How much is the cricket commtary worth?

It was not like I had a lot of respect for cricket commentators to begin with. Except when something very special happens in the game, what they say in a particular situation can easily be predicted. Lets say the batsman comes out of the crease for the very first ball he faces and hits the ball over the head of long-on fielder for a six. The commentator will say something like "He has decided to take the bull by it's horns, take the fight to the opposition. It is his natural style and it is a good idea to play your natural game while chasing such a total" Lets say the batsman was not that lucky and ends up sending the ball 'down the throat' of the fielder at long on. The same commentator would now say something like "This shot was absolutely not needed at this time of the game. The need of the hour was to consolidate and go for shots only towards the end of the game".

Recently I played Cricket 2007 game on Windows. This is a pretty nice game, but I admit I am not a game junkie, so it is easy to impress me. The game has pretty good animation, realism and gameplay. But what is commentary without the commentary? So the game contains pretty interesting commentary. They must have analyzed what typical commentators say in various situations in the game and made some voice snippets for each. Lets say it is a six. The commentary is one among "That is huge, he hit it right out of the ground" or "It doesn't matter when he hits it in the air when he hits it so far" or "Oh, I don't think it was a bad ball either" or "The bowler can't really complain, because it was not such a great ball. I am sure the captain won't be very happy with that" and so on. They play one of these randomly depending on the situation. Sometimes they play 2 or 3 together. However, what surprised me is that the commentary doesn't sound too repetitive/boring/unnatural compared to the real one! It sounds pretty alright.

This confirms my suspicion that commentary is not such a great skill after all. If you just collect a bunch of things to say in every situation and play them randomly, that is good enough! Even games can do a pretty good job of it. When I watch cricket matches, I don't mute the TV, because I like to hear the noise created by spectators in the ground. I am not that particular about the commentary.

How valuable is a life?

Today, Bangalore's newspapers had reported the news about a 'techie' killing his wife and committing suicide as the prime news on the first page. I could not understand why all newspapers thought this was the most important news of the day. FM radio stations, not to be left behind, were asking the listeners to send their opinion about the incidence through an SMS to them.

Don't get me wrong. I definitely feel sorry for the young couple and wish their lives had not ended tragically this way. However, this is not the first time entire families have ended their lives in such a tragic way in this city. If you sift through the newspapers, you could find at least one incidence in a month where a mother poisons her children and ends her life, a farmer, not being able to bare the burden of loans, kills himself and so on. Such news gets reported somewhere deep in the internal sheets, hard to find even if you are looking for. However, this incidence gained so much of importance only because the person involved is a 'techie'. (a unique word coined by Indian media which could mean anything from a people manager in a software company to a call center executive in a BPO company.) My thoughts when I saw this were, is the life of a techie more valuable than that of, say, a Government employee? If not, do the newspapers do this only because the readers are more interested in reading about the life of a techie than that of a more humble person? Or is it because.... I don't know...

After all, the families of the deceased would hate nothing more than media glare on the private lives of their
dear ones after this tragedy. I hope the media leaves them alone.