Monday, January 22, 2007

If it's good enough for India, why not for Australia?

Cricinfo reports that Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, Indian the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister has threatened to legislate for all cricket matches involving India to be broadcast on the state run TV network.

This issue has arisen before. When I was visiting India two years ago a court ruled that the state network should telecast the tests with Pakistan, which is what happened, and at short notice. I was expecting a relatively low standard of presentation, but once I got used to the multilingual commentary team, which switched seamlessly(when a word or two of warning wouldn't have gone amiss) back and forth between English and, I assume, Hindi, it was OK. In fact it reminded me that the pictures, not the words, are paramount in televised cricket commentary.

Speaking of television commentators, I see that Ravi Shastri has offended some of his compatriots for admitting to liking biltong, a South African dried meat product. Perhaps this deserves a separate post.



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