TV Sports commentators ~~ who needs 'em?

These thoughts were prompted intitially by using the red button on Sky Sports yesterday to watch an alternative match to the one offered on the mainstream channel. I had never done this before.

At first I didn't realise why I was enjoying the match so much more than usual. Then my wife pointed the reason out to me. THERE WASN'T ANY COMMENTARY. None of those pairs of facetious people making otiose comments on the play to draw attention to what we could perfectly well see or extrapolate for ourselves {as, e.g., "He has let three break points go; he can't be feeling too happy about that"}; no unasked information about the players' private lives or ages {"His wife is still in hospital after an unfortunate traffic accident"; "Her 27th birthday was the Tuesday before last" ...}.

None of it. Oh the joy and delight of just watching the game and following the perfectly informative scorelines, with no more distraction than the sounds of the crowd reactions, the rackets on the balls, the linesmen's calls and the umpire's scorings. Bliss! And oh how much worse it has got since the second, and even sometimes third, commentator came in, so that now we have all sorts of facetious and irrelevant interchanges to distract us ~~ think of, or look out for, your own examples: I don't wish to become more wearisome than I can help.

Moreover, tennis happens to be a game particularly well adapted to the pauses in the comments while the play goes on, notionally reserving them for the intervals between points. But more & more, under the influence originally of the egregious McEnroe, (a fine player but a self-satisfied, self-centred bore when not playing, who appears to think we have switched on solely for the pleasure and privilege of hearing him talk), the commentary is distractingly being permitted to spill over into the play ~~ there was a hair-tear-inducing occasion during last year's Wimbledon when he went on at length, through two entire rallies, about how difficult he found it to understand the scoring system in cricket ~ GRRR!.

These remarks apply equally in general terms to soccer ~ the other game I watch most regularly ~ cricket, and no doubt to all the other televised sports which I rarely or never watch. But I am sure I have said enough regarding the example of tennis to make my point ~~

TV SPORTS COMMENTATORS ~~ WHO NEEDS 'EM?!

What do other Catters think?

~Michael~