Bhogle voted as best commentator and Ravi Shastri the second favourite

Cricket host and commentator Harsha Bhogle has been voted as the best commentator in a poll among the users of cricinfo.com during May-June.

London, July 14 : Cricket host and commentator Harsha Bhogle has been voted as the best commentator in a poll among the users of cricinfo.com during May-June.

Thousands of voters cast their votes online to decide Ravi Shastri and Channel Nine's Richie Benaud as the second and third best commentators, respectively.

Tony Greig and Geoff Boycott were voted as fourth and fifth favourites among the voters.

Thousands of users of the cricket website who voted in the poll had a significant percentage of Indians. They voted for their top commentators in three other categories, viz Most Unbiased, Most Entertaining and Most Insightful, added a report in cricinfo.com.

The "Most Entertaining" category saw the closest finish: Greig pipped Boycott by just three votes. David Lloyd - who is with Sky - came in third, Bhogle fourth, and Channel Nine's Bill Lawry at No. 5. Benaud was the clear winner in the "Most Unbiased" category, with Bhogle following and Shastri narrowly taking third place from Michael Holding. As may have been expected, the "Most Insightful" title was a race between Ian Chappell and Benaud.

Chappell won - though not by a large margin. Bhogle was a distant third. Bhogle, though, was the only commentator who made the top fives in all three secondary categories.

The list of nominees in the poll lasting two months:

Aamer Sohail, Danny Morrison, Ian Smith, Michael Holding, Richie Benaud, Alan Wilkins, David Gower, Jeff Dujon, Michael Slater, Robin Jackman, Allan Donald, David Lloyd, Jeremy Coney, Nasser Hussain, Sanjay Manjrekar, Arun Lal, Geoff Boycott, Kepler Wessels, Nick Knight, Simon O'Donnell, Barry Richards, Graham Gooch, L Sivaramakrishnan, Pat Symcox, Sunil Gavaskar, Bill Lawry, Harsha Bhogle, Mark Nicholas, Paul Allott, Tony Cozier, Bob Willis, Ian Bishop, Mark Richardson, Pommie Mbangwa, Tony Greig, Bruce Yardley, Ian Botham, Mark Taylor, Ramiz Raja, Waqar Younis, Charles Colville, Ian Chappell, Martin Crowe, Ranjit Fernando, Wasim Akram, Damien Fleming, Ian Healy, Michael Atherton, Ravi Shastri and Zaheer Abbas.

ANI