Get ready for Ashes through Aussie eyes
Following an Ashes series from the other side of the world is a challenge: when to nap, what to eat, whether it is legitimate to have the heating blazing all night. Oh look, England have lost both openers inside half an hour again. Can I really have another cup of tea at 3am?
There is a comfort inherent in the bleariness of it all. Jumper on, frost outside, eyes battling to stay open as Marnus Labuschagne and Tim Paine extend Australia’s first-innings lead beyond 100, 150 … 300; I must have nodded off.
You sit alone on the sofa in the depth of night with no one for company but the people voicing
A number of the old guard remain, with their chummy manner and golf anecdotes
the action on television. You have never met them, but they are old friends in a way. Go on, explain to me why Zak Crawley cannot deal with the full ball outside off stump again. Whisper me sweet nothings.
But not this winter. After such trivial matters as lockdowns, deaths and economic catastrophes, the pandemic has delivered its most brutal blow: English viewers of the forthcoming Ashes series will not have their own commentary team. The people calling the games will be – excuse me while I find a way to spit the word out – Australian.
Owing to logistical difficulties involving quarantine, BT Sport has opted not to send its own commentators to Australia to cover the series. Instead, it will use the global feed provided and voiced by the host broadcaster, Fox Sport.
That means us English folk will have to watch the Ashes through the eyes of Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Mark Waugh, Allan Border, Mike Hussey and Brett Lee – a parade of Australian “villains”.
There is an innate parochialism to all sports coverage that explains why so much time on the BBC is devoted to the British 5,000 metres runner who finishes ninth at the Olympics. Devotees and neutrals aside, it is what the majority of viewers, listeners and readers are accustomed to and thus expect.
Other than own Michael Vaughan and the superb anchor Isa Guha, both of whom will provide a sprinkling of Englishness to Fox Sport’s Aussie souffle, the coverage will naturally be beamed through an Australian prism known for its one-eyed nationalism.
There are other marked differences between the excellent English cricket commentary honed largely by Sky Sports in recent years and that of their Australian counterparts.
In the footsteps of the revered Richie Benaud, Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Bill Lawry – the quartet famously parodied by The Twelfth Man – Channel Nine’s commentary output lurched pitifully towards entrenched blokeishness during the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Cricket writer Geoff Lemon wonderfully summed up the descent of the Australian commentary box as “all about being the matiest mates who ever mated”.
Channel Nine have since lost the rights to Channel Seven and Fox Sports, which brought in the likes of Guha and the equally informative Mel Jones to diversify away from the “male, pale and stale” army, but an unhealthy number of the old guard remain, with their painfully chummy manner and anecdotes about golf performance or middle-aged weight gain.
One can only hope that someone such as Warne, who is unafraid to criticise and raises his output when alongside the likes of Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton on British television, does not sink to the levels of some of his compatriots.
BT Sport could have followed Sky’s lead from England’s tour of Sri Lanka at the start of the year, when it was unable to send a team due to travel restrictions, and instead had its usual commentators fulfil duties from home rather than use the global feed. It had measured success.
The English-tinted familiarity remained intact, although viewers were hamstrung both by commentators unable to see what was happening outside of shot and an over-sharing of David Lloyd’s bin-collection schedule.
Of course, given only a small percentage of people in Britain actually subscribe to BT Sport, it may well be the case that most resort to the traditional night-time Ashes-following method of the BBC’S Test Match Special, although that does present the temptation to shut your eyes for a few moments. Perhaps leave the heating off.