Cricket commentating and Tony Greig

By Amal Hewavissenti

Cricket is a game of extreme excitement and commentating on cricket complements the excitement of the game. Its appeal has practically engulfed the whole world of sports lovers. Cricket is live and the heat of it is powerful enough to keep the audience in breathless exhilaration for hours.

Cricket sometimes reflects the nature of life the highs and lows of life which everyone has to be prepared to accept with strong mind.

It appears fair to say that cricket commentating is highly influential in producing, rather mounting up the feelings of exhilaration and excitement when the game is being played.

A talented commentator is capable of transporting a radio listener to the cricketing ground by his use of language and appropriate manipulation of voice.

It is clear that the feelings of the audience are more intensively influenced by the voice and language of the commentator than by actively watching the game on the pavilion.

Responsibility

The role of a commentator and his responsibilities are definitely grave because he has to be totally responsible for what is said in relation to the cricket in action.

This means that danger hangs where he unleashes his comments on an highly exciting moment and the audience clings hard on every word he gives expression to. The audience many lose their trust on the commentator if he gives a wrong impression or expression on the situation under discussion.

Just as a cricketer performs his role on the ground, the commentator too shoulders equal responsibility in how and what he reports. At the same time, the commentating strictly demands a sound knowledge of cricketing rules and regulations.

It is generally accepted that a cricket commentator's vocabulary should be ten times more than that of an average person. This vast vocabulary enables him to produce a baffling spectrum of emotions on the audience.

Apart from that the vocabulary and how he uses it determine the degree in which the listener feels that he is actually witnessing the event close to the players.

The BBC selected Tony Greig as the world's perfect cricket commentator with most of the qualifications, talents and characteristics which accompany the ideal cricket commentator. The BBC carried out a broad survey of cricket commentators with most of the characteristics of “ideal cricket commentator” stipulated by the panel of researchers.

Tony Greig was an Australian cricketer and achieved much prominence as far as cricket commentating was concerned. In the survey, Greig's voice was proved to appeal highly to the audience with a striking sharpness and clear articulation. Throughout his commentating, Greig sustained a full tone and clear articulation over extremely long hours of cricket.

Tony Greig is totally free and relaxed before a TV camera and there is almost no difference in how he speaks to his daughter at home and how he speaks before the camera. However, Greig's commentating is characteristically a combination of sharp intellect, humour, enthusiasm and impartiality.

Fine sense of humour is another conspicuous feature in Greig's commentating. A close study of his commentating shows that he has a surprising capability to relieve the audience of stressful moments by some humorous remarks (relevant of course) on the current scene and by certain words which excite immediate laughter.

Once he was commentating on a cricket match at the Oval in Sydney. Meanwhile, the cameraman had videoed a secret wedding ceremony held in a chapel adjacent the Oval stadium.

The scenes showed that the wedding ceremony was attended only by the bride and bridegroom accompanied by two others. The cricket audience throughout the world watched the marriage ceremony and Tony Greig made many humorous remarks on the novel scene.

“This is a marriage ceremony that has just taken place in complete secrecy to their parents. But all the world has now participated in it.

We hereby pray that the bride should have nice time with her husband tonight.”

This shows that Tony Greig's commentating had the essential elements of humour which could add novelty and divert the stress laden minds of the audience.

Capacity

His commentating always had the capacity to produce humour, enthusiasm, excitement and inevitable disappointment in cricket.

Tony Greig captured the audience's attention and attraction mainly by means of spontaneous flow of vocabulary appropriate to the situation.

Tony Greig (Anthony William Greig) was born on October 6, 1946 in Queens town, South Africa.

He was frequently down with illnesses while he was engaged in sports training specially in Tennis and cricket in the early years of his life.

The continued fragile health debarred him from proper training and engagement in cricket.

Again in 1980, Tony Greig rejoined cricket his cherished sport, as a commentator and started professional commentating for Nine Network.

Under Nine Network, Greig did commentating for a few radio and television channels.

Tony Greig breathed his last on December 29 last year in Sydney, Australia.

Tony Greig has proved that talent in anything can surpass a long time training and engagement.