While all this was unfolding a rather bizarre piece of commentary and analysis was playing out on ESPN who are covering the Tournament. Ian Bishop was a genuinely fast bowler for Trinidad and the West Indies. In forty three Test matches he took 161 wickets at an average of just over 24 and also snared 118 victims in 84 ODI matches at an average of 26.5 with an economy rate of 4.33.
He was forced to retire from International cricket at the age of thirty because of recurring back problems. He certainly has the credentials to discuss the challenges of Test cricket and he is now a commentator on televised matches in many parts of the world. I would not have put him in the category of Ravi Shastri or Sunil Gavaskar, who, when they are commentating on matches involving India, are regarded as apologists for the BCCI.
However when a match involving an Associate country is televised the commentators, who are almost invariably ex Test players, generally do not even do basic research into the Associate team or their players and if they are not being patronising they are dismissive. There are some notable exceptions to this such as Nasser Hussain and David Lloyd but there are few others. What was even stranger was that prior to going back up to the commentary box, Bishop had a live conversation with Ireland coach Phil Simmons as they walked round the ground during the Jamaica innings.
The two men know each other for a long time having played together for Trinidad and the West Indies and are on good terms. Phil explained that the difficulty with this leg of the trip was there was little preparation and acclimatisation time as Ireland had to preserve its funds so that it could get proper pre- tournament time in Bangladesh prior to the World T20 Cup.
He went on to say that another issue had to be dealt with over the past couple of days. Ian Bishop is an experienced media man at this stage yet didn’t ask Simmons what the issue was and moved the conversation on to another topic. Now either Bishop wasn’t really listening to Phil’s answers or he knew what the issue was and didn’t think it was appropriate to elaborate on it given its sensitivity and the absence of an official Cricket Ireland statement on the situation.
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