ESPN STAR COVERAGE

Its cricket season again and we have some of the best tournaments coming this year. We all see our stars on the television performing their hearts out against different teams and they do entertain us.
However one unsung hero who goes unpraised often is the media coverage which brings such live action right into our homes, with some flavours added on their own to entertain us even more. One thing however that I noticed was that not each and every channel is able to maintain high quality viewing to us viewers. For e.g. the ESPN coverage is the most optimum and they have set a benchmark which other channels should dream of achieving. We have Set Max's coverage of the IPL and the world cup upto 2010. And I have to say their coverage of the game is the worst. With prematch and post match analysis populated by the "so called" celebrities rather than proper cricket pundits. You have experts like Ian Chappel ,Gavaskar bewildered by the discussion going on during the prematch analysis. Like what does the astrologer say about the match analysis. is there some rift between the senior and the junior cricket members. One other day I heard cricketers were not able to concentrate on their matches because of their faces being used on the advertising boards. All this tamasha just to degrade the purity of the game. You have Laxman Siva RAma krishnan sliding down some slides while a four or six is being hit. You cannot see what happened to the last and the first ball, because of silly ads being thrown in. You don't what happened to the last ball of the match and hence have to wait for the limca girl to stop hopping and dancing around to know the result of the game. Steve Waugh a legend once commented that Indian coverage of the game was unwatchable.
However one can be assured of the quality offered by the ESPN coverage with ball by ball replay with greats like Wessels, Shastri, Gavaskar,Hadlee in com-box talking serious cricket instead of fake celebrities.