Mike Selvey is among many high profile cricket pundits publicly lamenting the perceived dumbing down of Test Match Special on Radio Four. According to the one-time TMS summariser, to bring in commentators from Five Live with little knowledge of the "cadences of Test match cricket" is "disrespectful" and "superficial". Probably appropriate that those disrespectful and superficial types over at Five Live took charge of the coverage of Alan Stanford's Twenty20 for $20m then. It was of course the most disrespectful and superficial sort of cricket imaginable.
But Five Live's bubbly and excited coverage was good. Really very good actually, even if reassuringly aided and abetted by TMS stalwart Jonathon Agnew.
Andrew Strauss, already marching eloquently towards the media career his education merits, makes a good and enthusiastic pundit - similar to rugby's Will Greenwood. And Agnew himself put in a sterling shift having bravely got over his hatred of all things brash early in the piece. When he mooted that this monstrosity might be the garish future of international cricket - and that, shock of shocks, he was quite looking forward to the game - it was almost as if listeners had eavesdropped on a cricket commentators' self help session: 'Hi, my name's Jonathon and I'm battling an addiction to disparaging anything that modernises cricket'.
Arlow White got right into the spirit of things too. "Because it's Twenty20 cricket and not a Test match," he explained to his summariser, "can I call you Viv instead of Sir Vivian Richards?" Clearly for White, this was taking the notion of a shortened game of cricket to it's logical extension.
Highlight of the night's coverage? The pre-match interview with Kevin 'picture of integrity' Pietersen. "Personally the money doesn't matter to me," the England skipper espoused in another attempt to make this cash cow butchery look like a matter of national pride. Comforting words from a South African multi-millionaire one feels.
According to some figures being recklessly bandied about, 700m people were tuned in worldwide to the match. And yes, the small percentage of those who were tuned in on Five Live got a thoroughly respectable broadcast. But no, the magical wit of of TMS seems to be the preserve of Radio Four. Mike Selvey can rest assured that some things are best done old fashioned.
Ultimately though, good as Five Live's coverage of a dull and superficial match was, Strauss, Agnew and co couldn't quite stop me switching over to Match of the Day.
Saturday 1 November 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
