Channel Nine fall well short in summer of cricket

This being my first summer as a student and not a member of the workforce, I’ve spent a deal of time enjoying the cricket on the TV. A few things have stood out for me, so let’s see what the rest of you think.

Mostly, it’s been quality.

I enjoy watching good bowling just as much as good batting, and over the six Tests this summer, as well as the Big Bash League, we’ve seen a pretty solid mixture of both.

I don’t remember ever seeing batsmen complain so often about people near the sight screens. It’s becoming laughable. Every third or fourth over (possibly hyperbole) we see the match stopped while a batsman has a whinge about a spectator picking their nose in the area vaguely behind where the bowler is running up to deliver the ball.

I’m pretty sure the sight screens haven’t shrunk, so I’m not sure why this has become such an issue this year.

The Australian team is on the mend. There’s no avoiding the fact that our first XI has been poor for a few years now. Thankfully that seems to be turning around. We’ve got a pool of bowlers that are capable of causing batsmen to question how to play. This is seeing them take wickets and generally dominate.

In the batting, things still aren’t crash hot, but they’re improving. Clarke and Ponting have found form, Warner had a cracking innings in the Perth Test, but the top order still isn’t clicking. Ed Cowan hasn’t really put a lot of runs on the board and Marsh has been outscored this summer by most of the bowlers on both sides.

India really dislike Test cricket. Perhaps this is overstating it a little, but it really seems like India would rather be doing anything but playing Tests on this tour. Not once have they actually looked like they have an interest in the matches, with suspended captain MS Dhoni the worst offender.

You can see it in their batting, bowling and fielding. Their bowling is nowhere near attacking, their fielding is (at best) lazy and poorly organised (by Dhoni), and their batting is so lacking in skill there are probably some twelve year olds back on the subcontinent who would give it a better go.

50-over cricket is in trouble. Maybe I’m a bit late to this party, but I really do believe that it’s the one-day internationals that are vulnerable, not Test cricket. And you can thank Twenty20 for that. Purists argue that the format is not worthy of being called cricket, but I think they’re wrong.

What Twenty20 does is provide an easily consumable match that isn’t going to suck up an entire day of your life. And when you go, or watch on television, you get batsmen, bowlers and fieldsmen giving their absolute maximum effort for the entire match. There’s no pacing yourself, there’s little tactical ebb and flow, it’s just flat-out cricket for the entire match.

You don’t get the 15-35 over lull you get in an ODI. Twenty20 is a format that brings all the best parts of cricket to one place and shows them all to you at the same time. I think it’s brilliant.

Let me put it this way. How many people are genuinely looking forward to a month of ODIs in the Australia-India-Sri Lanka triangular series? Yeah. No one.

Compare that to the TV audiences and attendances at both the Test matches and the domestic Twenty20 Big Bash League this year.

On that note, Channel Nine are properly rubbish. Oh holy hell. Due to the ongoing difficulties with syncing the ABC Grandstand commentary with the Channel Nine digital pictures, I’ve found myself just giving up and listening to the television commentary. To call it rubbish is too flattering.

Hour after hour of stale clichés, statements of the obvious, and endless plugging of bits of cardboard with photocopied signatures stuck on them, interspersed with brand new (but ultimately pointless) graphics and gadgets and tools. I’m sure EagleEye has destroyed more of my brain cells than alcoholism would.

The only thing they’ve done right this year is show the end of a day’s play on their digital channel when there is a conflict with local news bulletins.

As for the Segways, I have no idea at all why both Nine and Fox Sports have suddenly got themselves all hot and bothered over the use of cameras mounted on Segways in their coverage. It’s barely any different to Steadi-Cam. I don’t see what’s so bloody revolutionary about it.