The result of a Mitchell Johnson six in a one-day international at Harare in 2014
• Of the 15 sixes struck by Australia in a ODI against Zimbabwe at Harare in 2014, one smashed into a broadcast box window with glass fragments hitting one of the commentators. Sporting a few minor cuts, former fast bowler-turned-broadcaster Pommie Mbangwa continued his stint after a beaming Mitchell Johnson had raised a hand in apology.
The result of a Mitchell Johnson six in a one-day international at Harare in 2014
• A BBC cricket broadcaster achieved an unusual hat-trick in 2011 when a six smashed through the commentary box during a match at Taunton. During a 59-ball century from Peter Trego, BBC commentator Edward Bevan was on air when the Somerset batsman smashed one of his six sixes: “It’s coming towards us … is it going to hit us?” It did, with Bevan forced to cut short his duties: “It hit me on the back and I was quite shaken for a while. There’s a bruise there – in fact I couldn’t carry on.”
It was the third time in his career that Bevan’s commentary duties had been interrupted by a cricket ball: “Apparently when the ball went through the window, he [Trego] stood down and put his fist through the air as if to say ‘I’ve been trying to do that for years and I’ve done it at last!’”
• The BBC issued an apology in 2015 after being duped by an imposter who pretended to be a former Pakistan Test batsman and was paid to appear on a number of its cricket programmes. Nadeem Alam, a club cricketer who had only ever played for his home town Huddersfield, posed as Nadeem Abbasi, who appeared in three Tests in 1989: “If I ever find Nadeem Alam, I will punch him in the face. The BBC is a big institution … surely they must check.”
• A former Australian batsman was hired by ABC TV in 2010 to comment on the top stories of the country’s daily newspapers. A contributor to the breakfast show on the News 24 network until 2013, Paul Sheahan appeared in 31 Tests and three one-day internationals.
• Tasmanian batsman George Davies was the son of the founder of the Hobart Mercury newspaper. A state captain, he appeared in seven first-class matches in the 1870s and 80s, scoring 149 runs and taking three wickets.
• The Trinidad-born Trevor McDonald, one of Britain’s best-known TV newsreaders, cites cricket as providing one of his fondest childhood memories. Sir Trevor, who penned biographies on West Indies legends Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards, remembers “… making cricket bats out of coconut branches and begging for tennis balls.”
• Former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist threatened legal action in 2013 after a Twitter account bearing his name bobbed up during the Ashes series. During the Nottingham Test, England fast bowler Stuart Broad had gained worldwide media attention after edging a ball into the hands of Michael Clarke but, with the umpire ruling in his favour, stayed put. The ensuing free-for-all saw an Adam Gilchrist impersonator take to Twitter for some fun at the wicketkeeper’s expense. A noted “walker”, Gilchrist was unimpressed: “AdamCGilchrist this is Adam Gilchrist here. Stop pretending to be me. I know you say ‘parody’ on your profile but now it’s gone too far.”
In the aftermath of the incident, the Brisbane Courier Mail newspaper refused to mention Broad in its copy during the Gabba Test in the follow-up series, while Australia’s coach Darren Lehmann labelled Broad a cheat on a Sydney radio station. He was fined $3,000, a tab picked up the Triple M network which was later banned from interviewing anyone from the England squad after banners having a dig at Kevin Pietersen were flown over the Gabba.
• Rajdeep Sardesai played in seven first-class matches for Oxford in 1987, later becoming a senior editor at the CNN television news channel. A journalist and news presenter in India, Sardesai had a highest score of 63 not out, made on his first-class debut, against Kent at Oxford.
• A South African-born journalist who worked for CNN and the Jerusalem Post is credited with making cricket popular in Israel. A well-known face on TV screens around the globe for a decade or more, Jerrold Kessel played in 16 matches for Israel in the 1979, 1983 and 1990 ICC Trophies as a captain, wicketkeeper and middle-order batsman.
