Babblers are unbearable
My heart goes out to all those brilliant and articulate kids who will never have an opportunity. No-one will train them. Noone will give them a microphone. They may have the ability to be the finest sports commentator of all time, but they don’t stand a chance. Each and every one of them lacks the glittering key to the door. They lack fame.
All the talent in the world won’t get them past a threshold that prompts me to ask this question of you all. Is Sky Sports a circus or is it media? For my money, and I pay along with the rest of the dwindling audience, it is a circus, ramping up the spectacle, almost completely devoid of true journalistic qualities such as impartiality, investigative insight, observation or literacy.
A mate who watched last week’s golf coverage of the New Zealand Open said to me: ‘‘When I watched the Australian Open I was watching a golf tournament, but what I saw at the weekend was .... ’
He paused. He didn’t know where to go. He knew it wasn’t a golf tournament. He was being sold a tourist brochure, a rich and famous mates’ hit-andgiggle, a confection that invited a journeywoman to play whose highest finish on last year’s women’s tour was 23rd. Pernilla Lindberg was a shameless publicity stunt who some pseudo journalists celebrated for beating four men in the field. Wow.
And to their shame Sky, who talked it up all the way, was even giving away $250,000 for a hole-inone, half of which went to the successful player and half to charities. Well, good on them, you might say, but don’t be conned.
The money wasn’t won and even if it had been, I suspect Sky would have taken out insurance to ensure they didn’t pay the full whack. But whether they did or didn’t, they could have given the cash to charity without becoming a part of the golf tournament. But that’s not their way. More and more Sky insert themselves into events that they should be covering impartially.
In 2012, Richie Benaud offered his thoughts on broadcasting to Christine Sams, an Australian journalist. His precepts were: Never ask a statement. Remember the value of a pause. There are no teams in the world called ‘we’ or ‘they’. Avoid cliches and banalities, such as ‘he’s hit that to the boundary’, ‘he won’t want to get out now’, ‘of course’, ‘as you can see on the screen’. The Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought a disaster, and neither bears any relation to a dropped catch. Put your brain into gear before opening your mouth. Concentrate fiercely at all times. Above all, don’t take yourself too seriously, and have fun.
Jeff Wilson and the rest of Sky’s hopeless, ingratiating interviewers would do well to remember the first tenet. ‘‘Your pack were all over the opposition, weren’t they?’’ is asking a statement. It’s a leading question. The interviewee doesn’t really have to answer for themselves.
But we can go through that whole list, except the last point, and call out Sky’s mike-men and women. There is scarcely pause for our thought. Instead this ghastly chatter fills our heads. Cliche, banality and tragedy run into double figures in every broadcast.
But most grievous of all, ‘we’ and ‘our’ and ‘they’ are so commonplace as to have become accepted parlance.
Sky have turned the broadcast into a fanzone. Presumably they think this is what the lowest common denominator wants and so the rest of us also have to live in the basement.
We will soon reach the point when the New
Zealand cricket captain gets out and then does a stint in the commentary box for an hour.
Henry Blofeld, the eccentric and much loved British radio commentator, said of an accident, which left him unconscious for 28 days, his skull broken: ‘‘I lay like a broken jam roll in the gutter.’’
He described ex-England spinner Ashley Giles as a man who ‘‘trundles in to bowl rather like a wheelie bin’’. He said of the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board: ‘‘I am amused to see Colin Graves described as a ‘no-nonsense Yorkshireman’. Ever since he was appointed it has been nothing but nonsense.’’
‘‘Blowers’’ would be unlikely to get a job now, but he would at least have a chance in wireless. Jeremy Coney similarly called out Gary Stead on New Zealand radio. Not that we will be able to hear Coney and Bryan Waddle next season. The fools at New Zealand cricket have done for them as well as putting the TV cricket onto a streaming service that many will be unable to afford or receive adequately in rural regions.
But it’s television’s obsession with giving mikes to ex players that really grates. Yes, Benaud was an ex-player and so was Peter Alliss. There are some great commentators in their ranks. David Lloyd is frequently a joy and Ian Smith does a fine job.
But for the majority are semi-articulate babblers and gurning fools who are too much to bear. Danny Morrison has mercifully been exported, but you know the others. Where I ask is the melodic voice of the great West Indian commentator Tony Cozier, where is the lyricism of India’s Harsha Bhogle?
Bhogle said when Michael Vaughan, the former England batsman and at best part-time off spinner, bowled Sachin Tendulkar: ‘‘Oh, what a shame! It is like a soldier who survived the war when all the bullets were flying by his nose and then got run over by a bicycle in his native town.’’
Can you imagine any of our New Zealand commentators coming up with an image like that. The great commentators have vocabulary, speed of thought, observation and insight.
Great players are unlikely to have all these skills. Even if they had just the last two, all the greatest rugby coaches of all time would also have been the greatest players. But we know the ability to do something does not equate to the ability to observe, analyse and communicate something.
In the recent test match Craig McMillan said that if Colin de Grandhomme had been batting on off stump he could not have got out to a ripper from Ravi Jadeja. Technically it was a good enough point. But McMillan’s observation was negligible because de Grandhomme had taken guard on off stump.
It should pain all true fans of sport to live in this new TV and online world where fame comes before talent. It pains me that when Fox made recent cuts to their rugby coverage in Australia, they dumped Nick McArdle, the journalistic jewel in their show, and kept on a broadcasting dullard like Tim Horan. Not famous you see.
It pains me that Laura McGoldrick, who is a talented broadcaster, is allowed to work matches where her husband Martin Guptill is playing for New Zealand. How can she possibly be expected to be objective?
Even then, McGoldrick does a better job of objectivity than most of the fans with microphones up in the booth.
No wonder all those Aussie fans turn up at matches dressed up as Richie Benaud. Sure, it’s a carnival, but it’s a carnival celebrating a former world that Sky Sports have wrecked. It was Benaud who called out the Australian captain for that underarm ball: ‘‘A disgraceful performance from a captain who got his sums wrong. It should never be permitted to happen again. One of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field’’.
I struggle to imagine a New Zealand TV commentator saying the same of a Kiwi captain, however grievous the offence.
But then who among us would have the wit to say of a famous bowler who was not so adept with the bat: ‘‘And Glenn McGrath is dismissed for two, just 98 runs short of his century’’.
How to prick cliche and hyperbole with one short stab.
Instead sport’s television is becoming a mirror of a populist world where Shallow by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper will play on an endless loop. Where Game of Thrones will play on a public screen in continuous 24-hour cycles. Where libraries will clear their shelves to house 10,000 copies of the latest Danielle Steel frockbuster.
Surely we can aspire to something higher. I know our kids do.