00:00The big advantage with starting young
00:01is you're allowed to make mistakes, you know?
00:03I cannot mount an India-centric telecast
00:05when it's going to Bangladesh and Pakistan and everywhere.
00:08Now, there was an under-19 game in Hyderabad.
00:10England versus, I don't know if it was England versus India
00:12or England versus South Zone,
00:14but one of my friends was actually playing
00:15and one of my schoolmates, I just passed out of school,
00:18was playing in that game.
00:20And my father turns around and tells me,
00:22if there's an under-19 game,
00:24shouldn't there be an under-19 commentator?
00:26How do you fight with that logic?
00:28Apart from the fact, of course,
00:29that in those days, if your father said something,
00:30you said, yes.
00:32So I changed two buses, three o'clock in the afternoon,
00:34it's blazing hot, I take one bus,
00:36go to the terminus, change another bus,
00:38go to All India Radio just before it shuts.
00:39So they said, no, you do an audition first.
00:42Why don't you do a bit on Yovani?
00:44But a year later, I was doing Ranji Trophy commentaries there
00:46and the big advantage with starting young
00:48is you're allowed to make mistakes, you know?
00:49Right.
00:50So you make mistakes at a time
00:51when the world is charitable to you.
00:53Because if you're starting at 30,
00:54you don't have time to make mistakes,
00:55you've got to go in straight.
00:57There's a difference between a biased commentary
01:00and an India-centric commentary.
01:02I was doing the World T20.
01:03Yep.
01:04The World T20 was going,
01:05the world feed was going all over the world.
01:07It was an India-Bangladesh game.
01:08So there were people in Bangladesh,
01:10just as passionate as us in India,
01:11listening into the telecast.
01:13I cannot mount an India-centric telecast
01:15when it's going to Bangladesh and Pakistan and everywhere.
01:17If I'm doing a Hindi telecast,
01:19it's only going to India,
01:20and we all do Hindi commentary as well.
01:21You can be India-centric,
01:22but at no point should you ever be allowed to be biased.
01:26So I try to explain to people
01:27that you have to present both points of view.
01:30You didn't play professional cricket,
01:32how could you possibly not?
01:32You still get that.
01:33Oh, I get that every day.
01:35I get that every day.
01:37But my role is different.
01:38And I realized early in life,
01:39I said, can I be the non-striker?
01:42When I used to play cricket for my university side,
01:44I found I was in partnerships
01:45where I was making 25, 30% of the runs,
01:47but I was in long partnerships.
01:49And I said, can I be the non-striker?
01:51It's a lovely thought that all of us can go through it,
01:53but it requires you to be very aware
01:56of what you cannot do,
01:57which is sometimes as important in life
01:58as knowing what you can do.
02:00And so it started to work well for me.
02:03But I think there must always be a caller and a summarizer,
02:06a storyteller and an expert.
02:08You can have the batting average of 55
02:09to tell people what should happen, what shouldn't happen.
02:12But hang on, what is the emotion of a guy
02:14who's walking out on his first test?
02:16His parents are in tears over there.
02:18He's waited 25 years for this moment,
02:20and he nicks the first ball.
02:22How is he feeling?
02:22Someone's got to be able to tell that story
02:24because the people in houses want to hear stories.
02:27That's what our game is about.
02:28It's about emotion.
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