The Test: Why Aussie cricket team made unprecedented doco
The access given to a documentary team would have been laughed out of the room just a few years ago
TV
Don't miss out on the headlines from TV. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Fans don’t need Rise Of Skywalker’s juicy new secrets
- These sporting underdog movies will never get old
The fortified doors to one of the world’s most guarded professional sports are thrown open in a revealing new documentary that gives fans an unprecedented view into the machinations of the Australian cricket team.
Makers of The Test: A New Era For Australia’s Team, Amazon Prime Video’s first original local documentary, were given almost unfettered behind-the-scenes access in the wake of the cheating scandal in South Africa which saw Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft all banned from the game for between nine months and a year.
The ball-tampering saga during the third Test at Newlands in March 2018 — dubbed Sandpapergate —was one of the darkest days of Australian sport. But it also started a process of change within the game that would allow a documentary like this to be made with its full co-operation.
Cricket at the highest levels has been, until recently, very well stage-managed. Fans see what they’re meant to see and access has typically been very limited. A suggestion of cameras rolling unchecked behind the game’s protective thick curtain would have been laughed out of the room just a few years ago. But Adrian Brown, the show’s creator and director, believes there has been a big shift in thinking and that allowed him and his team in.
“I think off the back of South Africa it was almost that time, there was almost a changing of the guard,” Brown tells Insider. “I think that provided an opportunity to look at things in a different way.”
The Test, which starts its journey as Justin Langer takes over as coach following Darren Lehmann’s departure, provides a fly-on-the-wall view of the dressing rooms during some of the most intense moments of a match, it takes audiences inside the coach’s box as Langer and his team nervously watch on and it has a seat at the table of management meetings that have always been off limits in the past.
As well as the changing mentality of administrators, Brown believes the number of revealing sports documentaries that have been made in recent times means Australia’s cricketers were also open to the idea of connecting more with fans.
“There’s been that shift in the authenticity of being vulnerable and speaking the truth that is a great connecting point for people and for fans,” he says. “It’s endearing to the public.”
And it provides a glimpse into the struggles and sacrifice it takes to play sport at an elite level — especially one that involves so much time on the road away from family and friends.
In one interview, wicketkeeper Matthew Wade’s wife Julia talks tearfully about his struggle with being selected for Australia A’s tour of the UK which would see him required to leave before his daughter was due.
The amount of time away from home and how that impacts on both the player and their circle was an eye-opener for Brown.
“One of the things I don’t think I truly understood was the amount of time travelling and the sacrifice that it takes,” he says. “And that was for Wadey to play for Australia A, not a guarantee to even play for Australia.”
Another raw moment of the series is when Warner, back in the team after the ban, is dismissed cheaply in the first Ashes Test last year. What we have seen over years of watching cricket on TV is the disapointed batsman walk from the pitch and disappear into the sheds. This is where traditionally broadcasters cue an ad break then return to the middle with a new batsman ready to pick up the fight.
But Brown’s cameras are already in the dressing rooms and the raw emotion you get when Warner returns is equal parts fascinating and awkward — like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be but can’t look away. There is no need for a voiceover.
“It says so much without needing an interview grab from Dave Warner asking ‘how are you feeling?’ — you read it all in just that moment,” Brown says. “People say ‘oh, he struggled at the Ashes’ but it wasn’t without trying. There’s the frustration right there, it says so much.”
Tim Paine was thrust into the captaincy when Smith was stripped of the honour and the series’ makers don’t let the South Africa scandal drown out his journey nor that of the team which had to regroup and keep playing as the world pilloried the once-giants of the sport — even when the three banned players return.
In the third Ashes Test at Headingly, where Australia lost despite dismissing England for an embarrassing 67, the cameras were there to capture how such an important loss impacts the team.
“(It) is one of the most painful losses in Australian sport for so long, and to just sit in that moment and to be able to be there was fascinating,” Brown says. “There’s not much commentary around it until Tim Paine stands up — that’s a fascinating moment and we didn’t put too much around it, we just thought we’d let it speak for itself.
“You don’t need to tell people what’s going on at that moment because you can see and you can feel the devastation.”
The Test: A New Era For Australia’s Team premieres on Amazon Prime Video on March 12
Originally published as The Test: Why Aussie cricket team made unprecedented doco