From Darren Harold, New Zealand

Nothing tops watching a match live at the ground © Getty Images

What a fantastic time to be a cricket fan. As I pen this piece I am part way through a long cricketing day – in hours only, the time is positively racing by! In the space of one day, I’ll hear, read and see the exploits of six international teams playing in all three of the games’ formats via a seemingly endless list of media sources.

Over the course of a tiresome Friday in the office, I listened to my native New Zealand turn in a mediocre ODI performance against a Zimbabwean side in Dunedin still struggling to reacclimatise themselves to the rigours of international cricket. Though not the decisive victory they were hoping for, the feats of McCullum, Guptill, Nicol et al. were described via an audio commentary on my laptop, while I checked the details on ESPNcricinfo’s live scoring.

Upon arriving home, Aggers, Boycs and Blowers were setting the scene before the opening session of the third Pakistan versus England test from Dubai. Competing with the excited shouts of my young son, their dulcet tones filtered out of my iPad thanks to a digital feed via BBC Radio 5 Live’s Test Match Special (TMS).

Very soon, I’ll flick on the television to see if the hapless Indians can finally get a victory on their Australian tour in the second T20 from the MCG. The mute button will be on though so I can keep listening to the game in the desert – that, and I can only take so much of the Channel 9 cheerleading (sorry, commentary) team.

With the vast sums of money now flowing through our game and players seen as commodities to raise a profit rather than craftsmen playing their trade, the ever increasing amount of international cricket played across the globe provides spectators with endless opportunities to indulge their passion.

But it hasn’t always been so. Growing up as a child, international cricket was special for a couple of reasons –there was far less of it, and even less was broadcast outside the two countries involved. Stuck at the bottom of the world in our little corner of South Pacific paradise, we got very little coverage if New Zealand wasn’t playing.

New Zealand’s international matches were shown on a publicly owned television station (we only had two channels at the time) and every series were sponsored by either a tobacco company or a brewery. The same matches were broadcast on national radio, as were some of our domestic first-class matches. On a good day there was occasionally a comment on other international matches on the six o’clock news; if not, you’d have to wait for the newspaper to be delivered the next morning. How things have changed.

Cricket now operates in a global village where an internet connection provides access to matches the world over, regardless of where you call home. Just last week, I could listen to three Test matches in the course of a day, though none illustrated the power of digital media, and the changes in cricket commentary, more than a short session in Abu Dhabi. With the broadcast connections dropping out in the stadium during the second Test, the TMS coverage was off air for little more than a few minutes. It returned via an iPad Skype connection from Abu Dhabi to the studios in England and was then shared around the world. It may have been a little crackly, but it was worth it to see Messers Boycott and Blofeld talking into a tiny iPad microphone as I listened to it on the same device while laughing at Twitter pictures from the commentary box.

The choice of mediums to keep up to date is endless, and is broadcast from cricket grounds, large and small, the world over. There are many more than those I’ve already spoken of. Pay television, in all its guises, pushes pictures to countries where the only viewers are expats, and live internet video streaming means we can watch coverage at our convenience; but don’t tell the ECB – I hear they’re not happy about it. In T20, it’s even become commonplace to have the players miked up to give viewers another perspective, and no-one has done it better than Shane Warne in the BBL. He would describe how he was going to take a wicket, and then deliver - as Brendon McCullum found out. Twitter provides comment from scribes, punters and players alike, all in 140 character slots.

Established cricketer journalists write pieces for any number of websites and online publications and aspiring cricket writers make their point with blogs on every cricketing topic – take your pick, the choices are unlimited. Sites such as ESPNcricinfo provide a one-stop cricket library, including a statistics engine to satisfy even cricket’s most knowledge thirsty anorak – ever wondered who has the most Man of the Match awards in a losing ODI side?

Online cricket forums continue to pop up with the regularity of an Indian wicket, and we can access most of them via a multitude of apps on our mobile phones. There are plenty of other mediums and they just keep coming – thankfully, my better half is a cricket fanatic too, so I get to indulge my cricketing passion.

Many moons ago before we ever met in person she would email me score updates so I can keep up with the cricket during meetings. Even with all the media choices, there is still nothing that tops watching a match live at the ground. It would be easy to never leave the couch, the television, the laptop and the phone, but there is nothing that beats the atmosphere of a live contest. I took my young lad, and his mum, to the final of the HRV Cup T20 a couple of weeks back – his first introduction to our great game.

He left three hours later having tried to evade a security guard and invade the field of play, ridden an old roller and clapped Colin de Grandhomme launching the Canterbury attack out of the ground. But the thing that stuck with him? He got a sponsor’s hat that he now tells all and sundry is his ‘cricket hat’ - you can’t get that kind of involvement at home or social media. Finally, if the media all gets a little too much but you still need your cricket fix, get yourself a copy of Wisden. Cricket’s bible has been around since 1864 so the editors must be doing something right – will Twitter have the same longevity?

