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“You cannot be serious! You’re pathetic, you know that?”
These are some of John McEnroe’s famous lines from his clashes with tennis umpires and as a commentator the American remains a fan favourite.
Does cricket’s TV commentary have a McEnroe? Look no further than former Test spinner Greg Matthews on SBS on Wednesday, according to his new colleague Stuart MacGill.
Leg-spinner MacGill, who took 208 wickets in 44 Tests before retiring in 2008, has long been regarded as fiery and controversial, willing to state his opinions despite the risk of offending powerful people.
The 38-year-old MacGill now finds himself in the position of playing “straight man” on a panel for the Ashes coverage alongside the maverick Matthews and ex-Test batsman Damien Martyn.
“How do I feel about criticising friends and teammates? Greg and I talked about it today, we had our first rehearsal today,” MacGill told AAP this week.
“We have a huge advantage over (batsmen).
“It’s predominantly batsmen who are the politicians.
“If you try and always smooth the waters and play the straight man and you’re forever taking the diplomat’s line while you’re playing, suddenly giving an honest opinion about somebody when you retire can be quite abrupt and shocking for the guys.
“A lot of the traditional commentary panel have trouble with that because they have always tried to be nice to people, the ultimate team man sort of stuff.
“I’m not very good at pretending. I just reckon my best plan of attack was always if I had an opinion, provide it and always try to back it up.
“Sometimes at the beginning of my career that was a bit abrupt for some of the guys.
“Towards the end of my career everybody sort of went `ok cool well that’s where he stands and he won’t be swayed unless we can convince him that he’s wrong’.
“But that makes it really easy for me now and I think Mo (Matthews) is much the same.
“He got a great text message from a friend of his today saying `Dear Mo, I’m really excited about the Ashes, I think you’re the John McEnroe of cricket commentary’.
“He (Matthews) was pumped and I don’t think it’s far from the truth. He’s straight to the point, he’s very well-researched.”
MacGill, who did his best to educate his beer-guzzling teammates on the finer points of wine appreciation, has become a successful presenter of a Foxtel show on the subject.
But even those TV commitments have failed to pull him into line about how things work in the real world, MacGill admits.
“This is the most attractive part of the job that SBS has given me. It’s structure,” he said.
“For me that’s probably the thing that I’m missing since I’ve stopped playing cricket. I get up in the morning and help with the kids, take out the rubbish, do the dishes.
“I try to get a bit of work here and but I don’t have any deadlines or any structure in my life. Even with my wine show, it was sort of ad-lib and conversational.
“So I’m really excited about this job because I’m the straight man and I’ve got to stick to the minutes and seconds.”
MacGill is thrilled to have former Test quick Rodney (Brad) Hogg working with SBS for their Ashes coverage.
“I had him pasted all over my wall as a kid,” MacGill said.
“He’s over there with tour groups so he’s going to do a report every day for us.
“Mo and Marto will talk for 15 minutes and I’ll just say `how are you going, I’m Stuey’.
“I don’t have to do much at all except keep them in line.”
MacGill says it’s going to be a very different show to what the Nine Network offers every summer.
“It’s not just Channel Nine, it’s more the format that traditionally commentary panels stick to,” he said.
“It’s not ball by ball, left-foot-right-foot sort of stuff, but it really is 10-second grabs, very shallow interpretation of things that are happening through the day.
“I would rather talk through the entire over, about the sort of things you and I would talk about if we went to the cricket.
“It’s nothing wrong with the guys who are on it, but I wouldn’t be very good at it anyway and I don’t think Mo would be either.
“I’ve been told they don’t want you to talk about behind the scenes unless you can do it in seven seconds.”
MacGill was a late starter to international cricket and says that has given him some perspective on how to handle media criticism.
“On the rare occasions that the volume was up in the change rooms, the batsman who was out would quite often throw something at the TV screen and say `mate it was ok when you were playing!’,” MacGill said.
“They’d get really offended by what was said on the commentary.
“If you fail, somebody is going to have a dip at you. If you do well, somebody is going to say he was lucky.
“It’s just the way sport is.
“I’ve never been offended by anything anybody has said about me in the newspaper unless they’ve tried to tell people how I think, because nobody knows that. Not even me.
“My big advantage was I didn’t start playing professionally until I was about 26. The peaks and troughs of normal life, I guess I had experienced it.
“I’m not more enlightened. I have been a spectator more than I’ve been a player so I can probably more easily see things from another point of view.
“I’m not very good at being mainstream so I’ve always been trying to look at things from a different point of view so I could work out how to get people to accept me.”
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