Been restricted to watching Badminton only on Supersports and nowadays its all dominated by Gillian Clarke, sometimes with great assistance from Ian Wright , Poul Erik or Morten Frost. No more of "that guy?" Gillian seems to be building up her repertoire and getting more interesting and hopping all over the world. What about other TV stations say HK,China and Ina, is Zhao Jian Hua still commenting? I would switch to Zhao as he provides good technical details.Li Yong Bo,Zhang Jing Wu are a bit stiff. Mind sharing who are the other commentators currently?
Gillian Clark and Ian Wright are good I think Not too technical but interesting and easy to understand
In the Netherlands we don't have badminton on TV It's soccer or tennis. But at soccer the commentator most of the time don't know what he is talking about...
For sure in France we don't have it neither, but I watch videos I downloaded from the video sub-forum
Hasbullah Awang still doing his ever popular play by play as well as the color commentary work for RTM1??..
Ian Wright is good. he goes technical at time which is insightful. Gillian Clark is the color commentator who excels at sensationalizing little tiniest things to just keep the line from going quiet. CCTV often get guest commentators from Chinese or ex-Chinese team. i remember ZTT, XXZ, and i am sure there were other ones too. too bad i am only half full on Mandarin and don't often get everything they say.
Hasbullah has a good memory and can always recollect past matches in his commentary. But he gets muddled sometimes and for eg.confuses Zhao Jian Hua with say Dong Jiong. Used to follow his commentaries in younger days when there was no Astro but I admit I have never switched on RTM for many years.I think it would not be good marketing for Hasbullah to continue as the idea nowadays is to appeal to the young who form more than half the populace, unless RTM thinks it is catering for the old. Hasbullah like Gillian also tends to mispronounce Chinese names.The one done by Gillian is refering to Cai Yun (pronounced Chai Yin) as Kai Yoon and that makes everyone wince. But that is understandable ,we would stumble too if we try to speak French or Dutch.
I have several badminton videos with Gillian Clarke commentary - problem is she doesn't know when to stop talking!
I have to disagree here as I think Gillian Clark is one of the better if not the best commentator for badminton at the present moment. She has played the game at its highest levels and therefore provides very insightful analysis into player psychology, tactics, strategy, trends and the development of the sport in general because she's been there as a player herself. Very often I find her comments very appropriate and I don't think she talks too much.
Gillian Clarke, sometimes she's brilliant I just get her sick of her "injection of pace" speech about LD
When you listen to anyone enough, the mannerisms can start to grate. Gillian Clarke: "ABSolutely brilliant"..."ABSolutely pheNOMenal"..."ABSolutely inCREDible". But that's just a niggle. She's an excellent commentator, especially when teamed up with someone else such as Poul-Erik or Martin Dew-Hattens. The most insightful commentary I've ever heard was from Poul-Erik, when questioned by Gill Clarke about tactics.
In the recent Asian Games Gill Clark was commentator for the Tennis events. Never seen Martin Dew on TV as commentator before though.
Even the best commentator (Clarke or Ligget) can be quite boring without someone to play-off of. Be it badminton or cycling, the entertainment value goes up if there is someone to add colour who is either: prestigious and knowledgeable (Morten Frosst/ Paul Sherwen) or just enthusiastic and annoying (John Burgess /Bob Roll).
I prefer some humours. Maybe we can put some comedians to comment. lol. Too serious is not good. Life is short. lol. Who would you recommend?
A commentary is supposed to be commenting on play. Sometimes it's a non-stop background dialogue going on. A good commentator knows when to shut the **** up!
