I was very young when the whole house erupted in unbridled joy and hysterical happiness. Syed Mushtaq Ali, the swashbuckling opener whose hand was broken and had retired hurt, came as the last man to hit a four singlehanded to get an improbable victory for India! Those days radios worked only on valves and carried lot of airways ‘noise’ along with the commentary. But the commentator had sent the whole nation into an electrifying ecstasy by conveying what was happening on the field miles away. In clear contrast to this, when John Arlott was describing India’s innings with India 0 for 4 (yes, zero runs for four wickets) at Headingly, Leeds, you could hear a pin drop piercing the hushed silence as Freddie Trueman sliced through India’s batting using the ball as if it were a meat slicer. Such was the power of radio commentators.  Sanjay was the first commentator who narrated the 18-day Kurukshetra war between Pandavas and Kauravas in Mahabharatha to the blind king Dhritarashtra through Divya drushti (power to visualise what’s happening elsewhere and convey the same).
Radio commentators were pure magicians who could convey the see-saw feelings that erupted in the field to fans thousands of miles away staring at nothing but ceiling and yet participate in whatever happened in the field.  There was AFS Talyar khan, AFST giving the commentary for a full five days all by himself!  Maharajkumar of Vijayanagaram (Vizzy), who would describe Polly Umrigar as the ‘Palm Tree’ hitter for the sixers he was famous for. Quite a majority of cricket lovers grew up listening to ‘Berry’ Sarbadhikari, Pearson Surita, Anant Setalvad, Chakrapani, Dicky Rutnagar, Raj Singh Dungarpur, Ananda Rao, Balu Alaganan, Devraj Puri and his son, the ENT doctor Dr. Narottam Puri.  When the only way you saw action was through some pictures on the Hindu sports page next day, or the Weekly ‘Sports and Pastime’, these magicians by their collective range of voice and sheer artistry brought home the unalloyed ecstasy of winning, the despair of waiting for a draw or the agony of losing a nail-biter. Anant Setalvad’s soothing voice would comfort the desperate crowd at paanwala shops in street corners that Chandu Borde and Russi Surti were rebuilding an innings lying in disarray. Or, the smile that danced on the face of crowd when Dicky Rutnagar described the effortless ‘on-demand sixers’ by Salim Durani or ML Jaisimha to whichever part of the field the demand came from! As you walked from Churchgate station towards Nariman Point in Bombay, you would see hundreds shaking their collective head when you heard Dr. Narottam Puri lament India’s inexplicable collapse from the radio at Lotus Court office of Philips. A cabbie or a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, who would otherwise get frothing mad at the trespass of a carefree pedestrian with a tilted head, would smile and pardon his indiscretion shouting at the same time to know the latest score! Most people had one ear affixed to their transistor sets, while riding their cycles, running to catch a local or while haggling with vegetable vendors as they do with mobile phones nowadays! When Abbas Ali Baig, in company of Ramnath Kenny, drew a match against Australia with a fine 58 and was returning to pavilion, a girl came from nowhere and planted 13 kisses on him. The number was actually counted and conveyed by Vijay Merchant who lamented that he had played for years and lived practically on a cricket field, but never did a girl even look at him!  Did the commentators go wrong? Sometimes, but at extraordinary times! It took quite some time for everybody to realize they had a tie on hand, the first ever in cricket’s history in December 1960 at Brisbane! Our own All India Radio in the afternoon news at 1:30 News first flashed Australia had won and changed it to West Indies before finally coming out with the news of the first tie ever! Listening to John Arlot, Brian Johnston, Rex Alston, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Peter Baxter, Trevor Bailey over shortwave radio was like sitting in a cricket coaching class; their commentary when Jim Laker took 19 wickets in a Test was no less than the feat itself. Alan Mcgilvary, Micheal Charlton, Richie Benaud, Johnnie Moyes, Jim Maxwell were some of the finest Australian commentators who brought the drama of cricket right to the living room. Into this box walked young Harsha Bhogle to bring ball-by-ball commentary from Australia.  It was as much of a debut as Sunil Gavaskar or a Sachin Tendulkar would make on the field and Harsha had a great debut series in Australia. He is one of our best but somehow, the magic of what he did as a radio commentator has eluded him, such is the medium of radio compared to television. Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Sanjay Manjrekar too should sometime go on the air to experience the power of radio in commentary.  How was India’s victory in Port of Spain, West Indies, conveyed in India? India chased a near-impossible score of 400-plus runs against West Indies with both Vishwanath and Sunil Gavaskar scoring a century each, laying the foundation for the chase. When Brijesh Patel scored the winning run, both Hindi and English Commentators on the All India Radio panel wanted to break the news simultaneously!  There was a minor scuffle as to who should convey India’s victory between Ravi Chaturvedi and Suresh Sarayya! Those were the glorious days of ‘Emergency’ then and everybody had to be politically correct in their behaviour in public or the alternative was a quick spell in jail! So the commentators had to heap praises on the then Kings and Queens before they could shower some on the cricketers for the famous victory!

First Published: October 19, 2011, 4:56 PM IST