Amitabh Bachchan's cricket commentary is on another level

I find cricket matches, especially the ones in which India plays other countries, mentally taxing and emotionally exhausting. This is especially so when India plays Pakistan. It feels as though India is at war, the cricket team, a unit of the army trying to save us from Pakistani arsenal and attacks. I do not wish to expend so much of affective energy in a war zone especially when it can be avoided. I made an exception of the just concluded World Cup match between India and Pakistan because Amitabh Bachchan was in the commentary box, yet another chip added to his highly diversified portfolio as an entertainer. 

The commentary is interesting because it helps me look inside Amitabh’s head; the way he looks at the world, the way he interprets images that stream out of the media, apparently available to all uniformly and universally. There are other commentators as well for the various channels of the Star TV. There are Kapil Dev, Rameez Raza, Harsha Bhogle and other veteran commentators who speak as insiders of the game, describing what unravels in front of them in terms of the strokes and balls, the fielding and the umpiring. They underscore what is seen, add background for the viewers of television the careers of the players, records of matches and explain to lay persons of the game why some shots are difficult and what kind of scores are comfortable and those which are worrisome. They discuss strategies of games, in terms of the order of batsmen and comment on the quality of the cricket pitch. In short, they are in the game. 
 
Amitabh’s comments are on a different plane. He too keeps track of statistics and data but uses these to anticipate the possible outcome of the game. He has assessed through compiling historic data in his head, the right kind of runs teams need to make in each over of bowling. He analyses each player in terms of his mind, his habits, how he has trained, his natural tendencies and what he does due to his innate nature. Amitabh also analyses performances of players in terms of their tendencies to perform under stress. He studies minds of cricketers through what appear as giveaways on the field; he knows from the way Rohan Sharma holds his bat and plays his strokes if he has resolved to be in the game or if he is in a haste to score big runs. Amitabh is right about Shikhar Sharma who, despite a discomfort with full toss deliveries, communicates his intentions to play the very same lollies which are so uncomfortable to him and score sixers. He studies players in their psychologies, their innate dispositions, skills and attitudes and how such human endeavours find expression in the concert of the team.

Amitabh quickly makes an assessment of the kind of physical fitness which cricket requires; more power and vigour in the shoulder and arms for the bowlers and greater flexibility and strength in the hips for the batsmen because they have to stoop for such long hours. He compares the body tone of a cricketer to that of a film star and concludes that in terms of body fitness, the game demands more than his art and hence cricket is “superior” to cinema. Cricket is also psychologically more challenging than cinema because it holds players in a constant mode of competition with the pressure to win. Cricket ceases to be a metaphor of war and instead rises into a grander event of human endeavour. It emerges out of the baggage of posing as war and instead is revealed as a testing ground for the limits of physical fitness, psychological aptness, as style, attitude, talent and disposition. 
The writer is an independent media scholar