Opinion The joys of judgment

The Hindi news channels were as shrill in their appeals for Dravid’s dismissal from the team as Mitchell Starc was when he had Tendulkar LBW. On India TV,Yograj Singh (father of Yuvi) asked for him to be dropped along with Laxman and Sehwag. The channel did not name Tendulkar but let his recent scores speak for themselves — for now,the media at least,cannot dismiss him that quickly. Aaj Tak asked for Dhoni to resign. And all agreed with Zee News’ Hinglish conclusion: “Kya Team India ka The End?” The channel was unsparing in its exposure of Team India’s senior citizens: three small screens displayed how each of our top-five star batsmen were out in the first three tests at Melbourne,Sydney and Perth. It wasn’t a pretty sight and mean-spirited. Why are we crucifying them?

The Star Cricket commentators of Tom Moody,Ian Chappell and Wasim Akram played with as straight a bat as you can when a Test team is about to lose inside of three days: if someone scored a century for India,they said so and trailed off. Ravi

Shastri was less wise: he allowed his patriotism to stump his cricketing sense. When India’s second innings began at Perth with Sehwag’s and Gambhir’s combined score at 22,he spoke of India getting 350-400 runs to make a match of it. Besides him in the commentary box,Sourav Ganguly pooh-poohed the thought and remarked with almost English understatement,“that looks very difficult right now”.

Much better to watch Celebrity Cricket League (Filmy). This 20:20 format game for Bollywood,Tollywood,Mollywood,Kollywood etc,is the film equivalent of IPL. Sunday’s match saw the Bengal Tigers versus Karnataka Bulldozers; fascinating to see whether the latter would flatten the former or the wily Tigers would bulldoze the latter. The Karnataka team scored 253 from their 120 balls — rush them out as reinforcements for Team India,pronto.

Now here’s one for multi-culture vultures: Jerry Springer in Punjabi,aka Springer di Adalat (Spark TV,Punjabi). In this no-holds-barred talk show,the all-American,mostly white guests swore venomously at each other and sounded like what we imagine a tiger does when rolled over by a bulldozer. Tried to read their lips for the original English obscenities but why bother — it was much worse in Punjabi. Springer di Adalat da jawab nahin!

Back to sanity. Crime Patrol (Sony) is the best crime show on air. Perhaps because it is based on real events — our detective/police/suspense shows have flimsy plots a child could see through,and serious followers of ACP Pradyuman will be the first to confess that his CID team’s methods of detection are not just unorthodox but highly fanciful too.

Crime Patrol misleads but just enough to keep you interested in the chase. In Monday’s episode,a medical officer who had siphoned off crores by inflating the price of medicines to local hospitals,is caught out by an honest doctor and a vigilance officer. The plot has a twist which gives it that little edginess. The case is presented in linear fashion,the acting is subdued and there is no fancy camerawork or music to divert you from the story. An otherwise excellent effort is marred by the homily at the end of each episode,when host Anup Soni moralises on crime and its punishment. He shakes an angry and very self-righteous finger at corruption (what else these days?) Now here’s a thought: why doesn’t Team Anna start a TV serial starring Kiran Bedi as the cop,Prashant Bhushan as the lawyer,Arvind Kejriwal as the social activist in an episodic serial called Corrupt Patrol? Well,they did ask for ideas,didn’t they?

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com