RAWALPINDI: Dec 4,2022: The role of Radio Pakistan has been key in promoting cricket, the running commentary on the cricket matches of Radio Pakistan has been restored after 15 years.
On the fourth day of the Test match between Pakistan and England in Rawalpindi, senior journalist Asghar Ali Mubarak also gave an expert oppenion on the ongoing match.
The role of running commentary on radio has been key in popularizing the game of cricket. In the early days the live commentary was in English language and Radio Pakistan had two commentators,Umar Qureshi and Jamshed Marker. Both of them used to do commentary for 15 to 15 minutes.
The cricket fanes were more interested in what the score was. How many are out? Is the match going to be a draw or is there a possibility of a decision? Cricket in those days was limited to Test matches only and often Test matches ended without a decision being made. Radio Transistor became common in Pakistan in the early sixties. It was also cheap and then it could run for days on battery cells, so in those days when there was a cricket match, the running commentary on it reached homes, offices, street markets and fields.
It gained popularity among the public. At the same time television arrived in Pakistan. First black and white and then color television came in the seventies and thus the game of cricket became the cover of our people. During the period when cricket gained popularity in our country, this campaign started that live commentary on cricket matches should be in Urdu language as well. Cricket commentary in Hindi along with English language was started in India before us.
Running commentary in Urdu was attempted for the first time during Ayub Khan’s tenure, but that experiment failed.
Commentators like Muneer Hussain, Muhammad Idris and Hasan Jalil have brought running commentary on cricket matches to the highest level.
Running commentary on cricket matches become more popular in English as well as in Urdu. What happened was that Chishti Mujahid commented in English for 15 minutes and after him Hasan Jalil started commenting in Urdu for 15 minutes.
Similarly, Iftikhar Ahmed came and then Muhammad Idris came. Shahzad Humayun came and after him came Munir Hussain.
How much commentary will be in Urdu and how much in English was used to be a dispute, but the commentators never had a fight on this issue. Before the current commentary in Urdu, our common people’s interest in cricket was limited to winning or losing or knowing which team was playing or what was the score because those who understood the subtleties of the game were explained in the English commentary.M
It was our Urdu commentators who explained the nuances of the game of cricket to our people and then watching the game broadcast live on television, everyone started commenting on cricket expertly in our street markets.
Radio and TV in this era also used to sit with commentators for expert opinion and personalities who explained the game in such a way that the commentators were also educated. An over would end and Mohammad Idris would request the expert sitting next to him for expert commentary.
The experts would take the microphone and do a complete post-mortem of the previous over in the minute-long interval.
If the game of cricket is going on, the best live commentary for the audience is that it should be in Urdu language and an expert is present to give expert opinion and there should be no commercials between the two overs, but an expert commentator to the audience, viewers. Comment received.
This excellent series was going on in our country when it was attacked by the corporate culture. What happens now? Cricket commentary in Urdu has remained a dream. Expert commentary between two overs was a distant thing. Sometimes the audience and viewers could reach the game of just five balls instead of six.
But the efforts of the present government to restore the running commentary on public demand is a good step.
