“…and the ball races to the boarding hoards… its raining boundaries at the Chinnaswamy Stadium…”
“…and the ball races to the boarding hoards… its raining boundaries at the Chinnaswamy Stadium…”

 

By Rajesh Ramaswamy

 

As the next Indian Premier League (IPL) and the World Cup looms large, this blogger looks forward to more entertainment from his favourite cricketers. Especially those who’re still batting in the Commentator’s Box and regaling us with edges, swipes, and the not-infrequent semantic heave-ho.

 

This is a series on the men who keep us glued to the screen wondering what the hell is going on.

 

The ‘Raja’ of unintended wit: Rameez

 

“…and the ball races to the boarding hoards… its raining boundaries at the Chinnaswamy Stadium…”

 

Boarding Hoards? What on earth are they? As I was listening to the ‘esteemed’ Rameez Raja, I couldn’t help but wonder how he and his remarkable ilk have enriched the repertoire of the language, and of cricketing knowledge.

 

It took me repeated verbalizations of ‘boarding hoards’ accompanied by visual cues of balls thudding into ‘hoarding boards’ to understand that Mr. Raja was paying homage to the honourable Rev. Spooner; he of the “Three cheers for our Queer old Dean” fame (he was referring to the Dear Old Queen, by the way!).

 

But our friend from across the border doesn’t just have a passing interest in Spoonerisms, he also seeks to perfect ways to keep the viewer in good humour, albeit unintentionally. Some of his gems include Hall-of-Famers like, “This over has been full of action. All this action is sponsored by [pause] our sponsors.” Err…umm…ahem…that WAS very informative, thank you.

 

While I could go on and on about his bloopers, they’re too well catalogued to repeat, even if they can crack you up at the thousandth re-reading.  Considering that the World Cup’s going to be on sub-continental soil, the mind boggles to think of a commentary team of Rameez, Athar Ali Khan, Ranjit Fernando and Sivaramakrishnan being let loose. On second thoughts, bring ’em on…for, most likely, they’ll provide enough grist to the blogger’s mill for another four years.

 

Like Rameez never said, “You can bring an old horse to the commentator’s cabin, but you can’t make him think (before he speaks)”

 

(Rajesh Ramaswamy is a former fast bowler who believes he could have been the answer to India’s long prayer for an ‘express’ paceman. He regularly clocked speeds hovering in the late 80’s and occasionally let fly deliveries that touched the 90’s. Unfortunately for him, the selectors were talking ‘mph’, while he was operating in the metric lane with ‘kmph’. But he moved on from that massive disappointment which resulted from what he termed a ‘miscommunication’, and became a communications professional. After a long innings in advertising as a Creative Director, he co-founded a brand consulting firm called Contrabrand. He lives in Chennai and drives down to work in Bangalore…an arrangement that he finds less time consuming and stressful than getting from one end of Bangalore to the other.)

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