Harsha Bhogle, one of the most respected commentators in the game, is not going to be a part of this year’s IPL commentary team. Bhogle has been unceremoniously sacked by the BCCI and what’s weirder is that he has not been given a proper reason by the board explaining the expulsion.
The sacking has caused a huge furore amongst the cricket fans asking the Board to reconsider their decision. Meanwhile, there are speculations and conjectures flowing around in the cricket circle regarding this shocking decision. We will try to dissect that in a while.
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Harsha Bhogle, 54, has been an integral part of the IPL commentary team ever since its birth in 2008. He has lent his voice across all seasons of the IPL and the cricket lovers have enjoyed every bit of his commentary.
For years, cricket fanatics have lauded Bhogle’s inimitable style of speaking. He is known for his sharp analysis of the game and his ability to ask relevant questions. When on air, he invariably pulls out those one-liners leaving the listeners in splits.
Over the years, through his deep knowledge, Bhogle has shown that one can be extremely successful in the field of commentary even if he has not played the game at the highest level.
The Sacking
Let’s come back to the sacking saga now. The Board has said that after every tournament, they review the performances of the commentators and based on that they renew their contracts. If performance is the only criterion that has influenced the BCCI to take this decision, then this decision is highly debatable.
Bhogle, in my opinion, was one of the better Indian commentators in the T20 World Cup, if not the best. There is surely something rotten in Denmark.
There are speculations that a heated argument with a match official in Nagpur during India’s opening game at the World T20 has cost Bhogle his job. Bhogle, who is proficient in both English and Hindi, was part of the bilingual commentary team of Star Sports during the T20 World Cup. He had to move back and forth from the Hindi commentary box to the English commentary box and both the rooms were separated by the President’s VIP enclosure box.
Now imagine this, instead of making a way for the commentators through the enclosure, the VIP box was kept shut by the officials. This forced the bilingual commentators to take the stairs and rush up and down the stairs after every commentary stint.
Bhogle himself said that because of the tight deadlines, he was at times panting, as he went on air.
Was it the tweet?
There is another theory floating around that says that some senior cricketers could be involved in Bhogle’s ouster. This theory could be dated back to the India Bangladesh game where a tweet from Mr. Amitabh Bachchan could have acted as a trigger.
Bachchan, a cricket enthusiast, criticized an Indian commentator (presumably Bhogle) for not talking more about Indian cricketers during the game and in the post match analysis. This tweet was later retweeted by the Indian T20 captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Bhogle, later in a Facebook post, gave his own point of view saying that he can’t be biased towards the home team because the Star sports feed reaches a lot of countries and not just India.
I must confess to being a bit taken aback by the intensity of the criticism yesterday over the question of focussing...
Posted by Harsha Bhogle on Thursday, 24 March 2016
We can only hope that Mr. Bachchan’s tweet didn’t play a role in Bhogle’s axing. That was just Mr. Bachchan’s opinion, which I am sure is very much debatable since Harsha is a presenter and it is his job to stay neutral. For a board as big as the BCCI, to be influenced to take a decision on basis of a tweet and some subsequent retweets, seems highly unlikely.
That leaves us with the Nagpur commentary box episode. May be that heated exchange kicked up a storm in the Vidarbha Cricket Association. May be, the BCCI president, who hails from Nagpur himself, decided to take the matter in his own hands after learning about the episode.
May be all this is just conjecture. But surely there is more to it than meets the eye. Hopefully the BCCI can come up with a more concrete explanation as their decision has surely robbed millions of viewers the chance to listen to Harsha Bhogle’s eloquent and insightful commentary in the IPL.
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