Right arm over, first ball...

Brian Johnston kept talking about the lovely cakes he got from umpteen fans of his. To the people who have grown up with BBC Radio, Brian Johnston's cakes are a part of cricket lore. Growing up with cricket in India was not easy. I used to rush back home in the evening to listen to BBC's live commentary. I used to listen to Johnston, Fred Trueman, Trevor Bailey and Christopher Martin-Jenkins narrating the game that was going on. I remember the Ashes series of 1981 and the Headingly Test, which is a legend by itself. I saw the game through the eyes of the radio commentators and I swear they never let me down. As a kid I used to wake up at four in the morning to be ready for the Radio Australia commentary. Alan McGilvray, Norman O'Neill, Neville Oliver, Jim Maxwell and then Tim Layne... and through them I saw the bounce and pace of the WACA pitch. I saw Kim Hughes hitting many sixes into the Sydney Hill. It was thrilling and I owe my love for the game to these gentlemen. They were commentators who narrated the live proceedings as a story. Brian Johnston's cake was yummy too! It was part of cricket in England.

Then came Packer's Circus and that followed the telecast of the game with umpteen cameras and the duck walking along the batsman who was dismissed for a nought... things changed a little. Bill Lawry who knows it all, the genius of Richie Benaud, the assertive Ian Chappell and the exciting Tony Greig took over. Enjoying the game became different. Imagination was replaced by live pictures and sharp comments. Exciting enough! Due to financial reasons, BBC World Service discontinued live broadcast. So I got my little ration through Paddy Feeney's Saturday Sports Special on BBC radio. Little did anyone know that TV would change the game from what it was. The South Africans tried out the third umpire (Call him a TV umpire!) and soon it became such a reality that all international matches had a third umpire. Umpteen number of TV replays, spin vision, super slow mo cameras, stump cam, snickometer and now the dreaded rectangle that shows us where the ball landed and where it is going. Technology has meant that more and more decisions are put through scrutiny. Twenty replays later, I hear Richie Benaud say, 'The slow motion replay doesn't show how fast that delivery was'.

There is a suggestion that even umpires have to be made accountable. If a batsman of Mike Gatting's ability is not able to pick Warne's guile, how can a TV commentator or a TV umpire decide where the ball was going? There are limitations to the technology too. Cricket can never be a game on Sony's Play Station! There are a great deal of subtleties to this game, the wind, the pitch conditions, the humidity, the cloud cover, the shine on the ball and so on. Let us enjoy the imperfections of the game than go mad on perfecting for the sake of the TV audience. I don't think cricketers should feel bad about poor decisions they get. Once Mark Waugh said, "You take the bad with the good". There are a few batsmen who believe in walking even if they are sure about being dismissed. In other cases the rule followed is, there is a man who is going to make a decision. Good or bad, let us take it. And the umpire's decision is final. What best can be done is to get the best of the umpires to stand in the Test matches. It would be a farce to make umpires accountable by any means. What it really takes is competence and not pity.

Yeah! All this for the sake of justice. Justice is law interpreted. Decency is what it takes to be lawful. If we start punishing umpires for making mistakes, we might as well start punishing Tendulkar for playing a false shot. Where do we stop then? Given out early in a county match, WG Grace is supposed to have refused to go out as he said, "They've come to see me bat, not you umpire. Play on!"

Outrageous it might be, but the game has to go on within the rules of the game. Not for the sake of TV or for the TV audience, but for the millions who enjoy cricket as a game. The influence of TV is becoming apparent day by day. One feels sad when people like Ravi Shastri and Geoff Boycott start explaining how the game should be played aggressively. Many of us have seen them as boring slugs that couldn't get on with the game. These are the high priests of cricket today, who have stepped beyond their role as 'commentators' and have become judges of the game. They make judgements on umpires and almost on anything got to do with cricket. These days the TV commentators are the adjudicators of the 'Man of the match' and 'Man of the series'. What is the ICC doing? What is the role of the match referee? Why let these ex-players make decisions on the game, when they are not officially involved in it. TV has a role to play, let it do that and not start interfering with the game. Have you ever wondered how they keep playing cricket when there is a power breakdown? It doesn't take TV to play cricket, but sure it needs 22 players and two umpires with all their abilities and imperfections. Let the game go on... Right arm over, first ball.