Channel 9 roasted for putting cricket icon and commentator Mark Taylor on diving duty

Viewers were far from happy when cricket legend and Channel 9 commentator Mark Taylor turned up calling an unlikely sport at the Paris Olympics.

Mark Taylor was out of his element commentating on the diving. Picture: Hamish Blair/Getty Images

Mark Taylor copped some unplayable deliveries during his career as Australia’s opening batsman but none of them was as bad as what he faced from Channel 9 on the opening day of the Olympics.

Poor old Tubby was never going to be able to lay any bat on the women’s diving in the commentary box.

Viewers aren’t silly, they like commentators to stick in their lanes and while a bit of versatility is accepted, this was a car crash waiting to happen.

Taylor is a long time loyal servant of Nine and would think he deserves to get a trip to Paris but finding the right spot in the order was always going to be the key with no cricket at the Olympics.

Sending him out to face the new ball at the women’s 3m springboard synchronised diving was a risk which backfired badly. While he wasn’t sitting in the experts chair, you still needed an air of authority from the play-by-play commentator.

The outrage from viewers wasn’t a surprise with many labelling it “disrespectful” to the divers who have worked for four years for their big moment to then have it being described to family and friends back home by a former cricketer who wouldn’t have seen a diving board for 40 years.

Mark Taylor calling the diving. A wonderful cricketer. But a little disrespectful to the athletes. Tubby probs knows nothing about this sport. He’s admitted as much.
The EP who made this decision? Your last.#bellyflop

— Tim Bailey (@dailybaileylive) July 27, 2024

The problem is not Mark Taylor per se, it is the fact that not having an expert commentator does a disservice to the sport itself. The Olympics is a once in a 4 year window for the general public to some very niche pursuits.
A big miss by the broadcaster.#ParisOlympics2024

— OntheFlat (@Ontheflat3) July 28, 2024

Imagine if 2008 Olympic diving champion Matthew Mitcham had popped up on Nine’s cricket coverage when they were still doing it back in the day. There was also a bit of diving Tubby about Fremantle Dockers legend Matthew Pavlich surfacing at the equestrian.

We know he’s made a decent crack of it as a newsreader over in Perth but we haven’t seen him on horseback too many times before with the marquee at Railway Stakes Day probably the closest he’s got to the nags. One man who can get away with doing play-by-play commentary on dozens of different things is Eddie McGuire.

He has made an art form out of it throughout his long career but the man who was once ‘Eddie Everywhere’ is barely there. He’s on the graveyard shift between 1.30am-6.30am and while there are plenty of medals then, most of Australia isn’t watching. Making a good hosting studio set should also be at the top of the to-do list but there is an old-fashioned feel about the whole thing. As a rule it’s hard to please everyone as there are going to be some things which get through to the keeper but Tubby at the diving, that’s shouldering arms without offering a shot in the first over.

Originally published as Channel 9 roasted for putting cricket icon and commentator Mark Taylor on diving duty