Saturday, June 16, 2007

Laxman's song

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan owes his employment to an insatiable hunger. It accepts both taste and tasteless, colorful and drab, and inventive as well as ordinary. If it was not for today and this time, the richness of his voice would remain unknown, unless his sense of commentary took a sudden swerve skywards. But that is unlikely to happen, so the voice alone is to be marveled.

Is there anybody in sports broadcasting with a voice as melodious as Laxman’s? The man makes great shots out of normal ones, but he sings along and this is the difference. It is the way he employs it, conjuring from deep within the voice of a presenter on fight night in Nevada, a cartoon character, or perhaps only what he considers a parody of commentary. At times it seems he is reading aloud from a play manuscript he has only just come by. Sometimes he internalizes the manuscript but tries too hard. Whatever it is, there is nobody better at it.

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