• When a high-profile Australian radio announcer was given the flick in 2012, the move drew plaudits from Shane Warne. The former Australian bowler gave the thumbs-up to the sacking after 3AW’s Derryn Hinch had mocked Warne on his show: “Well done 3AW on sacking Hinch. I used to think he was entertaining and clever, but in recent times he has just spoken rubbish and lost the plot.”
• For the opening Test of the Australian summer in 2011/12, a first took place with the man of the match award chosen by viewers of Channel Nine. James Pattinson was nominated by viewers as the best player in the first Test against New Zealand after viewers voted with their fingers through an app called Cricket Live. But the system was dumped after just two Tests when viewers got it wrong in Hobart, voting century-maker David Warner the best player of the second Test over New Zealand’s Doug Bracewell who took a match-winning haul of nine wickets, including 6-40 in the final innings.
• In the same year that ABC cricket commentator Jim Maxwell was recognised for his services to broadcasting with an Australia Day honour, he was denied media accreditation to cover an Australia-India Test series. After the ABC had rejected a fee quoted by the Indian cricket board to broadcast all Tests of the 2012/13 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the national broadcaster had decided on the next best thing – sending Maxwell to phone in reports from the grounds, a proposal rejected by the BCCI.
Maxwell, who tried three times to gain an ABC cadetship before he was finally successful in 1973, was awarded an Order of Australia medal in 2013 for “significant service to sport, particularly cricket, as a commentator, and to the community”.
• Freddie Grisewood, who appeared in one first-class cricket match, forged a successful career in television broadcasting. He played for Worcestershire in 1908, and was the voice for the BBC’s first-ever live outside televised broadcast, the coronation of King George VI in 1937. He was also behind the microphone for the first TV broadcast of tennis from Wimbledon.
• An Australian TV sports presenter became a news item herself in 2013 when she was shown on live television while attending a Ryobi Cup match as a spectator. During play in the Queensland-Victoria match in Sydney, Channel Nine presenter Yvonne Sampson began to simulate a sex act while talking to two friends, all caught live on national TV: “This is embarrassing. I was telling the story of how we were throwing mini Christmas trees in the studio one time when a cameraman was caught thrusting away on one.”
• A BBC commentator went undercover in 2011, turning out in disguise for a second-grade club in Yorkshire. In 2006, the Goldsborough XI put up a shameful batting display against Disforth, in which no batsman got off the mark. A rematch took place five years later, with the Goldsborough XI bolstered by the inclusion of former England captain Michael Vaughan, who played under the name of Gary Watson, sporting a tattoo, beer belly and mullet: “The other side had no idea it was me. It was great fun getting dressed up, except for the original prosthetic fitting. I had to have this blue seaweed goo all over my face to make the cast, which made it difficult to breathe, let alone talk. Batting in the suit was pretty tough as I was sweating so much in the prosthetic mask. The pillow stuffed down my shirt to give me a beer belly made it hard to run. I was worried I might get run out. I had a decent knock of 28, the team played well and we won.”
A beaming Michael Vaughan gets a massage before going on air in his role as a BBC commentator during the 2010/11 Ashes series in Australia
• A British newspaper poll conducted in 2009 found that the laws of cricket were among the most confusing subjects in modern life. Topping the Daily Telegraph study of 5,000 respondents was foreign call centres, followed by algebra. The laws of cricket came in at No. 9.
• After making his first-class debut for Boland B in 1993/94, a future cricket commentator had to delay his debut for the first XI to attend his tribal circumcision ceremony. After a first-class career of 38 matches, Lulama Masikazana landed a gig in TV as a commentator thanks to leading South African journalist Neil Manthorp: “He wasn’t very good, but we had a lot of fun.”
Kerry O’Keeffe receives a special ABC cricket cap to mark his final stint in the commentary box, at the SCG in 2014
• Notwithstanding his cult-like status as a cricket commentator, former Australian slow bowler Kerry O’Keeffe generated a Facebook page calling for his sacking from the ABC. Formed by a so-called “group of concerned cricket citizens”, the page – replete with O’Keeffe’s name misspelt – attracted next to no support.
