Sight & Sound
Olympian fiasco
Amita Malik

Somehow the word ‘mess’ keeps returning to this column when it concerns events covered by Doordarshan. The last time it was used was over relay of the Olympic torch run in the Capital. And now we return to the Olympics (or Oh-lum-pick as DD’s reporters call it). By virtue of its membership of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), Doordarshan gets exclusive coverage of events such as the Olympics and the Wimbledon finals.

Since ABU has several member countries, it goes without saying that each country would like to choose relay of events of specific interest to that country. But DD preferred to sit back and relay any old event, such as fencing and interminable boxing events that were of no specific interest to India while Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati were winning their exciting first rounds. I could not watch a single one of them live and was told later by friends that they had watched recorded versions from 1-30 a.m. onwards. And this after DD had announced the earlier timings of the live matches and not made any announcement of the replay in the small hours.

The other annoying DD habit for viewers, and here DD has a choice, is to cut off an event at a crucial stage. For instance, it cut off the tennis final for gold when Maasu, the Chilean, was down 2-5 in the fourth set and we assumed he would lose. In fact, the tired Chilean, playing his second final of the day, having won the doubles gold as well, made a splendid recovery and won in five sets.

One can understand DD interspersing this enthralling match with the show of the tiny Japanese girl winning the marathon after running for well over two hours. But where was the need to cut in between these two major events to show one minute of cycling, one minute of long jump, one minute of high jump, one minute of javelin throw and one minute of sculling? And let’s not forget the long sessions of chit-chat from DD’s Delhi studios.

Surely the right thing for DD would have been to show as much of the major events, particularly those of interest to Indian sports lovers and events involving Indian participants live, and show recorded versions of other events afterwards. One also has a comment about the Indian commentators. While the commentator in English, Joslyn Martins, is a real find and of international standard, the Hindi commentator, Rakesh, seemed more interested in showing off his classy Hindi. As for comments, each of his sentences worked up to an exciting loud climax, culminating in his favourite phrase ‘Khatra hai’ (It’s dangerous). Unfortunately he forgot for which team there was khatra, and whether it was to India or some other team’s advantage. When it came to cricket, Sony was no better. Apart from the needless distraction of Mandira Bedi in a single noodle strap this time in the usual B panel headed by Charu Sharma, the technical aspect was dismal. Microphone placements were so bad that shouts of ‘Pakistan zindabad’ and ‘India, India’ completely drowned the commentators. No matter how much one pushed up the volume, the noises of the crowd only got louder. Then the intrusion of advertisements was even worse than on Doordarshan. The last ball of an over had hardly been bowled when, instead of cutting to valuable expert analysis in between overs, we got a string of interminable ads which cut into the first ball of the next over too. It seems that unless it is ESPN or Star Sports, with their technical finesse and formidable team of commentators (bar our bete noire Bhimani, who matches Mandira Bedi in trivialities) India’s sports coverage is as dismal as India’s performances at the Olympics and at cricket.

It has been a week of sports. But one could not help noticing with some amusement that after shooter Rathore’s silver triumph, DD fell over backwards to interview Suresh Kalmadi, Priyaranjan Das Munshi and Rahul Gandhi, who all looked suitably victorious. Well, DD will be DD.