Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri are not just two of the finest cricketers to have emerged from India. They are also two of the most high-profile commentators in cricket and are very much part of the Sony Max team that is covering the IPL. But an article in The Indian Express today made us sit up and take notice about their role in the tournament. In a superb article titled “No questions asked, no answers given,” Kunal Pradhan has written:

“The IPL commentary team is a who’s who of cricket’s brightest brains. Two of them are Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, Indian cricket’s biggest opinion-makers over the last two decades; men whose word is gospel for fans across the country. They’re also members of the IPL’s all-powerful governing council. And thanks to their wholesale approval of the tournament’s corporate speak, every six is already a DLF Maximum, and every wicket a Citi Moment of Success.”

Call us naive and innocent, but we are shocked! Why cricketers of the stature of Gavaskar and Shastri have to stoop so low (you should hear them singing praises of the tournament and hailing it as a success well before its conclusion) is beyond understanding – do they worship the dollar so much?  As far as we know, both players made more than a fair deal of money from the game and their commentating assignments, so their kow towing to a corporate line at the cost of misleading their listeners and followers is disappointing to say the least. The very fact that they agreed to commentate in a tournament that they were organising undermines their credibility. Small wonder that their commentary at times sounds more like an IPL campaign speech than a narrative of the proceedings on the ground. 

Call us naive if you will, but we are henceforth going to take every word this IPL-loving duo says with a load (forget a pinch) of salt from here onwards.