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Commentary crisis: Ten now comes before Nine

15th January, 2015
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Shane Warne has a laugh. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Expert
15th January, 2015
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KFC Trivia time. In the summer of 2014-15, who’s as popular as a bare thigh on a scalding vinyl car seat?

It’s the Channel Nine commentary team, an answer so utterly obvious in recent times that your prize for guessing is a thimble of potato and gravy and a moist towelette. Congrats, you’re eating tonight.

Yes, everyone’s talking about it – those boys in the box with the dots who have enjoyed a summer of plummeting to new lows in quality, thus causing cricket fans across the land to throw so much shade that they’ve subluxed their shoulders.

After fashioning a nook in the national makeup with decades of cutting-edge yabber, the reigning showpiece lobster of Aussie summer sport is now considered cafeteria slop – mass-produced, carelessly planned and made with a scant regard for consumer taste.

This nosedive in public opinion is a biblical fall from grace for Nine’s Wide World and its flagship cricket production. While once an empire which guided the pack, they are now a public lightpost for every man and his dog’s lifted leg of mockery.

Many scribes on the interweb have articulated their reasons for the fall, some with poetic finery, others with mallets, however all are accurate in their own unique way. After sampling all, it seems there was a common thread for blame.

This was Nine’s commitment to a muscled-up boys club ethos that has eliminated anything in the broadcast relating to cricket, a strategy that has worked for the network on other projects in the past, but in this case only resulted in alienating their undervalued diehards and employing Shane Warne.

Before now, such a slump wouldn’t have been an issue for Nine. For decades, they have been able to freely drop the ball without penalty in their monopolised kingdom, but now with feisty competition from brash rivals and general ‘times a-changin’, this is no longer the case.

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As they’ve been complacently navel-gazing, Channel Ten has been at the other end quietly grafting out a creditable innings with comparably less pomp – the unfashionable Chris Rogers to Nine’s Davey Warner, if you will.

Their Big Bash team has spent the summer carving out a new band of followers with their engaging affability. They riff with rhythm and research, and in comparison to Nine, they’re as modest as a pack of nuns.

In addition, they’ve innovated by spicing up quiet periods with live readings of Kevin Pietersen’s book, plus stuck to the game’s basics by pushing their fair share of fried chicken.

Channel Ten’s package has a core focus on cricket and the use of English, all wrapped up inside new-age graphics that pulse with the cool fluoro tones of youth and the balls of AC/DC. Simply put, their broadcast comes with all the promise of a new TV Guide that’s still in the plastic.

So using the logic of us being Australians in Australia, a place where we vote in new governments on the basis that the other one is so shithouse that it must be punished, does this make Ten’s fresh and inoffensive team the new leader in Australian cricket commentary?

It seems blasphemous to even suggest such a thing, but you know it could be the case. I know it feels like leaving granddad at the supermarket, but sometimes tired and incoherent stuff just needs to be let go.

If you’re unsure on the decision, you could remove the spak-filla from your ears and simply tune in to the broadcast of today’s first ODI for a reminder, or just try dipping your toe in to the info superhighway during play.

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On form, Nine will need a miracle to stop the ugly noise from the viewership, like an impromptu comeback from Richie Benaud or a power failure.

So has the guard changed in front of our eyes this summer, making Ten the new Nine? Is Mark Waugh the new cranky Chappelli? Damien Fleming the new cooky Warney? Mark Howard and Andy Maher the new footy-centric Brayshaw? Gus the Goose the new Plucka Duck?

Or can Nine hit back hard by getting back to basics – that being cricket – and once again return to being the feeders of this great country’s fixation?

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