IPL 2020 | Colloquial in the commentary box 

Tamil commentary box (Photo courtesy: Twitter @RJ_Balaji).

Untamed hair flying, Pat Cummins, the most expensive overseas player acquired for the 2020 Indian Premier League at Rs 15.5 crore, had just walked in to bowl. The paceman's team, Kolkata Knight Riders, fighting to avoid elimination, were up against the Chennai Super Kings, already out of the contest but eager to salvage pride. If there was any tension on the ground that evening, it did not infect the Tamil-language commentary box, where RJ Balaji observed irreverently: “Anda 15 kodiya vechu oru cipu vangirkalame.” (Cummins could at least have bought a comb with his Rs 15 crore). Akin to a ventriloquist managing his wayward puppet, co-commentator and former India cricketer Hemang Badani jumped in to pull the attention “back to the cricket” and matters of line, length, field placement.

A teasing quip about your fuzzy hairdo translates to “welcome” in many Tamil households. Balaji’s chatter — often bursting into song, mimicry, and onomatopoeia — appeals especially to sections among the cricket-viewing public who are looking for spectacle more than technique. To balance out his no-filter fun with keen analysis, the non-cricketer is paired with a number of ex-international players including S Badrinath, Abhinav Mukund, and Sri Lanka’s Russel Arnold. “The effect is like the bantering discourse you hear on a local tea kadai (tea house) bench,” says Chennai-based cricket fan Sakthi Prasad, of the mix of entertainment and earnestness. Ever since its debut on screens three years ago, Tamil commentary has been tickling enough people for the network to expand similarly into dedicated coverage for Telugu, Kannada and Bengali viewers too.

The option to access commentary in one’s own language could be democratising sports for masses that were left out by narrations in English and Hindi alone. “I travelled to villages in Nagercoil and Tirunelveli where people said they didn’t get the specifics of the games earlier. They are able to understand it now,” says Pradeep Muthu, radio jockey turned anchor on the Star Sports Tamil team. That includes relatively new concepts like ‘power plays’ or ‘strategic timeouts’ unique to the T20 format. The brief was to sound like a family or a group of friends discussing the game. “So there is someone like a father shouting at the players, someone else taking the players’ side, a third person supporting the father,” notes Muthu, who also commentates for football and kabaddi matches. “But the sport is still the hero. We just add flavour.” The plainspoken father in that mix, one guesses, is former India skipper Krishnamachari ‘Cheeka’ Srikkanth, who releases untranslatable verbal darts like “kaiyum varala, kaalum varala” when someone is struggling on field. A crude translation would be this: he can neither use his hand nor leg properly.

Such a region-specific handling has been long overdue in the glitzy, money-spinning 20-overs property. “When IPL started, it was mainly Bollywood-ised. With the digital revolution in the last few years, fans became hungry for content about their teams in their own languages,” reckons former journalist Manikantan MVL, who has followed the business of sports. The change began in 2017 when Star India bought the broadcast rights for five years for $2.5 billion, versus the previous broadcaster Sony Pictures Network, which had paid $918 million for 10 years in 2008. “The timing was ripe with Chennai Super Kings coming back,” reminds Manikantan, about the popular team’s return following a two-year ban. Using the same video feed and a few extra audio production teams, the network could better engage its audience in various playing states and acquire more localised advertisers. Star India declined to comment.

Vijay Shankar getting out on 0.

The gamble is not without precedent. Back in 2011 for example, Discovery Networks found it worthwhile to launch a dedicated Tamil channel, citing the deep television penetration in that state. Apart from Hindi, Hollywood films are typically dubbed into Telugu and Tamil given how strongly native speakers identify with those languages. Time spent on IPL has been growing at 8-10 percent year-on-year since 2018, with a skew towards southern markets, according to findings by Ormax Media. “While this can be attributed to several factors, including growth of brand IPL over the years, availability of multi-language audio feed is likely to be a strong element,” says Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO of the research firm.

