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.