The Australian sporting public is, I submit, a generally forgiving bunch. We forgave Shane Warne. We even seem to have forgiven Margaret Court, in as much as we have not yet placed her in an institution. But even the most happy-go-lucky, laid-back of sporting publics has its breaking point. And I fear that breaking point may be approaching if drastic changes are not made to the Channel Nine commentary team.
Now, please bear in mind, I do realise that Nine’s commentators are some of the greats of the game, with magnificent playing records that command respect. So don’t think for moment that the vicious character assassination in which I am about to engage reflects on their sporting achievements in any way.
I’m not saying the Nine team is beyond hope. The situation is not irreparable. There is nothing wrong with Channel Nine’s cricket coverage that could not be fixed by sacking the entire commentary team and replacing them with a CD of soothing ocean noises. Because I’m not sure I can take much more.
Of the banter – the match situation assessments which veer between the blindingly obvious and the bewilderingly inaccurate. Of the cringe-worthy plugs for other shows on Nine. It’s beyond a joke.
All of the commentators are culpable, with Mark Taylor’s rapid-fire babbling which spills haphazardly out over the game like tomato sauce out of a bottle that’s been struck too hard on the bottom. I don’t even know what he’s saying when he starts talking: my brain just sends the signal that someone in the background has turned on a Fujitsu air-conditioner, and I adjust accordingly.
Meanwhile, beside “Tubby” sit his erstwhile team-mates, Michael Slater and Ian Healy, the latter of whom is mostly occupied with describing events in the fantasy game being played inside his own skull rather than the one actually happening, and the former of whom’s main job is to engage in lively banter about which member of the commentary team the viewers would most like to see French-kiss a mongoose, as measured by the Vodafone Viewers’ Verdict, a brilliant new innovation for the telecast, inspired by Nine producers’ belief that the last thing any cricket fan wants to do with his time is watch the cricket. And then of course there are the old reliables. Bill Lawry still keeps plugging away, desperately trying to convince everyone that life is much, much more exciting than it really is.
And then there’s Ian Chappell, who pops into the commentary box every now and then to continue a thought he started to have in 1987 but hasn’t quite fully teased out yet about David Boon’s wrists.
Ah, but what of Mark Nicholas, you say? Well, when he first arrived, I liked Mark. He was British, which meant he was classy-sounding, and he seemed to have something of a handle on the game. But it turns out he’s just like all the rest – he will happily fake enthusiasm at ten consecutive overs of batsmen tapping singles to deep fielders in the middle overs of a one-day game.
And even worse, at every opportunity he’ll grovel to the cricketing greats in the box, meekly asking them “what’s it like, playing Test cricket?” Which frankly makes me lose all respect for him, and irritates me because the fact he’s asking the questions suggests he thinks any of us care what these senile fools think about anything.
And yet despite all this, cricket commentary on Nine does not actually hit rock-bottom, until James Brayshaw steps up to the microphone. And with a mix of pig-ignorance, faux-blokey anti-comedy, dementedly facile analysis, and an all-round on-air personality that will soon be banned by the UN as a chemical weapon, “JB” plumbs depths of commentary undreamed of since Geoff Boycott ate some funny mushrooms and asked Jonathan Agnew to marry him.
Listening to James Brayshaw commentate on cricket is the sports-viewing equivalent of having your kidneys forcibly removed by chimpanzees. So what are we to do, to improve this situation.
Well, here is my theory: Nine’s woes stem from the fact that it has always been obsessed with employing ex-cricketers. Feeling the achievements of its team lent gravitas to the coverage, they recruited yesteryear’s greats to provide comment and analysis.
Admittedly, Nicholas and Brayshaw break this rule somewhat, but they are at least both former first-class cricketers, and in Brayshaw’s case, in possession of some compromising photos of Nine directors.
The point is, it’s time for something new. We’ve tried experience, we’ve tried deep knowledge, and it’s been an unmitigated failure. It’s time for a fresh approach: let’s try ignorance. Let’s put some complete noobs up in the commentary box and see how they go. And I don’t just mean people with no broadcasting experience, or people who haven’t played at the highest level.
I mean people who have never even watched a game of cricket. Possibly people who don’t even WANT to watch a game of cricket. That way we’ll get a refreshing new perspective on the game: through their virgin eyes, we too shall see the game anew, reinvigorating our enthusiasm for it. Just imagine how fun it will be watching cricket to the sounds of:
“Ah … the … tall one … the bowlman I think he’s called … he’s thrown the ball at the batman, and … the batman … has hit it maybe? It’s gone … somewhere, I dunno. One of these guys is running, not sure why. Oh actually a few of them are running. The ones with the sticks are running too, the batman and his friend. What do you think Sam?” “OH MY GOD THIS IS BORING.”
I think with this sort of commentary we can make cricket come alive again, and win back all those fans who deserted Nine’s commentary in favour of watching drug addicts ride up hills in France. A clean slate, a new era, a vibrant new start for the art of cricket commentary.
• In what was claimed to be a world first, a village cricket match in Lancashire was streamed live over the internet in 2011. Staged to promote the need for fast broadband in rural areas, the match was between the village of Wray and a team billed as the Rest of the World.
• Former Fleet Street editor-turned-CNN host Piers Morgan was a handy cricketer in his younger days, once taking all ten wickets in an innings in a schools match. In 1977, a 12-year-old Morgan took 10-9 off 11.2 overs for Cumnor House against Copthorne: “I was a fast bowler in those days. One year I got picked for the England Prep School squad but never played. My best bowling tally was ten wickets for nine runs. Later, I became an off-spinner and focused more on my batting. I joined Newick cricket club at 13 and my best batting scores include 107 and three others in the 90s batting at No. 3. In 1983, I was a member of the side that toured Malta and my first-ever published article was actually a write-up of this event in a local paper.”
• A motoring mishap in 2008 saw Australia’s Michael Clarke make the pages of a Sydney newspaper after rescuing his then-off-field partner Lara Bingle whose car had run out of petrol on a busy thoroughfare. The Clark-Bingle bungle resulted in a Sydney radio station challenging its listeners to deliberately disrupt peak-hour traffic by running out of fuel. The competition earned the station a rebuke from police after the winner caused havoc on the Sydney Harbour Bridge at 7am.
• Nasser Hussain found himself in the centre of a media storm in 2011 when he compared some of India’s players to donkeys. During a commentary stint on Sky for the England-India Twenty20 international at Manchester, the former England player noted: “I would say the difference between the two sides is the fielding. England are all-round a good fielding side. I do believe that India have few … three or four very good fielders and one or two donkeys in the field.”
The donkey comparison didn’t go down well with Rajiv Shukla, vice-president of the Indian cricket board: “One should adopt restraint while making observations about players. Commentators should not make such comments. We will definitely look into it. Every player has to be respected irrespective of his performance. I don’t think this comment was appropriate.”
• A grandfather of prominent Australian journalist Jennifer Byrne appeared in first-class cricket scoring two centuries with a best of 143. Dallas Brooks, who was Governor of Victoria for 14 years, appeared in 29 matches under the name of Reginald Brooks, once taking 8-90 in a first-class match at The Oval in 1927.
• David Warner was handed a maximum penalty of almost $6,000 by Cricket Australia in 2013 after opening up on Twitter. Upset at the placement of his photograph next to a story about gambling in the IPL, Warner took to Twitter to attack two News Limited journalists, Malcolm Conn and Robert Craddock: “In hindsight, clearly I let my frustrations get the better of me and posted some inappropriate tweets. While I disagreed with the story and my image being used alongside the story, I could have chosen my words better.”
• Iconic UK broadcaster Henry Blofeld once appeared in an episode of the radio series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2003, Blofeld appeared in 17 first-class matches for Cambridge University, scoring a century (138) opening the batting against the MCC at Lord’s in 1959.
