Keep your commentary cool

SIR: Andrew Nickolds in his Rant (February issue) rightly criticises the poverty of language used by sports journalists. Their favourite adjective is now ‘massive’: a golfer faces a six-foot putt and the commentator blurts out, ‘This is a massive putt’; or a footballer misses an easy goal and the commentator shouts, ‘It’s a massive mistake, massive’.

Another irritating verbal tic is the use of ‘for me’. The man on the telly says, ‘for me, that was an easy goal’. And in cricket commentaries, why is a short ball now described as being ‘back of a length’, rather than the more accurate ‘short of a length’? Why do these media people refer to a batsman as a ‘batter’? I thought that was something used in the cooking of fish. Malcolm Hamer, London SW13.