Stumps drawn on my childhood memories
With the Listener and many other publications closing, it’s been a tough week for an already ailing media. Radio Sport also closed. With no sport being played, apart from wondering to what extent highly paid sports stars will be asked to cut their salaries, there’s not much to discuss.
Radio Sport had its beginnings in Sports Roundup, which used to broadcast on the government YC network. During my childhood, it inadvertently provided a soundscape for a summer battle between me and my father. Phil hated every team sport, ever since he was forced to play rugby as a child. I once asked him if there were any sports he liked. ‘‘Of course: tramping and gymnastics.’’
I loved all sports, especially cricket. When Sports Roundup commandeered Phil’s beloved classical music YC network for the summer daylight hours, he was apoplectic. ‘‘We have enough bloody sport in this country already.’’
While I dreamed of going to popular camping grounds like Mt Maunganui for holidays, paradise for Phil was an uninhabited tussocky lakeside. My older siblings fled to music festivals or live-in holiday jobs and I was left stranded to entertain myself while Mum and Dad read improving books on the remote western side of Lake Taupo¯ .
Thank heavens for my tiny transistor radio and Sports Roundup. I would know the score of every Plunket Shield game and most minor games too. ‘‘Take that bloody noise away,’’ Phil would grunt. I couldn’t understand how a man who listened to Stockhausen on 2YC could complain about noise.
I realise now that Phil was simply practising social distancing 50 years before Covid-19. His children had to stay 6ft away at all times. Mum was exempt from the rule as she was married to him – she only had to stay 3ft away.
While they read their books, 3ft apart, I would listen, 100ft away, with breathless anticipation to see if Mike Shrimpton and Dermot Payton would get Central Districts past Wellington’s modest total. A friendly stranger would occasionally tramp past and say something like ‘‘Shrimpton got his century yet?’’ My mother was mortified when she once overheard a stranger mutter, ‘‘Poor little bugger has to listen all on his own.’’
The commentators were nothing like today’s sports jocks. They had day jobs, and stood firmly on the socially conservative Right. They did a great line in loquaciousness and cliche´ , though no more than your average writers’ festival.
Bevan Congdon never flattened down the pitch with his bat, he ‘‘did his gardening’’. When Richard Collinge slogged and missed, he took an ‘‘agricultural swing’’. A ball was never hit to the boundary, it was ‘‘dispatched’’. And if Lance Cairns slogged a six, the ball had ‘‘snow on it when it came down’’.
Umpires never had a first name but were ‘‘Monsieurs’’. And why say a drunk was kicked out of the ground by the cops when you could report that ‘‘a patron who’d imbibed one beverage too many was evicted from the premises by the local constabulary’’. But I loved it.
In between overs, details of the magnificent ‘‘luncheon’’ prepared by ‘‘the ladies’’ were shared. Years later I realised that luncheon and lunch were exactly the same thing. Sexism and racism existed but it lacked the all-conquering arrogance that Radio Sport had in its blokey veni, vidi, Veitchy years. On Sports Roundup, Indian spin bowlers were ‘‘cunning and deceptive’’ as they ‘‘delivered their spicy balls onto the pitch which they turned into a magic carpet’’. Meanwhile, West Indian fast bowlers ‘‘loped’’ around like ‘‘giant gazelles’’.
John Clarke once said that sport was invented so New Zealand men could talk to each other, and Radio Sport proved that to the max.
My father, a lifelong Marxist, was delighted when Sports Roundup was privatised and became Radio Sport. I occasionally enjoyed Radio Sport talkback, especially after an All Black loss when grown men would be in tears. That’s why last year’s World Cup loss was probably our nation’s greatest sporting moment – we dealt with it like adults. John Clarke once said that sport was invented so that New Zealand men could talk to each other, and Radio Sport proved that to the max.
As TV sport continued to annihilate all competition, Radio Sport tried to shake off the overly blokey reputation it had developed. At the time of its closure it had some excellent talent, but losing the cricket rights was the coup de graˆ ce, as Sports Roundup commentators would say.
I remember when the Listener and all our state ‘‘commercial’’ radio stations were privatised. There was such confidence they would last forever. Yet they’re falling like flies. Maybe the state does have a role to play in sports broadcasting after all, though I’m not sure talkback is the solution.
Why not call those Sports Roundup commentators out of retirement? They won’t cost much more than a free luncheon. But I’d advise against annexing the Concert FM frequency to do it. As Phil used to say, ‘‘there’d be hell to pay’’.