How Mark Nicholas saved the IPL
In the Daily Mail Alan Fraser is less than impressed with the start of the IPL, or with the commentary of Mark Nicholas.
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
In the Daily Mail Alan Fraser is less than impressed with the start of the IPL, or with the commentary of Mark Nicholas.
'We are ready,' Nicholas declared as the first ball was about to be bowled. 'The start of the 2009 DLF IPL, here in South Africa, an extraordinary performance to move it in just three weeks. We have pulled it off.'
The award-winning broadcaster was not about to satirise a competition pretty much staged for, and financed by, television. Indeed, it sounded as if he and his cronies had been personally responsible for switching the event from India. Maybe they were.
While conceding that Nicholas might not have been employing the royal 'we', it remained an extraordinary use of the personal pronoun. But then the star of Britain's Best Dish-if you can be such a thing - has always entertained an elevated opinion of himself. He thinks he is Britain's Best Dish.
Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa