That IPL TV coverage: is it really too exciting?

From the June issue of SPIN, out on May 8, which also features Andy Flower, Atul Sharma, Ian Blackwell, Courtney Walsh, Chris Read and Michael Vaughan’s art and load of other top stuff. Buy it in shops or order it for home delivery from here.

Last year, my attempts to subscribe to Setanta for the IPL almost came unstuck as, to get the cricket, I was required to – crazily – sign up for a full season of football, despite having already missed 90 per cent of the season. The terms and conditions of the contract run to a full 2826 words. This year, with Setanta keen for any business they can get, things are different. Play your cards right and you could see all 61 IPL games for a grand total of less than £50. Which is, fair’s fair, pretty good. Readers, I signed up.

I tune in for Day 1 of the IPL: Flintoff and Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings v Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians. Last year, the IPL’s gantry team copped stick for being too excited. This year, it was slower going…

14 mins Our host Mark Nicholas hands down to the pitchside reporter for the first time. It is former New Zealand seamer Simon Doull. Sounds promising, no? No. Of course it doesn’t. He’s an amiable fellow but in terms of communicating excitement – all-action cricket! Cheerleaders! Cash! – he’s so deadpan as to make Paul Allott and Mike Atherton seem like the Chuckle Brothers. How do these people get these jobs?

“Thanks very much Mark. Well, it’s a magnificent atmosphere,” begins Doull nervously. “I’ve just had a chat to Stephen Fleming, the Chennai coach. He seems to think about 150-160 would be a very good score to limit these guys to.”

That’s how magnificent the atmosphere is, viewers. Doull takes nondescript to new levels. You certainly couldn’t pick him out of an identity parade. Unless everyone else in the parade had a bit of personality.

23 mins With Jacob Oram set to bowl the seventh over, a dog takes to the pitch.

“Ha,” says Nicholas, then says nothing at all for a good 20 seconds as he prepares some canine quips. Finally, he summons up something: “Nobody wants to go near Lassie in case, of course the bark isn’t as bad as the bite,” says Nicholas.

What does this mean?

“Simon Doull, what do you reckon?” he says. My heart sinks. Doull is pitchside, interviewing a very boyish Jonty Rhodes.

“Jonty – it’s not your dog is it?” he asks

“Not now,”quips Rhodes, rather well.

Back to the gantry. “Its a dog’s life at Newlands,” says Nicho, cheerfully. “We still can’t get rid of this bit of animal magic thats interrupted proceedings. So we’d better keep Simon Doull going.”

The zero option.

Finally, Setanta take us back to the studio where some fella from the ’70s called Dominik Holyer is talking to Ronnie Irani. Hoyler’s up against it: thanks to his job talking to taxi drivers for 14 hours a day on Talk Sport, Irani is a more famous presenter than Hoyler and really rather good at being relaxed on TV.

Welcome to cricket’s new age.

Irani [chuckling] Are you a dog lover?

Hoyler I am.

Irani Have you got your own dog?

Hoyler Yeah. Well we did until recvently.

Irani Hey hey. I must admit it’s a classic. It’s a lovely dog. Interesting stuff. But it looks a lovely dog, doesn’t it?

Hoyler Super.

Irani But whose dog is it though?

Gordon Bennett.

After an 11-minute delay we go back to the game. But the spell has been broken and it’s all very military medium. Nicho seems a little depressed.

50 mins The first ten overs are finally completed. It’s been all go.

84 mins Nicho comes out of a break with this: “One of the many things that go with IPL is the opportunity for one lucky girl to…”

To what, readers? Have dinner with Simon Doull? Second prize: two dinners?

No. The answer is “…end up in a Bollywood movie. Fifty thousand rupees are there for her, and a business class trip to India, as the tournament goes ahead with its Miss Bollywood South Africa compeition.”

The camera lingers on some fox in the crowd. Nicho continues: “We’re looking for that lady. Who knows? It might be you.”

Who this ‘we’ is, is not clear. The IPL? Setanta? Nicho and Simon Doull together, the deadly duo? I picture Nicho, looking groomed, smelling wonderful and ready for cocktails and Doull, looking dull, smelling of boredom and ready to paint the skirting board, back at the hotel, trawling through a mountain of risque photographs sent in by dusky Veldt-based Bollywood wannabes.

Not for the first time, I wonder if Nicho is, by some weird twist of space-time, leading a life actually intended for me.

I conclude he probably isn’t.

Surely this is the role for which Nicho was born: cricket commentary crossed with the chance to preside over an ongoing beauty contest, a format that has traditionally – well, traditionally in the 1970s anyway – been the preserve of the nation’s No 1 mainstream presenter. Aspel. Forsyth. Peter Marshall. You remember.

Maybe this is exactly why he was hired. Imagine Lalit Modi weighing up the options. Would Tony Greig be the man for the job? (“And. Let. Me. Tell. You. That is a fox! Oh no – no she isn’t! Hang on, maybe she is!”) Nasser Hussain maybe, shaking with rage and undermining the light-ent vibe?

I don’t think so. (Obviously the correct answer would have been Ravi Shastri, immaculate, like the prince of a small but very wealthy country. He makes Nicho look like Steptoe and Son. Maybe he turned it down.)

86 mins Freddie Flintoff gets hit for the first three sixes of the tournament and we rediscover the fact that in IPL land, they are not sixes but ‘DLF maximums’. Within days, Flintoff will make his excuses and leave after hurting his knee trying to lift a big bag of money.

And I’ll still be wondering what happened to Dominik Holyer’s dog.

Mark Nicholas crosses over

Back in the ’70s, a well-loved cricket personality branched out and built a cult following on ITV on weekday teatimes. Indoor League involved Fred Trueman wandering around an old man’s pub, somewhere in The North smoking a pipe and wearing a jumper, while introducing games of darts, shove ha’penny and even arm wrestling. At the end he said: “I’ll see thee next week.”

Thirty years on, we have Mark Nicholas presenting Britain’s Best Dish. 

It’s change, but it’s not progress.

The pitch must have gone something like this: “You know that BBC show where celebrity chefs competed to find the best British dish to celebrate the Queen’s 80th birthday? Let’s just copy it but with ordinary punters doing the cooking. And Mark Nicholas instead of Jennie Bond. No-one will even notice the difference!”

Fortunately, I’ve managed to skip the first six weeks (seriously! six weeks!), which at one hour a show, even on ITV, is a lot of lives going to waste. So I’ve missed the no doubt excruciating X Factor-style heats which, in turn, have led to some kind of endless regional play-offs where – and I may well have misunderstood the rules here – two people have to cook the same dish, expressly so Nicholas can tell us it’s the “Battle of the pies”

Hell’s kitchen indeed.

Basically it’s a bit of cooking, a bit of judging and a lot of padding. But does that stop Nicho applying Ashes ’05-style hyperbole to what is, effectively, a village fete jam-making competition?

It does not.

Ten minutes into the Starters section of the Midlands semi-final, Nicho glides over to a woman who has squashed a giant crab into a wok. “I’m very pleased with it,” she says, all jolly. “I’ve got it crammed in there!” 

Nicholas is momentarily flummoxed but says something about ‘girl power’ and the claws being out and ushers her towards the judges, three faces distantly familiar from ’90s cookery shows. Ridiculous Day Today-alike music and dizzying camerawork then attempt to whip the teatime audience up into a frenzy.

“This crab is going to take some serious breaking into!” observes Nicho, grinning delightedly, as the judges tuck in, gravely. (Nicho himself doesn’t even get to eat, just stands there watching the ‘experts’ chomping away, like a particularly well-groomed eunuch at an orgy).

For the main course cook-off, Jill is making game pie. Caroline’s doing steak and mushroom. “It’s traditionally a winter dish,” she says.

“It’s the real thing!” exclaims Nicho, apparently apropos of nothing, before adding: “It’s a yum yum day.”

“Two pies in the oven and the all-important chocolate brownie recipe still to come!” he beams. And so on, painfully slowly, to the final of three semi-finals (yes – three). It doesn’t start promisingly.

Nicho Alison, you were telling me earlier that your phone’s been on fire almost!

Alison It has, it’s been alive with all the texts and phone calls. It never stops.

Nicho I bet you couldn’t have believed that your pudding could be the subject of so much attention!

Alison It certainly caused up a stir.

The winner, should you care, isn’t the old chap with his mother’s recipe for apple pie, nor the earnest-looking fella with a spotted dick (oh yes!), but Alison and her sticky pudding. But it’s not over yet. Each course winner has pocketed a mighty sum of £2,000 but the winner of the viewers vote (can we have that on ITV now?) will get £10,000 as the starter, pudding and main course take each other on in yet another final! 

Now, Nicho really cranks it up: “Yup, 10 grand is on the table! This is it!! The nation’s biggest-ever cooking competition reaches its conclusion: the live final!!!” Nicho begins like he’s presenting the National Lottery – possibly a future ambition – before recalling the halcyon prose-poetry days of the C4 highlights. “What we’ve proved is that this nation of ours, this culinary melting pot is home to a vibrant food culture of which we should be mighty proud. Today it’s up to you to decide the much vaunted title of Britain’s best dish who will take the coveted trophy.

“It’s the stuff that dreams are made of,” he adds, wildly. It is as if, in his ear, a voice is shouting. “Pad! For six weeks!”

John’s pork belly wins. “John, John. This meant a lot to you, man, didn’t it?” says Nicho. “I can’t describe in words how much it means to me,” says John, unhelpfully.

And then it’s over. Until – apparently – next year. Nicholas has looked cheerful and smooth throughout the ordeal. He always does. The man’s a pro.

What would Fred Trueman say, though?