Where are the young pundits who can inform and entertain?

Stuart Broad's insights highlight India's lack of expert commentary, hindered by BCCI restrictions and lack of objectivity.

Listening to Stuart Broad, England’s latest television pundit, during the West Indies series showed how far behind India are in this crucial area of the game.

A match can be watched only by a few thousand spectators; a telecast has an audience in the millions. To inform and entertain could well be the expert’s motto. Broad brings to his assessments recent knowledge of both the players and the game’s changing perspectives.

India haven’t had a recently-retired addition to their commentary team, with the exception of Dinesh Karthik. And Karthik came via England where he was a big hit when he started out. Harsha Bhogle, who began in the 1990s, has been bringing to us his passion for cricket and the sheer joy of watching it. He positioned himself as the eyes and ears of the average spectator, leaving the so-called experts to analyse and criticise. Except that Indians in the box seldom do the former and never do the latter.

One reason Indian commentators tend to be bland is that anything critical about players or selectors or the Board of Control for Cricket in India is ironed out when they sign the BCCI contract. There is no room for dissent. The Justice Lodha panel, constituted by the Supreme Court to clean up Indian cricket, had condemned the BCCI for this lack of objective commentary.

We expect our commentators to be jingoistic and uncritical, and thus cut off their objectivity at the knees.

In 2016, when Bhogle was sacked apparently because he had criticised some senior players earlier and had had words with a BCCI official, even Amitabh Bachchan got into the act condemning Bhogle in a roundabout way for being unpatriotic.

A player complaining about a commentator is taken seriously. Sanjay Manjrekar was sacked after calling Ravindra Jadeja a “bits and pieces” player. He returned after writing a letter of apology to the BCCI which said among other things, “I will be happy to work as per the guidelines laid by you….If unwittingly, I have offended anyone I would be happy to apologise to the concerned party.”