Something weird happened during India’s recent Test tour of Australia. On television sets across a nation, not just once but over and over.
Michael Clarke talked about the cricket.
In slightly shy, broadcast-unsteady tones, Australia’s then-injured captain analysed why Chris Rogers had edged a ball, how Shane Watson used the seam, why David Warner had two gullies, how Virat Kohli worked opposing fieldsmen, when Steve Smith would declare.
Between times, the regular cast of Nine’s Wide World of Sports held important discourse about the Commonwealth Bank and what a good bloke Glenn McGrath is and how every Australian cricket ground is really great. John Goldstein wrote to the Guardian’s over-by-over report, “My vision is very poor and at best I see blobs move these days so I depend on audio, and I’ve just listened to Shane Warne talk about his party and fancy dress. I’ve enjoyed Clarke and his insights when he is allowed to express them.”
Let’s be honest – Nine’s cricket coverage has never been a place where genius came to joust. Unchaperoned, though, recent seasons have subsided into a swamp of hokey backslapping. Grown men call each other Tubby and Binga and Slats, not as nicknames but a full-time mode of address. The guffaw is king. It’s all about being the matiest mates who ever mated.
Michael Slater plays the daft little brother who bounces around after the big kids until they let him have a go. James Brayshaw has the emotional depth of a sock puppet during a button shortage. Between them they offer insights like “Whey-hey!” and “Look out!” and “Turn it up!”. Mark Taylor, Ian Healy, Brett Lee and Warne descend to that level. Mike Hussey perches quietly to one side. Mark Nicholas, a fine writer on the game, stands like a school-play caricature of a nobleman stranded in the colonies, unable to hedge or redirect.
Here comes that fresh middle-aged banter: did you know Warnie used to be fat? Or that Braysh spends an hour in front of the mirror? But Tubs is thinning on top, look out! Maybe time for an Advanced Hair joke. Back to Heals for more about the lobster at lunch before Warnie runs a poll about pizza. It’s a mode that cricket writer Jarrod Kimber describes as “embarrassing dads”, with Ian Chappell “looking more and more like a professor at a keg party”.
Every boundary gets an “Oof!” or a “Phwoar!” Every ball is a cherry. Everything is fantastic. Talk illustrates nothing, nor will it stay quiet and let things run. We’re off to a fantastic new show that the boys are loving, Home Celebrity Garbage Wars, 8:30 Wednesdays, or this fantastic set of commemorative Josh Hazlewood pool cues, one for each of his five wickets on debut, strictly limited to 4,000 sets individually signed by Josh’s uselessly fused right claw.
The winks and nudges are so obvious they’re on teletext. You would know about ducks, ha ha ha. He’s dropped as many catches as you did, haw haw. You’d hate to get out in the nineties wouldn’t you, har har. Then as sly as a school magic show – we happen to have that footage on hand, look, here’s you getting bowled. Here’s you dropping that catch. Remember, we used to be in the Test team too. Weren’t we fellas? You were there, and you were there… In a mindless parade of plastic good humour, as human and genuine as a Barbie with the head torn off.
Clarke chimes in again: “One of the things about Kumar is his accuracy, so with Virat Kohli’s field like this, they’re going to look to attack Shane Watson’s front pad and get him lbw.”
Shut up about cricket, you nerd.
Cricket is about the story. A boundary isn’t important in the act, the ball being smashed or cracked or creamed or hammered. It’s what those runs mean in the context of an innings, what that innings means to a career, or to a total, or the total to the match, or the match to the series, or the series to the history of the rivalry, to records and their progression, to the wider game dating back to its inception. Everything in cricket is a thread in a wider tapestry, woven outward and forever, world without end, Amen.
When Misbah-ul-Haq matched the fastest Test century record against Australia in October 2014, Roar Radio caller Adam Collins launched into an impromptu song of praise. He took us from Misbah assuming the captaincy among the ruins of the 2010 spot-fixing scandal, through his slow and criticised rebuild and on to this joyous moment of vindication, catching the emotion and significance of the moment for his audience with a response that was detailed, meaningful and aptly turned.
In the Adelaide Test after a high-profile funeral, Steve Smith produced a moment of poetry, walking halfway to the boundary during his century celebration to salute the 408 painted large on the Oval turf. That footage will be forever twinned with Nine’s soundtrack, as Brayshaw mustered “I think he might be walking over to the number here to recognise Phillip Hughes and that’s… terrific stuff.”
The previous era went like a tracer bullet. Tony Greig died, Richie Benaud grew frail, and with their loss Bill Lawry retreated to special guest status at the MCG. Only Chappell remained, the least subtle of the old regime becoming an unlikely bastion of broadcasting excellence in the new. There’s already a nostalgic impulse to declare their time a golden age: “Bland was never an adjective you could use when describing the old days,” Jon Anderson wrote in the Herald Sun, which as far as sentences go is not one you could call true.
