Cricket calling war: Who would you pick in your commentary dream team?
FOX Sports have Adam Gilchrist. Channel 7 has Ricky Ponting. Who would be your next pick? Kerry O’Keeffe for a laugh. Shane Warne for his brutal honesty. ROBERT CRADDOCK reviews every candidate.
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FOX Sports have Adam Gilchrist. Channel 7 has Ricky Ponting. Who would be your next pick?
Australian sport has never seen a situation quite like the nation’s Great Cricket Commentator Signing War where Fox and Seven are involved in a shootout for the sport’s biggest names.
It’s a race which started from ground zero because neither had the rights before they signed six-year deals to broadcast the game in Australia.
Seven spent more than $2 million signing Ponting. Few will get anything like that but plenty will get decent feeds.
So who are the best of the rest?
It depends on what you are looking for because there is no formula for a fine commentator as many have different strengths.
Such as ...
HUMOUR: Kerry O’Keeffe remains the top seed because he can get a giggle out of 18-year-olds with his frog joke and 80-year-olds with old yarns about Jeff Thomson.
CUT THROUGH: Shane Warne’s supporters like the way he just calls its straight. If Warne is angry-frustrated-disenchanted we will know about it. That’s good. You don’t have to apologise for raw emotion.
Ian Healy is similar while Mark Waugh, despite the complications of being a national selector, is renowned for calling it as he sees it.
BIG BUCKS: Ponting chooses commentary over coaching
OVER & OUT: Triple M abandons summer cricket coverage
RESEARCH: Damien Fleming is known for his forensic scrutiny not just of careers but the news of the day and he can often be seen trawling through cricket stories on his laptop in the press box.
Relentless cricket student O’Keeffe has files on players you have never heard of.
ACCENTS: An overseas accent used to be regarded as a negative but the best ones have their own charm. Michael Holding has become a cult figure partly because of his engaging West Indian accent while Michael Vaughan (Yorkshire) and David Lloyd (Lancashire) are also easy on the ear.
GAME ANALYSIS: Plenty of good ones here including Ponting, who seems a play ahead of the game, Gilchrist and Fleming. Andrew Symonds was a Big Bash surprise packet in this category.
RECENT GRAVITAS: Fresh voices and fresh stories always catch the ear and eye. The ABC’s Chris Rogers often told us things we did not know, from mindsets to game plans and the recent nature of his career gave them extra credence. Always his own man, Rogers did not mind ruffling the occasional feather.
ENTHUSIASM: Commentators who throw themselves at the day tend to cop heaps but being enthusiastic is better than being too cool for the room and not excited because you have seen it all 100 times before. England’s Lloyd is 71 yet his enthusiasm mirrors a boy making his first visit to the cricket. Bill Lawry is 81 and still gets turned on by a leg bye. Dean Jones’ passion-o-metre is similar.
SURPRISE US: Cricket days are long and this is the longest summer of all. It’s nice to be surprised with a left-field theory or hidden story. Jones and Matthew Hayden often do that.
PLAYERS: Steve Smith is contracted to Fox Sports while the underestimated Usman Khawaja would be a perfect choice on a panel show when he retires.
The camera eats him, as they say, and his quippy sense of humour would be a winner in the same way that spinner Graeme Swann is in England.
Debonair Pat Cummins could be the Brendon Julian of the year 2030.
LEFT FIELD: It’s not always the established names that are the most entertaining. Female star Isa Guha was popular on MMM radio and author and scribe Gideon Haigh is without peer on the history of the game and worth a try.
Jimmy Maher is a great story teller while Darren Lehmann would have a million yarns to tell and is no longer in the straitjacket of the national coaching job.
The canvas is blank. The possibilities are wide and varied.
The game will never be the same.
GOOD, BAD AND UGLY
Good: Ben Hunt. Wonderful to see a young player rise to the pressure of being a million dollar player. Many have wilted under similar pressure. Hunt has responded and he deserves the iconic Maroon No 7 jersey.
Bad: The Cowboys. They have played worse games than their loss to the Wests Tigers but to be just one win off the bottom of the ladder after 10 games is astounding for a team widely tipped to take the title.
Ugly: The Aquanita racing scandal. It makes cricket’s ball tampering affair look like children squabbling over a marble in the playground. Just dreadful on every level. Cruel to racing, even crueller to animals.
Originally published as Cricket calling war: Who would you pick in your commentary dream team?