Bachao, Bachao... Help or these drones will get me!

GROUND ZERO

PRAY, WHO IS GETTING THE CARBON CREDITS?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...Bore sorry Boria Majumdar andSherry 'slam dunk' Sidhu, what an odd couple on telly? Don't theydrone on and on? In India's talking head studios, this duo is firstamong equals as it really grates on your nerves. The IPL eco systemhas also jump startedanother cottage industry, that of commentators and experts who bandytheir knowledge base and poleaxe you between your eyes with theiruber gyan. Navjot Singh Sidhu and Boria Majumdar are two such cottageindustrialists who need to be booked for noise pollution. Wonderwhether Times Now is getting any carbon credits out of thesepollutants? Opinionated, egotistical, loud and talking down to viewersthe Motormouth from Patiala and Bore from Bengal might succeed indoing what no one including my parents have not managed to do forclose to 40 years, wean me away from my obsession with cricket. Fromthe time I set my eyes on the game, I have always been a cricketjunkie, one out of a vast army of savants in this diverse land. Butafter watching the two verbalising and filibustering Bards, I feelchallenged. How can they be allowed to blah and blah and blah ontelly?
On Thursday their antics got nauseating and completely out of controlas they tried desperately to shout each other down. The airwavesalready congested must have been choked with the din that the ruckuscreated. Sample this Sidhuism - I prefer one person jumping sevenfeet, instead of seven people jumping one foot each, referring to theinclusion of Tendulkar in the T 20 World Cup squad. Wah, kya baat hai,but what does he mean, I asked myself. Neither he nor Bore Ya shut updespite numerous interjections by the hapless Times Now anchor wholooked flustered at this unbecoming conduct from his guests. Finallyhe pleaded with both, shouting time out, time out, but to no avail.The producer at this point went in for a commercial break so that theodd couple cooled off. Emotion is one thing, but this was emotionalatyachar. The anchor was practically saying bachao, bachao... mujhe indono se bachao, but his cries for help went unheard. That is when oneanother Sidhuism was unleashed - it is an ill omen to see a fox lick alamb... eh, what does that mean? Boy, did the temperature climb inthere even as the intellectual depth plumb new lows? Robustintellectual debate is one thing, a shouting match is quite another.This was worse than the Yadavs in Parliament.
If there were two unwanted talking heads on telly, then it isdefinitely these two.You can argue that if I don't like them, why don't I switch channels?After all the power is vested in me due to remotis proximus (remote inmy hand). And I did exactly that, but only after I found that my headwas spinning with theirverbal assault. An assault on my sensibilities for the game. So, Iswitched and to my horror found that I had come face to face with someone calledCharu Sharma. I told myself, oh my God, not again! Fortunately the manriding stagecoach with him was Nikhil Chopra who is still tolerable.Sharma is a purveyor of purile inanities and he has been peddling hisstuff for years. At the moment he is on Headlines Today. The best andmost understated and even laconic and sometimes cynical of thesecricket experts is definitely Ajay Jadeja. Unlike the aforementionedtroika, he is not in your face. Jadeja on NDTV's twinchannels is sobriety personified and certainly not camera challengedlike the other three. With Sidhu, Boria and Charu, I guess the momentyou say rolling, the verbal battery and assault begins.
Boria, God bless him has the right name - Bore Ya - and he plays hispart to perfection in the odd couple, verbose and gyani, sitting inhis arm chair or recliner or whatchamacallit and talking nineteen to thedozen. Meanwhile Sherry saheb thinks he is reprising LaughterChallenge. His Sidhuisms are replete with crass humour and cheesyproverbs. Both of them are like that fly which is in your face. Youwant to swat it, but are unable to find something to do it with. AshokMalhotra, Akash Chopra, Kirit Azad, Saba Karim, Kapil Dev, AnjumChopra, Chetan Sharma and even Atul Wassan with his supercilious airabout him are all tolerable. Jadeja is quick with his repartee, butquiet and somber. When the NDTV anchor asked him about the World Cup T20 team selection. He said that obviously the selection was puttingpressure on the players in the IPL. But more than that he said theplayers were under the cosh of delivering on the performance matrixdue to the impending player auction coming up this September-October.With nearly all players going under the hammer for season 4, barring ahandful of Indian and foreign players and the player cap having beenjacked up to $7 million, the intensity to deliver so that they can gounder the gavel at higher prices was that much more on all the players- domestic, Indian regulars and the firangs.
