This column is not about the IPL, or fat cat pay cheques, or sons of politicians heading cricket bodies, or India being walloped by the Black Caps in a home series. Once a cricket buff, I have switched off the sport in the last few years. A colleague reminded me that the five Test match series between India and Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy begins on November 22. So let us make this about celebrating, preserving and, most importantly, reigniting a flame of Indian and world cricket commentary on the radio.
In the age of gifs and 30-second reels, when was the last time you listened to cricket commentary on the radio? When was the last time you tuned into Akashvani (sitting in a car) to follow a match? Must have been decades!
Millennials and Gen Zs reading this column will be unfamiliar with the concept of turning on the radio to “listen” to a cricket match. It is not their fault. Those of us born in The Beatles or ABBA years looked away as “video killed the radio star”. Imagine the magic of radio commentary on the opening day at the Optus Stadium, Perth… “and here is Bumrah, right arm over the wicket, from the Langer Stand End, to Steve Smith. This one pitches outside the off stump, drifting away from the batsman. Smith shoulders arms.” November 2024.
1922. Australia. The first recorded broadcast of a cricket match was for an exhibition game celebrating Charles Bannerman, the man who scored the first century in Test cricket. The Bible of cricket, Wisden, confirms that there is no recorded evidence of that broadcast.
India, too, has a rich legacy of cricket commentary on radio. Ardeshir Furdorji Sohrabji “Bobby” Talyarkhan is often credited as the pioneer of cricket commentary on radio. His first stint as a commentator for All India Radio (AIR) dates back to 1934, during the Quadrangular tournament, in a match played in Mumbai between teams representing the Parsi and Muslim communities. Bobby Talyarkhan was Bobby Talyarkhan! He never shared the microphone with any other commentator. As Ramachandra Guha wrote in his book, A Corner of a Foreign Field, “His self-control was superhuman, for he would speak without interruptions (except for lunch and tea).”
In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, radio cricket commentary had some class acts — Berry Sarbadhikari, Pearson Surita, Dicky Rutnagur, Anant Setalvad, Kishore Bhimani, among others. Some of these gentlemen had more than a hint of a British accent, very pukka, straight out of The Long Room at Lord’s. Currently, commentators Sushil Doshi and Sanjay Banerjee in Hindi, and Sunil Gupta and Prakash Wakankar in English, are in a different league.
Done well, radio commentary can be just as engaging as 24 frames per second on television. It involves the listener, makes her use her imagination, and puts her in the middle of the pitch. As Orson Welles said, “Radio is the theatre of the mind”. That is why the BBC’s ‘Test Match Special’ and the ABC’s ‘Grandstand’ have dedicated channels and listenership, including their podcasts. The success of these programmes is primarily due to their uncompromising standards of quality. It is important to engage top-rung commentators who eventually develop a long-lasting relationship with the listener. John Arlott, Jim Maxwell, Alan McGilvray, Henry Blofeld, and Christopher Martin Jenkins went on to become a part of cricketing folklore.
Why is Indian cricket commentary on radio now covered in the dust of mediocrity? With the exception of four or five commentators, it is a droning litany of facts and figures, and nothing else. No colour, no context, no history, no banter. This is a lost opportunity. Consider this: In the first three months of 2022, AIR averaged two crore listeners per month. The number of podcast listeners in India is estimated to be 17 crore. Revenues of Spotify, and audiobooks produced by multiple companies, are growing exponentially. There is a huge potential for AIR to create good content and reach larger audiences by producing world-class cricket commentary.
Here are three suggestions:
(i) Dedicated channels for each language are the way forward. Having the Hindi and English commentators doing the commentary as a pair is the surest way to kill good radio commentary.
(ii) The selection procedure of commentators for AIR is an opaque process. To create a pool of top-notch commentators, it is essential to have an impartial and professional judging process.
(iii) From the AIR panel of commentators, it is essential to select those who have a thorough understanding of cricket, and the style/vocabulary, to engage the listener. There is little use slotting cricket commentators on the principle that “every person on the panel has to be given a chance”, irrespective of their rating by the Audience Research Unit of AIR. This is a lacuna which needs to be rectified immediately.
Perhaps the Minister of Railways, who is also the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, who is also the Minister of Information and Broadcasting (that deals with the subject of this column), will do all it takes to ensure that “someone still loves you, Radio ga ga”.
P.S. Harsha Bhogle, the voice of Indian cricket, who started his career as a freelance sports journalist and radio commentator told me, “All India Radio opened the door for me, but you could not be a full-time professional on AIR. I wanted to make it a profession. My biggest learning when I started doing BBC/ABC was that we could be as good.” It is time to appoint Harsha the captain of a new team whose task it should be to make Indian radio cricket commentary world-class.
The writer is MP and leader, All India Trinamool Congress Parliamentary Party (Rajya Sabha). Additional research: Ayashman Dey
Why is Indian cricket commentary on radio now covered in the dust of mediocrity? 
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