Henry Blofeld, who made a duck in his first first-class innings and a half-century in his only List A innings
• Australia’s national broadcaster broke new ground during its cricket coverage in 2014/15 by introducing its first blind commentator. James Pittar – one of the world’s premier marathon swimmers – joined Jim Maxwell behind the microphone on ABC radio, describing play for three overs on the second day of the fourth Test against India in Sydney: “I’ve met James before so I knew he had the confidence to speak. But to sit there and feed off the sound and create the commentary was remarkable and inspirational. He was able to keep giving the score, which is easy enough for us because we can see it, but he obviously couldn’t.”
• Former New Zealand cricketer Iain O’Brien issued an apology in 2012 after tweeting that he was making a comeback. O’Brien, who had twice retired from the game, said sorry after a number of journalists took up the story on April Fool’s Day.
• India’s Virat Kohli celebrated a groundbreaking milestone in 2015 by becoming the first cricketer to attract 5 million followers on Twitter. Kohli went past Sachin Tendulkar who’d commanded a following of some 4.9 million at the time.
• TV broadcasting history was made in England in 2010 with a one-day international shown in 3D for the first time. British TV network Sky Sports was the first channel to go three-dimensional, for the match between England and Bangladesh at Trent Bridge.
• The father of a New Zealand Test cricketer was once a voice on ABC Radio in Australia. Lou Vincent’s father Mike has worked as a print, radio and television news journalist in a number of cities in Australia as well as for Radio New Zealand in Auckland and at a community radio station as a night-time DJ.
• A BBC commentator had to leave the box during an on-air stint in 2012 after feeling sick. While Kevin Pietersen was batting, Mark Church stepped outside, vomited, and returned to his seat without missing a ball.
Church had another memorable moment behind the microphone during the year when he and a fellow commentator got the giggles during a match at The Oval. While on air with Johnny Barran, the latter referred to modern-day batsmen as “slappers”, a derogatory term used mostly to describe women who enjoy frequent sex: “I think most, a large proportion of players are natural slappers … slappers of the ball I should say [laughter] … I can’t believe what I just said. I do apologise.”
• An Indian father-and-son combination graced the airwaves for the first time in 2014 with Sunil and Rohan Gavaskar sitting side by side in a TV commentary box. The two came together for coverage of the Ranji Trophy semi-final between Maharashtra and Sunil’s old team Mumbai. Sunil appeared in 348 first-class matches – for India, Mumbai and Somerset – while Rohan played in 117, mostly for Bengal.
• Three British journalists were kicked out of Australia in 2014 after covering the Ashes and the ensuing one-day series. The Sun’s John Etheridge, Dean Wilson from The Mirror and The Daily Mail’s Paul Newman had been travelling around the country on 90-day working visas which expired.
• An Australian radio producer was stood down as a ground announcer during England’s tour of Australia in 2013/14 after allegedly introducing Monty Panesar to the crowd at Alice Springs in an Indian accent. The ABC’s David Nixon was reportedly sacked from his role on advice from Cricket Australia: “It comes as a complete surprise to me to be at the centre of a controversy about racial slurring, and I absolutely refute any allegation that I feigned an Indian accent. ‘There’s a change of bowler at the Traeger Avenue end ... it’s Montyyy!’ That was it.”
• The Zimbabwe and Ireland teams at the 2015 World Cup joined forces in condemning a newspaper article that attacked Irish all-rounder John Mooney and his battle with depression and alcohol. Mooney had taken a disputed boundary catch in a match at Hobart which ultimately saw Zimbabwe eliminated from the competition.
Writing for the Zimbabwe Herald, journalist Robson Sharuko accused Mooney of dishonesty in claiming the catch that resulted in the exit of Sean Williams on 96: “A recovering alcoholic, who was so depressed last year he even contemplated killing himself, was the Irishman who sealed Zimbabwe’s fate at this World Cup in Hobart with a shameless piece of fielding dishonesty that has soiled this global cricket showcase.”
Cricket Ireland chief exectutive Warren Deutrom described the article as “crass” and “childish diatribe”: “We understand, as does John, that public figures may occasionally be subject to negative comment, but in mocking John in such a contemptuous fashion, and using his personal difficulties as a mere punchline, the Zimbabwe Herald has demonstrated breath-taking crassness and a gross error of editorial judgement.”