“Welcome to the wonderful city of XXXX for another wonderful day of cricket. The brilliant XXX is going to take on the terrific XXX in a co...

“Welcome to the wonderful city of XXXX for another wonderful day of cricket. The brilliant XXX is going to take on the terrific XXX in a contest that promises a lot of excitement. The pitch is great. We have a great commentary panel. We even have a breakfast show. We’ll all share a few laughs with Super V. And through all this, we promise there will be no criticism involved.”
We’d like to think that we are watching just a game of cricket. But in reality, it is so much more. For the BCCI, it is an opportunity to show how great Indian cricket is. For Star, it is an opportunity to keep BCCI happy and that usually means praising everything in sight. As someone once said, the entire show can best be described as ‘the grand Indian cricket commercial.’
Now, in this mix, there suddenly was an anomaly. Sanjay Manjrekar likes to speak his mind. For good or for bad, he likes to play the agent provocateur. It gives him a thrill.
Of course, there were times he would pick up the wrong tree to shout at. He went on and on about concussion substitutes which only exposed his ignorance on the matter. He didn’t...