They had their shortcomings – The Twelfth Man wouldn’t have been funny otherwise – and like a road trip gone too long, they did need the windows cranked down after a while. But at least they weren’t afraid of disagreement, and at least their broadcast centred around the cricket. There’s a reason there are no more Twelfth Man albums: the bloke has nothing left to parody.
Most of Nine’s current crew are capable of better. They’ve shown it on radio spots or overseas broadcasts, even in glimpses at home. Taylor was a famously sharp captain and is now an administrator. Healy is knowledgeable, especially on wicketkeeping. No number of lunchtime masterclasses will help Warne teach you leg spin but he’s astute on the broader game. Even Slater was spoken of highly after his first English stint in 2005.
Together though, they dish up the buffoonery that Nine either tolerates or expects, empty thought-bubbles as placeholders for jokes. It’s the sound of people who know each other too well. Most presenters are former players, but Taylor, Healy, Slater, Warne, Hussey, Lee and Clarke were essentially in the same team. The biggest gap is between Taylor’s last Test in 1999 and Hussey’s first in 2005, while Brayshaw spent that era in the proximate environment of the Sheffield Shield.
Of course viewers want fun – the art of filling slow hours is cricket commentary’s joy and genius. But there’s a reason that it’s great to sit around with a bunch of mates and talk shit among yourselves, and boring to sit next to someone else’s bunch of mates while they talk shit among themselves. In-group banter is inherently dull to the world it excludes. A couple of minds in a commentary box must connect with a million outside it.
Then there’s the roster’s monotony. All gestures toward cricket’s international character are deemed satisfied by the plummy tones of Nicholas, an Englishman living half the year in Bondi. Guest callers from touring nations have been done away with as insufficiently Australian. There’s only room for baggy-green heroes in the box. The upshot is part commentary, part cheer squad, and a yawning ignorance about the opposition, piped to millions of fans through networks around the world. Especially with a World Cup about to start, this is a national embarrassment.
Brayshaw is the forward marker of the new regime: an AFL commentator who trades in hyperbole and volume and phrases like “big unit”, and calls like a man who’s kept half an eye on cricket in pubs over the years. There are the touchstones: teenage Tendulkar made a Waca Ground hundred, Laxman and Dravid were rather good, Indian batsmen have wrists. But no detail, no effort to learn. Wriddhiman Saha would never have seen the Adelaide Oval, declared Brayshaw, when Saha’s grand total of two career Tests included an Adelaide debut. The most cursory glance at Cricinfo would have done the trick. “Gee, you’re unlucky,” was Slater’s vacant-grinning response. Or later in the series, Brayshaw again: “If you’re the Indian fast bowling coach – I don’t even know who that is, by the way...”
There’s a deliberate idiocy at work here: not just not knowing, but making a point of not knowing, and of telling us he doesn’t know. Consciously or not, this is Brayshaw nudging his audience to say that he doesn’t give a fig about this touring team, that none of us need to, they’re a mere backdrop to Australian glory.
Jingoism is now Nine’s province. Too many links to the administration and players mean that cricket is called by company men. That’s literal for Cricket Australia board member Taylor, and recent Big Bash players Lee and Hussey. The rest know which side their party pies are sauced. We hear ad nauseam about India’s DRS position, but not on the running of the local game. Nor is there true criticism of players, aside from fringe types who never made the club.
When Warne suggested on-air that Mitchell Starc had timid body language, Australian coach Darren Lehmann told a press conference he would call Warne that night for an explanation. That alone is extraordinary. Starc’s next match was played with a pantomime flail of aggression for the commentary box while Warne fell over himself to issue compliments. The whole scenario was high farce. No one blinked twice.
So who cares? Why does a TV station matter?
Part of cricket’s strength in Australia is that it has always been free-to-air. Television is the best promoter of sport, and cricket’s steady presence helps it stay socially universal. England and South Africa play their games on pay TV and draw their teams from private schools, while Australian players of that background have to prove themselves all the harder. Lehmann left Gawler High at 16 to work on a Holden factory line; he sees Warner, the Matraville Brawler, as Australia’s spirit animal.
The flipside is that pay channels like Sky know they have a dedicated cricket audience. This can leave their broadcast pretty dry – sportswriter Ryan O’Connell memorably described Andrew Strauss as an “energy tampon”, and there’s a jadedness to David Gower and Bob Willis – but there’s no demand to shift focus from the game. Ian Botham would be egotist enough but doesn’t get licence. Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain are perceptive, Michael Holding has gravitas. When Australians join the call they tend to match the standard.
Nine, meanwhile, is competing for a general crowd. Apparently this is best served by Slater bounding at the camera with his tongue lolling out, or the indignity of Taylor inserting himself amid the Australian dressing room celebrations after regaining the Ashes in 2013, having sponsor Peroni poured over his head while conducting anodyne post-match chatter. In the Nine world view, channel-surfers don’t want boring stuff like analysis or expertise, they want beaming chums with familiar names.
