Even before a certain Sachin Tendulkar burst onto the cricketing scene, there was Harsha Bhogle quietly making a name for himself in the commentary field. He started off his commentary stint as a teenager in the All India Radio(AIR). He attained his MBA degree from the prestigious IIM. He soon became a part of the well known ABC Radio Grandstand and BBC teams to provide his inputs on the game. Ever since I started following cricket, I have been seeing him cover Indian cricket matches on ESPN-Star Sports. For us Indians he is considered to be the 'Voice' of Indian cricket.
But, since the last few months this 'Voice' has gone missing from Indian Television sets. Why so? A commentator's job is to describe the events happening on the field without being biased towards either of the teams playing cricket, or any sport for that matter. Harsha Bhogle was punished for following this protocol. The story goes back to the World T20 held in India earlier this year. In one of the matches(don't want to mention which one!!) in which India were outplayed neck and crop, Mr. Bhogle made a huge mistake. He praised the opposition team. Now it is natural for anyone to praise a team who has won a game of sport convincingly, but that doesn't seem to go down well with BCCI and its autocratic behavior in the world of cricket. Under BCCI's rule,you are expected to speak only about Indian players and look for positives even in defeat. You just cant get away by praising the opposition players. Ridiculous!! Isn't it? But true.
We have cricket boards around the world. We have commentators from those countries criticize the board,players,system,etc. I can think of many such examples. One of them is Ian Chappell, who has spoken against the system that is generating the current crop of Australian players who are inept at playing spin. Michael Atherton also has spoken against some of the policies of the ECB. It's not like these gentlemen were banned from commentating just because they spoke against their board. In fact I believe that with negative comments, a chance is presented to the boards to inspect what has gone wrong and correct them in the future. But, at this juncture BCCI is in no mood to receive any feedback. Without feedback, you can't expect any development in life. You will stay wherever you were. Anyway, because of this we have lost a very able and intellectual commentator(at least for the time being). It may not be a big deal for the BCCI, but for the audience it does matter a lot. The BCCI is happy with its army of 'YES' men. Hoping to see you soon Mr. Bhogle