For those who can understand it, multi-language content has offered unique insights. Most Tamil and Kannada commentators have played plenty of domestic cricket, points out sports writer Siddhartha Vaidyanathan. “They understand the pressures that the young Indian cricketers might be facing in such high-intensity games.” He offers the example of commentator Abhinav Mukund who was never over-excited when Rahul Tewatia played an unbelievable innings in September — starting off slow, then hitting five sixes — to help Rajasthan Royals win against Kings XI Punjab. “Most of the English commentators are legends of the game and many of them don't seem to connect with the struggles of domestic cricketers. They are also not from India, so they don't have much knowledge about many of the Indian cricketers taking part.”

Among such domestic veterans is GK Anil Kumar, who took to Kannada commentary two years ago “like fish to water.” The last decade of appearing on pre- and post-match panels of various regional channels had prepared the coach and selector to face the camera and microphone. The former player has shared a dressing room with titans like Rahul Dravid and Javagal Srinath as well as coached current stars such as KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal in their teens, which lets him share insider perspectives. “I have observed their journeys, how they mentally rehearse. The stories I talk about on screen have happened behind the scenes and people don’t get to hear them anywhere else.” For instance he knew that Devdutt Padikkal’s emphatic debut this year for Royal Challengers Bangalore after being on the squad without getting a game last season was a dead ringer of how the young player had bided his time in the nets after a game-less season of the Vijay Hazare Trophy previously.

Through Kumar and co-commentators, including ex-cricketers Vijay Bharadwaj and Srinivasa Murthy, colloquialisms from Karnataka’s gullies make it to the commentary box too. Like “Nodkondu kodu”, where a team urges the batsman on field to “watch and go for a big stroke”, or “Eh, wicket odibeku aste” (Just try to hit the wickets) which was the no-fuss reply of choice for Anil Kumble or Srinath when a bowler asked what line or length they should keep to. Former international cricketer Laxmi Ratan Shukla does the same for Bengali cricket fans, slipping in a quick anecdote or two about Sourav Ganguly. Tamil commentators have brought street terms like “ara kozhi” (half chicken) to describe a slower, short-pitched delivery or “manga adi” which refers to a throw made with the force of a stone aimed at a “mango” tree into the mainstream.

Maybe because they are cleverly designed or because they are still fresh, the Indian language experiments have not been as given to cliches or monotony yet as narrations in English and Hindi. There have been hits and misses in the still-shifting landscape for Indian language sports content. Malayalam audio feed was launched briefly but pulled off air. Kerala does not have an IPL franchise. Dedicated audio is unlikely for Punjab and Maharashtra, home to Kings XI Punjab and Mumbai Indians respectively, because those states are seen as bi-lingual with a high grasp of Hindi, says Ormax’s Kapoor. However, during every major competition, petitions surface online and die down unnoticed, with fans asking channels to “stop Hindi imposition” and introduce Marathi commentary. Some critics call out the heavy amounts of English that find their way into Telugu and Kannada relays, or notably, the overuse of Mylapore (read brahmin-dominated) slang rather than Dravidian words in the Tamil telecast.

The colonial sport, in its Indian regional versions, is narrated with loosened ties. Neutrality is optional as the state’s franchise is often openly favoured. Taking from meme culture, and also contributing to it, international players get local nicknames. Among a team of mainly men in their mid-30s, CSK’s cherubic Sam Curran gets called “chutti kulandai” (cute baby) in Tamil. The same presenters turn Mitchell McClenaghan’s challenging name into an opportunity to bring up Rajinikanth’s popular refrain from the film Chandramukhi, so that he becomes “McClaka laka laka lakan”. When the Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper David Warner scores a six, the shot is exclaimed to have travelled “Malakpet Tower kante podugaina” (higher than the Malakpet TV Tower), even if the match is happening in Sharjah. He is also favourably compared to action star Mahesh Babu. Beyond Bollywood, popular cricket entertainment is getting the Tollywood and Kollywood treatment.

Ranjita Ganesan is a journalist and researcher based in Mumbai.