Indian cricket on radio through the years

It might have been only 10 minutes a day, but live cricket from England had an impact. The English based in India were not keen (“the last thing they wanted to listen to is about Indians”), but the Indians tuned in by the thousands.

Things were different for matches in India. When England toured India in 1933-34, there was live commentary for parts of the first and third sessions. You needed a licence to own a radio back then — just about 10,000 Indians had one — but it was still something.

India did not host Test cricket again until the West Indies came in 1948-49. By then, a radio revolution had taken place. There had been no international cricket in the interim period, but domestic matches often had live commentary for the entire day.

AFS ‘Bobby’ Talyarkhan was a legend of this era, and arguably the most iconic Indian cricket commentator of all time. Unlike today, there was no panel of commentators: Talyarkhan spoke on the match on his own for the entirety of a cricket match, with only a scorer to help him.

In his rich, distinctive voice, he would speak for five to six hours without tiring, taking breaks only when play was stopped. He was part of the reason behind the immense popularity of the Bombay Pentangular. He even accepted telegrams during the match and read them out on air — the ones he found worthy, that is.

In 1948-49, 12 years after it was founded, the All India Radio (AIR) decided to have a panel of commentators for Independent India's first home series. Talyarkhan quit for good, though he was part of the panel when India toured Pakistan for the first time, in 1954-55, and returned as an end-of-day presenter when England toured India in 1972-73.

By the 1950s, the likes of Vijay Merchant — one of Indian cricket’s all-time greats — and celebrated cricket journalists like Dicky Rutnagur and Berry Sarbadhikari had taken up seats behind the microphone.

Dicky Rutnagur (left) covered around 300 Tests in his career. He is shown here with a young Tony Cozier. (Photo: Wisden/ESPN via Twitter)

AIR had a more or less established policy in place by then. For every Test match on Indian soil, there would be — with the odd exception — three commentators and an expert, often from the local pool.

This was in stark contrast with the English way of having the same group travel across the country to cover the entire Test series. While the Indian approach saw a significant difference in quality from centre to centre, it also encouraged local flavour unique to every venue.

Perhaps encouraged by this, AIR began another revolution. They had toyed with the idea of Hindi commentary before, but now they took things to the next level by introducing Hindi, Bengali, and Tamil, depending on the location. There was also an effort towards launching Marathi commentary towards the end of the decade, albeit in vain.

By the 1960s, portable transistor sets had become common in India. This was a significant leap from the enormous ‘box radios’ of the yesteryear, which only the privileged could afford and have a space large enough to accommodate. These would often be a status symbol for the owner.

Spectators often carried portable radio sets to the venue — remember, the security was not as tight back then. Watching cricket while listening to AIR commentary was, in a way, the average Indian cricket fan’s first access to live audio-visual experience of matches.

It had its downsides. In the Bombay Test match of the 1969-70 series against Australia, umpire Sambhu Pan wrongly gave S Venkataraghavan out caught behind off Alan Connolly. Umpiring errors have happened throughout history, but in this case, many spectators heard Devraj Puri’s reaction on air. The angry fans, having sat through sapping heat all day, set stands on fire.

Of course, the cricket mania came with a flip side. Covering a Test series meant dedicating more than six hours of radio time to a single sport for five events of five days each. That left with virtually no room for other sports.

Cricket correspondent and commentator Arvind Lavakare did not mince his words when he wrote “cricket is king in our country while all other sports are Cinderellas: kept out of the dancing floor, neglected and shunned, wallflowers plain and simple.”

After England’s 1972-73 tour of India, the magazine Link had a similar opinion: “Either the media is partial to cricket ‘because the mass wants it’ or the latter is voiceless in its demands and gulps down whatever is fed, it should not be either.”

Fifty years later, the gulf between the popularity of cricket and other sports has merely increased in India.

Even after the advent and spread of television, the humble transistor radio sets scored high on three counts. They were cheaper than the television sets to an incomparable extent. They were portable. And they did not require electricity.

These two advantages made radio the common user’s medium. If you boarded a bus during a cricket match, there would be someone listening to the All India Radio commentators.

Easy to carry and affordable, radio sets would be everywhere, and cricket on radio would not be interrupted by power cuts. (Photo: AFP)

Radio sets would be everywhere, from paan shops to factories to classrooms, because they could be carried. And cricket on radio would not be interrupted by power cuts, a not-too-uncommon occurrence of 20th-century India.

Now, however, the radio is up against an unprecedented challenge, from affordable mobile handsets and fast, inexpensive internet. Tough times lie ahead.

Yet, even today, during travel, if the internet signal is not the strongest or when one is driving, the FM radio — the chic, younger sibling of the AIR — remains the sturdiest source of updates.