In my opinion, Hussain is one of the two best commentators in World Cricket.
Hussain understands modern day cricket, thinks and speaks like a captain, and puts the viewer into the captain's mind and tells us what the players out there are going through mentally and physically. We do not want 'star' commentators who tell us that the ball is racing away to the boundary in 10 different ways - we can see the damn thing for ourselves. Nasser adds value, to my viewing anyway.
Today's break-time show on Ten was case in point. His views on bowling coaches was terrific. Everyone and his dog says cricket teams need bowling coaches. But Nasser explained in 2 minutes what a bowling coach can do - with a 'for instance'. Having seen Troy Cooley work, he said that Cooley's role is to track how many overs each fast bowler bowls in internationals AND county cricket. He monitors their body weights, their off-season work, their fitness, their run ups and works out a program to make sure that youngsters coming through (like Freddie, Harmison some years back) peak at the right time for the Tests and important ODIs. His point was that India has RP Singh, Pathan and Sreesanth - all 20-21 years old and promising - but they can so easily go off the boil like Nehra, Zaheer and Balaji did in precisely 6 months.
For India to be winning consistently, Nasser made the point that come Nagpur 1st March, if England win the toss and bat, India want these three bowlers fresh and raring to go, not tired and sluggish due to workload in Pakistan and improper recovery in the gap between series!
Now that put things into perspective for me like no one else had. You do not need 1000 word articles and countless interviews by ex-cricketers extolling the virtues of fast bowling coaches - simple, clear and articulate thinking is what is needed. Hussain provides that to the cricket viewer.
Oh, and Ian Healy is the other one who does this to me - and entertains while at it.
Category: Cricket
2 comments:
You make some good points here. After watching an entire “Summer Of Cricket” here in Australia, it pissed me off to see Channel 9 commentators make absolutely no reference whatsoever to the cricket being played elsewhere! India and Pakistan were playing an important series (albeit boring) and I could not hear a peep out of the commentary box about this!
Listening to Jim Courier and John Alexander during the Australian open was refreshing. Jim constantly went back to the days of when he played Sampras and Agassi and tried to explain things from his viewpoint. The viewpoint of a champion player, a previous world number one; insight we can never get otherwise.
The other thing that irks me about cricket commentators is that when they are discussing an issue or describing an anecdote, they stop mid-sentence to illustrate that ‘Pointing played one down to fine leg’ and Pollock picks it up and throws it back to the keeper’!! It is not radio commentary, for crying out loud!
Bill Lawry is an excellent commentator too! He is honest and calls it as he sees it. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about our Indian ‘legends’ in the commentary box.
HK
I agree - Jim Courier is terrific. He has that typical American attitude of saying it as it is which our 'politically correct' commentators in cricket are scared of.
Bill Lawry - honest yes, but too excitable for my liking. But hey, better excitable than dishwater dull (Ranjit Fernando/Ranil whatever).
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