game on, times now?

Finally, to stop sounding an 123-year-old cynical granddad with a bad cough, something good about a news channel: Times Now’s Faisal Sharief sounded good, spoke well, and presented the “historic” South Africa-Australia ODI even better. The fact that he’s an old sports hand and knows exactly what he is talking about came across pretty well, and his questions to the channel’s correspondent Dinesh Chopra in Mohali was pretty relevant. (Usually, what you expect is “Dinesh, tell us about the Indian/English team’s/fans’ reaction to SA’s historic victory?” or “how do you think the Indian team management/Sachin’s pet dog is looking at breaking the record 438?”, or some such inane query.

In contrast, CCN-IBN did just that inane stuff: asking fans and children in Delhi about their reaction (which stretched from “SA rocks, maan!” to “SA rocks, maan!”, with nothing in between, save for the odd “India can blast that”). Given their correspondent Nishant Arora’s repertoire and knowledge of the game (wonder if he knows chinaman from Mao), it’s good that they didn’t cut back to him following the match — at least not on the incredibly funny/irritating/take-your-pick Late Night Show, hosted by the equally funny/irritating/take-your-pick Vidya Shankar Aiyar, which I caught, ahem, late in the night.

NDTV… I don’t remember what they had. Ditto with Headlines Today. Reason? They gave me not the slightest reason to remember it after a good 20 hours or so. And less said the better about the Hindi channels (please note: I have no linguistic bias besides the fact that they come across as abominable.)