Collins’ bold move keeps Test cricket on the air
An enterprising freelance stepped in when no one picked up radio rights for Pakistan v Australia, writes Simon Briggs
‘There are costs involved that had not occurred to me. But we have invested’
uestion: what do you do when your national cricket team are about to play a Test series against Pakistan and there is no radio broadcast scheduled? Answer: buy up the rights, then head out to Dubai to sit behind a microphone.
This was the bold route taken by Adam Collins, a one-time political adviser in Canberra who has spent the past six years commentating and writing on cricket as a freelance. His work has appeared all over, from this newspaper to the Cricinfo website and Wisden Cricket Monthly.
But to become a one-man answer to Test Match Special? That was a new departure.
Collins, 34, had to fork out a five-figure sum for series rights, then hire a co-commentator (Geoff Lemon, another Australian writer and broadcaster), plus a producer and on-air “talent” in the shape of former Test all-rounder Brendon Julian and occasional Pakistan opener Bazid Khan. The means of delivery will be a streaming service hosted by the wisden. com website. “It turns out there are costs involved that hadn’t even occurred to me,” Collins told me. “Like the servers. We could have gone for something off-the-shelf but didn’t want it to drop out at exciting moments, so we made a decision to invest.”
In an age when any wannabe director can potentially record a feature film on a smartphone, the barriers to entry are coming down all the time. Sports-wise, a trailblazing example was set by Test Match Sofa, the irreverent online commentary service launched by Daniel Norcross after he was made redundant from the City in 2009. Almost a decade later, Norcross has traded up to become part of Test
Match Special’s core commentary team, while the BBC – which was outbid for the rights to this winter’s England tours by Talksport – is about to run disruptive online coverage of the Sri Lankan series via an app called The Cricket Social.
To return to Collins, he helped to create an Australian answer to Test Match Sofa in 2014, under the name of White Line Wireless. But he intends the mood of the coverage – which begins tomorrow – to be very different. “White Line Wireless was from that school of guerrilla commentary, so it was quite alternative, quite sweary and silly,” he explained. “We want this to be much more professional, the sort of crisp and well-produced broadcast that you would expect from a rightsholder – which is not to say that it won’t be humorous, too.”
There should be plenty to talk about. This series against Pakistan is the first Australia have played since the balltampering affair erupted in South Africa in March. How will they cope without their two best batsmen, Steve Smith and David Warner? What can we expect from understated new captain Tim Paine? No one knows, but at least a global audience can now tune in for free.
“This all started from realising that there was a gap in the market,” said Collins, “because the only coverage was going to be on Fox Sports [the Australian equivalent of Sky Sports]. And I think this is the way things are heading. Some series, like the Ashes, have a huge prestige value and everyone wants the rights. Others less so, but we see a lot of global interest and affection for Test cricket, and that translates into a lot of potential listeners around the world.
“It’s not just about national allegiance,” Collins concluded. “Ultimately, we wanted to support the game and put something back.”