Now that was a thought out call, unlike the 'bak bak' that Sidhu andBoria were indulging in. Or for that matter Charu Sharma who loves tohear the sound of his voice. Worst part is the faux accent which someof these experts have developed in recent times. Mind over matter ormatter over mind, depends on which way you look at it. Like two prizefighters, Sherry and Bore Ya first size each other up and then beginto land verbal punches. Finally the referee has to step in to breakthe clinch. The gab fest leaves you drained. The sardonic Jadejameanwhile thinks and talks, making sense all the time. A touchcynical, AJ isn't loud or overbearing. Now NDTV is readying to unveilProfessor Deano on us. Sidhu was kayoed from commentary stints afterhe abused a fellow commentator on air, while Deano or Dean Jones madea catastrophic boo boo, calling Hasim Amla a terrorist on air.
Sidhu is a popular MP from Amritsar as well, his eccentricitiesprobably make him loveable to some, but as an expert or commentator,he defies all. Witticism is one thing, downright rude and obnoxious isanother. Sidhu graduated from a strokeless wonder to one of the mostdominating batsmen of his time by the time the 1987 World Cup camealong. Known as a ferocious six hitter, he was the first to go afteralchemist Shane Warne on his first tour of India. In fact, he singledout Warney as he smashed four fifties in five innings in that 1997-98series. One of the best and most attacking players of spin bowling,Sidhu had a fearless style of his own. Sidhu has time and againmanaged to metamorphose himself. Not known to be very agile orathletic as a fielder, by the time he retired, he had earned thenomenclature of Jonty Singh for his new found vigour and divingprowess. But always a maverick and unpredictable, he fought withskipper Azharuddin and returned from a tour of England. After beingdropped, Sidhu's hand was forced because he didn't take kindly to theway skipper Azhar handled the issue. It was an unprecedented act.Subsequently he retired from the game in 1999. And while hispaisan-paisan style endered him to the masses, he found that theclasses were revolted with his talkathons.
When Sidhu was sacked by ESPN-Star for his awkward comments, he deniedit all. But rediff.com ran this story in September, 2003, "In April,during the Bangladesh-South Africa match in Dhaka. Sidhu got into averbal spat with fellow commentator Alan Wilkins. He is said to havesworn at Wilkins, saying, 'Don't f*** around with me,' which wascaptured by one of the microphones and reported to the producer. Whencontacted by rediff.com in Hong Kong, Wilkins refused to comment aboutthe incident and said he is unaware about Sidhu's sacking.A month later, at the ESPN school quiz prize-distribution ceremony inKolkata, Sidhu compared the Board of Control for Cricket in India to achameleon, saying it lacks in transparency. His criticism of Indiaskipper Sourav Ganguly during the World Cup in South Africa causedhuge problems for the channel after most of the Indian playersboycotted ESPN. Ganguly dismissed Sidhu as a joke after thecommentator criticised him and the team on-air following the loss toAustralia at the start of the World Cup campaign.
"Sidhu earned his stripes with a commentary style that was his veryown, though it often defied logic. His comments evoked laughter andgenerated a nationwide following. "It is only after I left cricketthat learnt the true meaning of self-belief. I started meditating forlong hours. That is when all my ideas strike me," Sidhu toldrediff.com in a telephone interview on Tuesday morning from his homein Patiala. "I keep a notebook next to me in which I write all thepure and pristine thoughts that I reflect on while meditating. That iswhat you hear in the commentary. I tried to cultivate a style of myvery own, be original and unique," he said. "People liked that andthey called it Sidhuisms. It is the voice of the people."
Bor Ya meanwhile, is a self styled cricket specialist, a researchfellow at the Central Lancashire University, attached to the TimesGroup for some reason. Known to be a cricket writer, he should stickto research and not offering perfunctory expert advice on the gamethat we love. Charu Sharma has been around forever, he is like PeterPan, keeps popping up on different channels at different times. Tillnot so long agao, he was Times Now, but with Sidhu in the saddle now,he has relocated to Headlines Today. All three need to be kept 100yards away from a television screen. In the old days, we used to haveAtul Premnarayen who was the tennis guru, he would bring us reportsfrom Wimbledon on the radio. This was an age when live telly feeds didnot exist. Atul wasn't a bad bloke (I knew him personally), but he wasa a terrible commentator who would talk, talk and talk.
Everyone is an expert on cricket in India. It is not necessary that wesuffer such monumental gabathon meisters. The problem is that the IPLlasts 45 days, only to give way to the T 20 World Cup beginning onApril 30 in the West Indies. So, the news telly wallahs will continueto inflict pain and punishment on us poor telly watchers. Anyway thoseof us who aren't into telly masochism will just tune off. Wind downthe needle Slam dunk Sherry and Bore Ya or you will find yourselfturfed out by the studio bosses. They have short memories for thosewho are part of the shouting brigade. Which reminds me, time for anap...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. After all my head is still ringing.

(IMPACT)