Pardon - your slip is showing!!!

As the IPL caravan ended and the least expected team won, people can heave a sigh of relief (at least until the next 10 days before the World Cup starts). There were quite a few standout things for me - Gilly and Anil Kumble's captaincy, the way the "old timers" played, the maturity displayed by the younger players and the see-saw battles on the filed. Of course, the cheerleaders helped too in a purely aesthetic sense of course!! As outlined in an earlier post, I find my English vocabulary has been considerably enhanced - DLF means a six while a Citi moment of success can mean just about anything..

But to me, the funniest moments were the abysmal depths to which the quality of commentary have gone down. Except for a Harsha Bhogle possibly , the rest of the commentators looked like a bunch of jokers including the usually suave and insightful Gavaskar (evidence later). I am not sure if it was because the fast paced format of T20 but it was like watching my favorite VVS Laxman try to swat balls in his matches - ugly, lots of efforts but no results. Here are my personal pick of "Dirty Dozen" commentary gems

12, People of India, people of the Rainbow Nation, people of the world, this is the final - Ravi Shastri on May 24, 2009 spelling it out in case you thought this was a warm up match.

11. "It's not going to be easy. Because it's going to be hard." Samir Kochchar shows why he should return back to films but then its not going to easy for him.

10. "The IPL has been extremely well received in the IPL." - Ramiz Raja showing why he is NOT the natural successor to Richie Benaud.

9. "This is in support of children and (long pause) AIDS" - Ravi Shastri pointing that the awareness bands were, in fact, in support of a deadly disease making both Anil Kumble and Gilly very very uneasy.

8."Amit Mishra can spin the ball." - Ramiz Raja makes a shocking revelation. In other news, Shilpa Shetty was still telling Siddarth Trivedi to learn from Amit Mishra on how to spin the ball.

7."This over has been full of action. All this action is sponsored by [pause] our sponsors." - Ramiz Raja discounts the players contributions to the cricketing action. Take a bow - sponsors!

6."Lasith Malinga, Nehru, Abdulla... all with 14." - Robin Jackman keeps the Nehru legacy alive even in the IPL.

5."Two overs remaining. That's 12 balls, folks." - Alistair Campbell just in case you were bad at multiplication or did not know that an over has 6 balls.

4."These are crucial times, the last 10 overs" - Laxman Sivaramakrishnan shows how well he has understood this game, after the strategic time out. He might have already told that the first 10 overs were crucial BEFORE the time out.

3."He's got to pick up wickets, he's got to be economical" - Laxman Sivaramakrishnan giving Anil Kumble advice , at the beginning of IPL, which the bowler seems to have taken very well.

2. "An Indian would say, 'Usko ullu banaya' He has made him an ullu."- Sunil Gavaskar has made ullu part of the English language as he translated for the non-Hindi audience. Of course, there is a minor fact that some Indians would not know what an "ullu" is anway, especially south of the Vindhyas. People wonder who is the actual "ullu" now!

1. "Sab upar wale ke haath me hai (everything is in God's hand)" Sunil Gavaskar giving us profound wisdom on the fate of teams in the final. Looks like Upar Wala was favouring Gilly on that day or was Sunny referring to Lalit Modi - one never knows!!

So those were MY dozen (or 12 exactly to paraphrase Alistair Campbell) bloomers made on TV. Now I know why they call it the "idiot" box. There were a few more - would be glad to hear from you about your own favorites....