Arsenal?s Fabregas ? not Robert Pires ? celebrates after scoring against Juventus during the Champions League tie on Tuesday (Reuters)

It was clueless: ?Aur ye bahut shandaar goal Pires ka (when the scorer was actually Fabregas).? Or it was cricket style: ?Henry ne bahut achha gend dala (when Thierry Henry delivered a cross from the left flank).?

This is what football-lovers in pockets of the city ? from Santoshpur to Salt Lake ? were subjected to while watching the crucial Champions League quarter-final match between Arsenal and Juventus late on Tuesday. The video was of world soccer at its best, the audio was of Hindi commentary at its worst.

But in this case, it was more the city multi-system operators (MSO) at fault than ESPN STAR Sports (ESS), the broadcaster beaming the match. The sports feed sent to MSOs across the country contains one video channel and two audio channels ? English and Hindi (replaced by Tamil in case of Formula One). ?It is up to the MSO to choose which audio feed it will use,? an ESS spokesperson told Metro.

The choice, claim MSOs, lies with the majority view, which apparently increasingly prefers Hindi to English. The solution: ask for the language you want, provided you have the numbers in the neighbourhood. ?The message on the screen said the viewer could contact the cable operator for English or Hindi commentary. But at 12.30 am, who do I call for the English feed?? asked a peeved Arsenal fan in south Calcutta.

Football fans were taken by surprise because only select programmes are available on ESS in regional tongues, like big-ticket soccer and cricket in Hindi, and Formula One in Tamil.

The sports major had introduced Hindi commentary during EURO 2004. ?It enabled us to open up several non-traditional markets for soccer, like UP, Gujarat and Punjab,? explained the ESS spokesperson. Localisation, he stressed, adds value for viewers who find it ?difficult to understand accented English? or those not familiar with the language at all.

The soccer commentary bug had bitten kids? channels in town a while ago. Bugs Bunny asking ?Kya ho raha hai, bhai?? hits a jarring note for cartoon fans brought up on Mel Blanc?s trademark ?What?s up, doc?? But in case of channels such as Cartoon Network and Pogo, the Hindi mandate is more from the channels themselves than the MSOs re-routing the beam.

?The decision to provide a Hindi feed across the city was taken by these two channels after conducting surveys,? said an official of Zee Turner which distributes the channels. ?And with very few complaints, people seem to have accepted the switch to Hindi as well.?

The jury may still be out ? or should it be bahar ? on that.