So you have Rameez Raja referring to sense as buddhi and strength as shakti Kapil Dev preferring zehen over mann for the mind, describing a top-drawer stroke as aalaa and an assured one as having been played itminaan se. In each case, one member of the pair is, to his mind, speaking Hindi while the other is speaking Urdu yet their vocabulary tends to merge. To what extent Hindi and Urdu are separate languages is a matter of academic debate but to be reminded that there once existed a syncretic Hindustani, you need only listen to Navjot Sidhu on air with Rameez Raja, or Kapil Dev with Wasim Akram. Where once a high-flown, officious-sounding vocabulary was pressed into service to describe the ebbs and flows of the game, we now have an all-embracing hodgepodge of colloquial and Sanskritised Hindi, Urdu, and, frequently, English. What the Indo-Pak team of broadcasters has to offer is markedly different from the Hindi commentary we’ve been used to over the years. Yet one substantial addition to the world of Indian cricket has gone unremarked, if not quite unnoticed: the new-age Hindi commentary on Star Sports. As the Indian team’s fortunes have first dipped and then soared in the home Test series against England and Australia, India’s younger generation-Pujara, Vijay, Jadeja, Ashwin-has received praise from all quarters.
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