Axcellent Commentary!!!

I’m a die hard cricket fan. By die hard i mean i enjoy almost every aspect of the game. In the 90s and even till perhaps 2002, commentary (in English) was good and maintained some standard. Well, at least they had some command over the language. But, commentary faced its worst disaster when Mr Navjot Singh Siddhu came into the limelight.

His comments were sort of annoying and even stupid at times. The way he spoke was disgusting like a jackass(funny of course!!) but his twisted sense of humor evident in his “Siddhuisms” (a collection of silly phrases like “the ball swung like a banana“) made him world famous. Now something gives me the notion that the commentators these days drew inspiration from Siddhu which makes them sound awful. (Guess at least Siddhu ll be proud!!)

He should be, because whether it was Aamir Sohail exclaiming “there ees no doubt about it” (about what?? I’m sure even he doesn’t know) “Axcellent short” (read excellent short!!) and trying to put on an alien accent everytime he spoke, or Ramiz Raja calling every batsman (or bowler, even Umar Gul or Ashish Nehra for that matter…) who came to the crease “a clever operator” or “a cheeky customer” or some other weird commentator talking about Arun Lal’s toothache or Arun Lal himself trying to explain in the 16th match of the IPL.. “…in the 15 matches played so far, 10 have been won by teams chasing…another astonishing fact is that only 5 matches has been won by teams batting first!!!” (as if 15-5=10 is as he says…”astonishing”) or shouting “ Chris Gayle has smashed Agarkar’s two balls” …. they have all managed to eat our heads. No doubt about it indeed!