After watching the whole series of India v/s Australia, I can undoubtedly say that Australia’s channel 9 had the best coverage of cricket I’ve ever witnessed.
-All the commentators were enthusiastic, into the game, giving very good strategies, pin points and not boring. Note: All the commentators were Aussie.
-Hawk eye, the new computer animated simulation of where the ball would hit had it his the pads. (i’m missing this so much in the Pak vs. NZ series).
-Digital picture quality. (I’ve watched Cricket on other channels, and Channel 9’s digital quality gave it a crisp look). They even had digital widescreen capability.
-Trivia within the game. eg, sponsors giving out Power Word of the day, trival questions, etc.
-Very good camera angles. They seemed to have a camera located everywhere in the stadium.
-Good template used. Template as in green colour, solid background when showing scorecard, etc.
After watching the India and Australia Test matches, going back to Pakistan vs. NZ is kind of disapointing. Maybe it’s the hype of the India vs. Australia series that’s letting me down about Pak vs. NZ.
But anyways, it would be very good to see a improvement from other channels considering a few of the points mentioned above.
I agree with you. In HK we got both espn and channel 9 and all indians and aussies unanimously agreed that harsha bhogle and indian ads was too much to digest. we chose channel 9 every time. the comms were pretty unbiased and informative on the whole.
I know, I know...the hype has lent a certain gloss to the series.
Well Channel has a lot of experrienc in that field and the bonus are the comms ..... i sadly have to rely on Harsha, Akram, Shastri and co ..... only Boycott is a joy to listen to ..... but on Ch. 9 u've Richie Benaud, Ian Chappel, Tony Greig etc. etc. which've a big positive impact on how u perceive the whole match + the atmosphere in the stadium ......
But then we've a number of ppl on this forum which r just happy to have live cricket on their screens (especially PAK-Matches) regardless of who is commentating
I think as far as the use of technology and specially camera work is concerned i rate Uk's Sky sports even better than Australia Channel 9. too bad that dont have anyone other than David Gawar who sounds enthusiastic, and has some technical knowledge too.
The use of technology did not change greatly from 1995-2000, when i watched allmost all the Austrailan serieses...but the standards of cricket coverage in UK specially on Sky has been wonderful during that period and even after that period..