Question

What is commentary in cricket?

Answer 1

Had enough? Not going to take it anymore? Like me, are you tired of mindless cricket commentary and its hodge-podge of trivia, matey banter, and focus on the hosts’ antics? Cricket commentary, especially on TV, has lost its mind.

While Test cricket can be a hard game physically, its essential nature lies in its mental combat and what Greg Chappell calls the “inner game”. Cricketers have to be fit and strong but more importantly they have to be creative, confident thinkers. Five day Test cricket is the thinking person’s game. And what especially separates cricket from many other sports is that it is a captain’s game. As the on-field leader, a cricket captain devises strategy and tactics, inspires confidence and nerve in his team, and tries to outthink his opposing captain. Cricket, particularly in Test format, is a conceptual sport.

The key to improving cricket commentary, to make it more compelling, is for it to dramatically convey that mental side to the game, and the captains’ strategies and conflicts. One important way to do this is for commentators to use storytelling techniques that focus on the strategic and psychological aspects of play. The poor way to tell a story unravelling live before a viewer’s eyes is to spoon-feed them slap-dash descriptions of the action, reveal to them the consequences of these actions, and tell him what emotions to feel. Such commentary places the focus on

Answer 2

As I tried to explain in my first article in this series, cricket itself isn’t that complicated a game. What is hard is that, just like baseball, it is steeped in jargon. If you were listening to baseball on the radio, and had never seen the game, would you know what a curveball or a knuckleball were? Would you know what a 6-4-3 double play meant? The same holds true for cricket. It would be so much easier to understand if only people know what the heck the commentators were talking about. With that in mind, here is a brief guide to some of the jargon