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 Is this 20:20 vision, or what? Is this rocking, or not? What-not is the correct observation: what-not happened, is still happening. Ask not. From the inaugural ball with trapeze artists and the skeletal remains of human being on stilts to dainty dames inside giant bubbles, laser lights and fireworks to light up the television screen with more colours than in a rainbow, to the Washington Redskins’ cheerleaders and all those we love to ogle, or is it goggle? — Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Akshay, Saif, Kareena, Anil Kapoor — oh bloody, oh bloodah, we had a ball before one was even bowled.

The commentators groped for adequate responses: “This is fascinating,” commented Ajay Jadeja (like it was a Sudoku puzzle); “this is a great concept,” remarked Laxman Sivaramakrishnan (like it was Einstein’s theory of relativity), “this is magical,” said Rameez Raja like Harry Potter at his school of Wizcraft. Well, it was all that and more. More, as in the aforementioned ladies who did this thing with that part of their anatomy that wiggles. And wiggles till it will fall off, but never does. Happening, or what? Rocking or not? Or like one poster read, “I am here to watch the girls dancing.” Oh, that’s what they call it, these days

Once your eyes tired of the pom-pom derrieres, they eloped with the Kolkata Knight Riders, or rather their ravishing black and gold costumes — with gold helmets. The remaining teams, in shades of blue, were outrageously commonplace barring Rahul Dravid and the Bangalore Kingfishers’ red and yellow. Blue is the colour of that longer, drawn out game — that 50:50 thing. It’s cool but not eye-candy.

While we were watching all these sights, they were playing something akin to cricket on the field. At certain moments — when Rahul Dravid batted — it looked like cricket. At others, in the hands of Brendan McCullum, it looked like something no one had seen before. They just reinvented the game. The shots they hit must count for more than six. How about introducing 8s and 10s in this game? By day three of the IPL, watching sixes was as Rameez Raja put it, “a joke”.

The game has changed, the atmospherics have been transformed but some people just don’t get it. They’re meandering along at the same pace, like this was a five-day game. The commentators are far too restrained — except Ravi Shastri, who, while introducing the captains sounded like he was introducing, da one, da only wrestling sensation of da India — The Great Khali!

If this tournament is to work as a TV spectacle, we need to import the entire World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) commentary team and let them loose. Those guys can raise the buried, awaken the dead — T20 cricket deserves them. Gavaskar, Raja, Chappell, Robin Jackman are the family silver but the family silver is always a little grey, old-fashioned. So, unlike the batsmen they still treat the bowlers with respect. Nah, nah, none of that now. This has to be, saucy and spicy, irreverent and possibly, irrelevant — a bit like the young lady reporters at ground zero who burble and gurgle and ask whatever comes to their lips — “Anil (Kapoor), hey, whose side are you on?” (A clue: he was wearing a Mumbai Indians T-shirt.).

The commentary must match the style of the game — they’re still talking as if they dressed in buttoned down shirts with ties and neatly combed hair. You need dreadlocks, colourful T-shirts and a language that does justice to the cheerleaders, and of course, the game. Ditto for the camera work — zoom in, zoom out, stay with the pace. If we’re changing cricket, then television coverage must change too. Otherwise, we might tire rather quickly of the sixes.

P.S.: You know what the world thinks of news channels when Colgate toothpaste has a TV commercial featuring a TV news reporter on a train, asking a commuter about, what was it... cavities?

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com