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I know this is naive, but I was really hoping that the furore over the Hobart Test’s Man of the Match award might knock over Channel Nine’s Viewers’ Verdict altogether.
Turning over the Man of the Match award to the masses was a disgraceful piece of commercial piracy, but the other snap polls conducted during a day’s play do not lag far behind on the scale of irritation.
In all the sporting events I have watched in my 20 years on this earth, I have never come across a promotion which is at once so pointless and so infuriating.
It is as if the Newspolls and AC Nielsens, not content with driving politics into a mire of mediocrity and hand-wringing, have come across to cricket to give it a crack too.
I understand that Vodafone want to promote their brand. And I understand that Channel Nine want to help them. However the Viewers’ Verdict is incredibly invasive to the actual game, and gives air time to something which simply does not matter.
Whether or not those who combine ownership of a smart phone with an interest in cricket think Ed Cowan will make a century does not matter one jot.
Whether those people think the Decision Review System should be in place should not matter one jot. I suspect they are not far away from polling as to which product Mark Nicholas should use in his hair.
The public’s response to these questions do not actually make a difference as to whether Cowan will make the century or how many runs Australia will make in their first innings, but the commentators speak about them as if they do.
While a perfectly competitive and interesting test match is going on in front of them, the wags among the Channel Nine team do a running description of how we are thinking.
I missed most of the first day of this test match, but listened to some of the Nine commentary on the radio; about three hours over the course of the day. In that time I heard four viewer’s polls.
I think the most captivating observations came around how many Ed Cowan would score. I think it is fair to say that most people watching the game would be spending only their third or fourth day of knowing who Ed Cowan was. And yet in they all hopped.
One minute it was 98, then it was 92, then it was 102.
Michael Slater blamed Mark Taylor for forcing the numbers down whenever he spoke, then they remarked about how little faith the viewers had, and everybody laughed.
And all the while, nobody spoke about what Ed Cowan was actually doing, out in the middle of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Rather than call the game as it was, the lads insisted on calling the game as small portion of their viewership thought it might be. They have effectively abdicated their prestigious roles as experts on cricket to take up commentating the Viewers’ Verdict.
It’s nauseating, and it seems part of a broader trend for Channel Nine. Richie Benaud’s understated delivery, high on dignity, quality and command, has been replaced by a totally different approach of which I would imagine Mr Benaud does not approve.
Increasingly the great Bill Lawry is forced to say ‘meanwhile, here at the MCG,’ just to get his fellow commentators to actually talk some cricket.
While Benaud, Lawry and Chappell talk about the game, the likes of Healy, Slater and Taylor go on frolics more befitting of a variety show than international sport, this lot will talk about anything except the game.
Quite simply, cricket was fine without the Viewers’ Verdict. Sure, ask the questions, publish the results to the users.
But when the commentators speak less about the game at hand and more about the public response to it, I find myself lunging for the radio, where the ABC’s Kerry O’Keeffe has the unique distinction of being both a genuine expert and genuinely funny.
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