Without proper coverage on TNT Sports, we only get India's side of the story

TNT Sports broadcast the first day of the India-England Test series without any studio guests and will continue to do so for the rest of the match.

After only winning the rights to screen the five-match series last week following a protracted process, TNT Sports did not implement their usual pre-production process for the opener in Hyderabad. At lunch, they showed highlights of the morning session, hosted by broadcaster Matt Floyd, but did not have the customary analysis provided by in-studio guests.

In place of any guests Eoin Morgan, one of the commentators for the host broadcaster, is doing analysis to camera for TNT Sports before and after each day’s play at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, however.

The commentary team also includes Kevin Pietersen, alongside former Indian international cricketers Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Murali Kartik and Dinesh Karthik, as well as Indian broadcaster Harsha Bhogle.

TNT Sports are set to have a full on-screen team from the second Test, which begins on February 2 in Visakhapatnam. The broadcaster, and its previous guise BT Sport, have previously used figures including Sir Alastair Cook, Steve Harmison and Moeen Ali to provide in-studio expert analysis. Harmison is already in India, as part of TalkSport’s commentary team.

Viewers let down by club-standard TNT Sports coverage

It was a Test match, but nobody at TNT Sports appeared to realise this basic fact. Their coverage of the first day’s play was club standard – or, to be precise, club standard during the time of Covid when you had to bring your own tea to the game because nothing else was provided.

England’s spinners were ordinary but at least they were better than the coverage. At least Jack Leach and Co turned up. At least they put on a show. TNT Sports just stuck the stumps in the ground and left everyone to get on with it. No frills, nobody in the studio to stand back at the interval and offer an assessment.

There is a serious point here, concerning objectivity. The last thing that anybody in the Indian government wants at present is objectivity, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India is an arm of the government: to wit their chief executive is the son of the Home Minister.

The two former England players on the commentary team in Hyderabad, Kevin Pietersen and Eoin Morgan, talked interestingly enough about England’s batting and their shot-selection, but what of their opinion of the pitch? Pietersen, outspoken soul, went so far as to say it was a day-three pitch, with some balls behaving as they would on a day-five pitch. But an experienced player at home in the studio – Sir Alastair Cook or Steve Finn perhaps – would have felt able to go further and be more critical.

And what about the elephant in the room, or rather the elephant that was not able to get a visa in order to be allowed into England’s dressing-room, Shoaib Bashir? England were not able to pick from their full squad because of the Indian government’s policies.

This Hyderabad pitch is one for finger-spinners, not wrist-spinners. Just drill away on a length, as economically as possible, and wicket-taking deliveries will come along: finger-spin in such conditions is always the better, thriftier, option. Keep the wrist-spinner for flat pitches when the extra turn is required.

Bashir, in other words, would have been a better option on this first-Test pitch than Rehan Ahmed, and particularly useful against India’s lefthanded opening batsman Yashasvi Jaiswal, who took England’s debutant left-arm spinner Tom Hartley apart.

And who was telling us this very basic point? If not somebody in the commentary team on the ground, unprepared to criticise the Indian government’s visa policy for fear of consequences, then it should have been a pundit in the studio, with the freedom to be objective.