So that’s what we get. When Healy says “Australia’s most winningest captain,” or Taylor says “that’s one of those ball-of-the-century type dismissals,” it’s because these are sportsmen who were plonked into broadcasting. This reflex that only ex-cricketers can call the game is a nonsense – career broadcasters like Jim Maxwell prove it by the day, but his kind are increasingly outnumbered. There’s no surer path to monotony and a crushingly limited world view – and let’s not even start on the place of women in the game. Cricket needs people whose aptitude as analysts, entertainers and public speakers is tested ahead of batting or bowling.
Television is cricket’s point of first contact – it educates new generations and draws them in. We need them. Loving cricket depends on comprehension, seeing its complex cross-hatching of long-term tactics and split-second response. So what do you get when six former cricketers think they’re comedians? There’s not even a punchline. Around the jocular filler go stock observations and coaching platitudes. “He needs to back himself and play his natural game,” they say of Australian strokemakers, while AB de Villiers goes about dead-batting a thousand overs for a Test match draw before making an ODI hundred from 31 balls.
That lack of insight fails cricket. When the likes of Brayshaw feel comfortable going on air without preparation, Nine is ripping off everyone who contributes to its massive ratings. The numbers stay high, but don’t prove a love of the program. Like the fast-food windows in a stadium concourse, a captive audience will queue to buy an awful sandwich. Nine’s technical crew are excellent, but people watched when there was a single grainy camera at one end of the ground. Strip back every refinement and we just want the game.
For all the joviality, there’s an ugliness at Nine. Recall the exhibition of Brett Lee bowling to TV loudmouth Piers Morgan. Lee could have demolished Morgan’s dignity and protected his own by sending down six yorkers to shatter the stumps. Instead he bowled express-pace bouncers off 18 yards at an ageing amateur flinching back toward square leg, shattering his wrist and ribs. Morgan can be a prime-grade pillock, but Lee was set on affirming himself as gold-leafed wagyu.
Nine’s executive director of cricket, Brad McNamara, is another mate, another Shield cricketer who played through the ‘90s. He’s the charmer who made news for sneering that without Nine’s money Australian ODI captain George Bailey would be flipping burgers – McNamara failing to grasp that his own income depends more on cricketers than theirs on his employer.
There was a tang of sour grapes: as Wisden India’s Saurabh Somani noted, McNamara “ended his career with New South Wales as a middling all-rounder who didn’t get close to national selection, while Bailey is in the middle of an active career.” Not part of the NSW inner sanctum, Bailey was fair game.
In February The Australian’s Niki Savva summarised Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s relationship breakdown with backbenchers. “It’s not as if people haven’t tried to tell him what the problems are. They have, for a very long time, in very many ways. They have been dismissed as liars, or stupid, or of running vendettas.” She could equally be discussing McNamara, who uses the same dismissals against Nine critics.
Channel Nine have forgotten about the story. They’re no longer commentators or cricketers but “personalities”, as Allan Border Medal advertisements reminded Test crowds all summer. They’ve gone from presenting the entertainment to thinking that they are the entertainment. Benaud and company made Nine’s coverage an institution; its inheritors blithely degrade that legacy.
It’s not that Clarke dazzled behind the microphone. He was feeling his way, and constrained by his conflict of interest. But little illustrates Nine’s problem like having a debutant be the man most closely following his job description. Greater experience has only led his colleagues to complacency.
Running a show means setting the tone, being starkly objective, dishing out roastings where required. But the modest cricketer McNamara has lost all critical capacity, too chuffed at feeling part of a higher echelon. Between arguments, his Twitter feed is mostly photos of him with Nine’s Test legends and needy conversational gambits in their direction. It’s friendship as public performance: did I mention I’m mates with Warnie? Did I mention that he’s hilarious? There’s no surer road to mediocrity than a director starstruck by his talent. There’s no more likely consequence than the talent starting to believe they deserve it.
Chappell is the only caller who still sits in the press box between stints. He knows everyone. He writes his own articles. In 1973 he told editor Graham Perkin to let him try a few columns himself, then they’d talk about a ghostwriter. That conversation never happened. A student of Benaud, who started out as a newspaperman, Chappell holds the last residual respect for that corps. Behind the scenes, while broadcasters and the press share facilities, the rest of the Nine polo shirts breeze through like there’s nobody there.
There’s no sense that they feel lucky to bring their audience the cricket. There’s the sense that we’re lucky to have them. That old line about no one being bigger than the game is drowned out by chuckles and chiacking. The lights flare. The cameras roll. Someone throws Slater a treat. Welcome back, you’re with Binga, Warnie and Heals. Sending down a few cherries. Still talking about ourselves as we sink, dinosaurs in a tar pit, into a burbling cry for relevance.
Remember that time Slats got out. Remember that time Tubby got a wicket. Remember that we used to play in this team. Remember us.
Please? Remember us?
This article was amended on 7 July 2016