From D Yogesh, France

It's time to stop linking an expert's commentary with his team's performance © AFP

Ian Chappell, like his brother did, seems only to divide opinions of sub-continent followers. His latest branding of some of Shahid Afridi's actions as "idiotic" has led to vilification from many Pakistanis. Just the way the Indians reacted when he called for Sachin Tendulkar's retirement after the 2007 World Cup.

Firstly, on Tendulkar. If I remember right, Chappell was not alone in calling for his retirement. There were hordes of Indians, too, wondering in more polite terms about Tendulkar's decision to continue playing despite a "seemingly" interminable decline. One among these hordes was a man considered by many to be one of India's finest cricket writers and a Tendulkar admirer for long - Rohit Brijnath. Similar doubts went through the mind of many a writer, spectator and even ardent devotees (I am one of them). Some voiced it publicly and politely like Brijnath, and others more bluntly like Chappell.

Of course just as geniuses do, Tendulkar answered his critics with his performance. But that does not blind the fact that Tendulkar's form and runs were deserting him since the 2003 World Cup. Everybody knew it. Injuries were piling up. Many of us hoped he would capture some of the magic of his youth and sign off stylishly, but I would like to hear from someone who believed he would have the almost super-human second-wind he has had since then.

Despite my strong conviction that Tendulkar is the best player post-1990s, I respect the opinions of those called for his head. There is something seriously wrong with the media if not a single writer calls for the head of a No. 4 batsman whose averages for four consecutive years are as follows - 17 (5 matches), 91.50 (10 matches), 44.40 (6 matches), 24.27 (8 matches), with even the 91.50 being primarily due to three not-outs.

Now coming to Afridi issue. Chappell is not the first and will not be the last to describe Afridi's actions in such a manner. The problem being that the man as a bowler and captain seems to be intelligent but as a batsman, the less said the better. Here's what Wasim Akram said about Afridi : "If Afridi hasn't learnt to bat in 10 years, then I wonder when he will." Well, how would you bluntly call a man who has not learnt his daily trade in 10 years ? For a start, 'idiotic' is not a bad word. Akram put it in polite terms and Chappell put it bluntly.

I do not agree with Chappell's stubborn refusal of Afridi's captaincy and indeed, Chappell, like many strongly opinionated commentators has often infuriated me with inflexible opinions. But should that mean I vilify a commentator just because we differ on something?

What is more disheartening is to see are comments insinuating that since Australia lost to Pakistan, Chappell has lost his right to criticise Pakistan. I am not sure how Australia's cricket performances bestow rights on Chappell to praise or criticise the opponent. Does it mean that if Australia wins, all that Chappell, Taylor and Healy say should be embellished in gold? Even in the comments section, an Indian cannot criticise a Pakistan or Australia player. The first response is 'look at your own team and they are struggling'. Well, even if that is the case that neither proves or disproves my criticism and only diverts attention from it. If I am allowed to criticise players from teams only when India defeats them, then for the most of 1990s, I would have been on a silent-vow. Even in the last month, should I criticise only the Associates, Bangladesh and West Indies?

It is sad to see a good writer like Kamran Abbasi, too, linking Australia's poor performance with Chappell's commentary. I agree with Abbasi's article except his last paragraph that equates Chappell's reference to Afridi with Australia calling him so ("Indeed, a more troublesome issue for Australia is that your World Cup campaign must be in genuine danger if you are walloped by a team led by an idiot?"). The article was indeed an apt response barring this last paragraph. Such vilification of commentators and writers is nothing new and seems a clear case of pseudo-nationalism.

It reminds me of friends who were upset that Danny Boyle was showing Indian slums, forgetting that countless Indian directors had done so. Their fury was not that India had despicable slums or someone had shown it but rather a foreigner had exposed the country's ugly side to the world. Ditto is the case here. The issue seems to be less about Tendulkar's retirement or Afridi's idiocy but more about an Australian calling it.

Increasingly, cricketing discourse and especially comments sections on many forums are marred by such narrow-mindedness. If Chappell calling Afridi's actions as idiotic is wrong, then please say so and explain it. Indeed, question his double standards over Afridi's and Brett Lee's celebrations? Chappell's favourite Shane Warne was no less a exhibitionist on the field. But why bring his nationality or his national team's performance into the picture? They bear no relationship whatsoever to the validity or invalidity of his comments.

Respond (positively or negatively) by every means possible to the comments if you want to, or reject them, but please do not pollute or pervert interesting discussions by going after the writer or the commentator. They are not paid to commentate on only one team or the winning team. It's a sad development if even the so-called experts who respond to them are being jingoistic and only encouraging base pseudo-nationalistic tendencies among fans.