Once in a while, when I am away from my TV set, I am compelled to listen to cricket commentaries aired by SLBC. To begin with, as most people know, these are not ball-by-ball commentaries as claimed by SLBC. More often than not the first ball of an over is lost to commercials. But to compound the misery, the Sinhala commentaries are quite often not commentaries.

A few days ago I had to listen to commentary on the just-concluded second test. Part of the commentary went as follows ‘There is a change and Muralitheran comes on to bowl’. There then followed a litany of names of former West Indian batsmen going back to the era of the three ‘W’s’, followed by ‘ that is the end of the over and the score is

’. In the same spell of commentary there were descriptions of just two balls of an over. Previously too, we have had these ‘discussions’ interrupted by a bald statement that a four has been hit or  the batsman is out - no description, but followed almost instantaneously by a commercial - being described as ball-by-ball commentaries.

We all know that the local commentators are watching the match on their TV screens and they see all the action while they carry on various discussions that pass as commentaries. This type of commentary is fine if one is watching the action on TV, but the radio listener does not have TV to watch. Hence, when Messers Chappell, Gavaskar, Holding and others reminisce or discuss aspects of cricket on TV during a match, the viewer does not lose the action. Mr Epasinghe has boasted more than once that he has been told that people watch TV with the sound turned off and the SLBC commentary on.

This may be a fact, but, the people who made such comments watched the action on TV; if you only have a radio, then you don’t see the action nor do you hear a description of the action. If I have the action on TV I can manage without Messers Chappell, Gavaskar, Holding and others; even without Mr.Epasinghe!

What a change from the days of John Arlott, Alan MacGilvray, Charles Fortune and others when we really had ball-by-ball commentaries and heard a description of the field placings, every ball,  and the strokes played by the batsmen  and so many other aspects of the game and could quite easily visualise the action.