Fair and Lovely: The Fourth Umpire or the Hostess?

Those who have been watching over breakfast, Doordarshan’s hopeless attempt at stitching together a cricket talk-show will have realized (or expected) that the stuff is as useless as the actual Fourth Umpire himself. On the ground, he at least carries replacement balls. These guys carry an air of boredom and redundancy. That the show is sponsored by an all out feminine product should be a proof enough of how sure other regular sponsors of sports programmes are about the show's TRP.

You do have to sympathize with the producers though… after all, DD have only managed to come up with KKrishnammachary Shrikkanth and unsuccessful cricketer turned expert commentator Atul Wassan. Given that, pandering to sleaze such as having the hostess show cleavage is not surprising. What is surprising though is that all this is on National television, who have always found themselves within some rather sharp and implicit scissors of the censor board. After Mandira Bedi introduced spaghetti straps to cricket broadcasts, Roshni Chopra is going a step further. Unfortunately for the real cricket connoisseur, such digressions are sickening. Mandira’s claim to fame was that her presence in the studio brought women audiences in front of the TV set (which I disregard completely). Ms. Chopra’s primary aim seems to be that of at least getting the men back to watching DD’s telecasts.