Sight & Sound
DD queers cricket pitch
Amita Malik

There is seldom a dull week on TV but last week there was an overdose of exciting and, at times, highly emotional events.

There was an air of poignancy in the highly emotional farewell to Yasser Arafat as he boarded a helicopter to make his long journey to France. The fond farewell by his supporters was followed by the sadistic pronouncement that 35 per cent of Israelis wanted him to die. His reunion with his wife and little daughter was another of those emotional moments. The BBC did a wonderful live job.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the American elections also ruled the screen. Indian channels and the Press sent their reporters and observers. Veterans like Saeed Naqvi and younger reporters like Pankaj Pachauri and Maya Mirchandani of NDTV, Shireen of Sahara and reporters from other Indian channels added to coverage the Indian viewpoint and there were also the views of American NRIs. Add to that BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera’s dramatic scoop (the video cassette collected from Pakistan) of Osama bin Laden’s threat to George Bush and co. How much more dramatic can you get?

Nearer home, there was the controversial cricket pitch at Nagpur, Saurav Ganguly’s mysterious illness and disappointment about India’s dismal defeat by the Aussies. Highly excitable by the success, the Aussies’ captain was almost at a loss for words.

And in politics, there was the prolonged drama about the choice of Chief Minister of Maharashtra. The new CM is much more articulate on TV, even if he does not smile half as much as Shri Shinde on TV. Then Jayalalithaa put Karan Thapar properly in his place and I think scored more points throughout the interview.

DD does change its spots according to the political scene. A prolonged homage was paid to Indira Gandhi on her death anniversary. The other programmes on her included long interviews with those who knew her. NDTV India did an informative post-mortem on the 1984 riots and visited the families of Indira Gandhi’s killers.

Doordarshan’s new set of news anchors are well dressed but most of them speak badly. Even established ones like Elizabeth Jane seem to be in competition with the Rawalpindi Express in speed. A pity and totally unnecessary because Elizabeth is a good reporter and interviewer.

I had mentioned the fall in standards of Question Time India last week. This time it was a badly chosen panel. The French correspondent of Le Figaro could not express herself clearly in English and was completely at sea when asked, rather unfairly, to comment on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The Alkali gentleman was much more expert on such political questions but spoke rather haltingly in English and was often cut short. The analyst from Prannoy Roy’s election special team saved the panel from further disaster.

I must return once more to the mindless and callous manner in which Doordarshan ruined the Nagpur Test for viewers, who are the taxpayers who fund Doordarshan. This time there was not even a moment of critical analyses between overs by the commentators. Although they showed the opening bowlers in the first innings, they left one visually in the dark about who were India’s opening batsmen. Then they totally cut the analyses between overs and did not allow one to see even the fall of a wicket, cutting before that to endless advertisements which again cut into the opening of the next over. Viewers might well ask, who has given DD the divine right to take an arbitrary decision like this?

No other channel does this and DD’s anti-sports money-grabbing attitude should have been noticed by the Minister and the Secretary, I&B, long ago and a stop put to this callous assault on the rights of the viewer.

One also feels sad about the apathy of Indian cricket lovers. They should have flooded the Ministry with protests and held demonstrations outside DD’s headquarters: they certainly would have in Britain and Australia. Our sports writers should also have taken up this serious matter long ago. How about doing so now.