Revenge of the nerds: The rise of cricket's new generation of critics

Brian Eno has been attributed with the oft-used summation of the Velvet Underground and their influence that “they only sold 30,000 copies of their first album, but everybody who bought it started a band”

I think Gideon Haigh is a nicer bloke than Lou Reed (and his music taste I’d say veers towards punk and post-punk), but Haigh’s influence runs through an offspring of young writers that sit on the fringes of Australian cricket.

This group is ever so slightly encroaching into the mainstream which poses an interesting dilemma for both them and the game.

Let’s call them the ‘Geek Pack’. They’re young and they speak literately about cricket. In short they’re like nothing mainstream Australian cricket has encountered except for Godfather Gideon. And please be clear I use the term ‘Geek Pack’ as the ultimate sign of respect.

To be a member of the Geek Pack you’re typically under 35 and write for websites or blogs, you typically have a genuine love of the game that goes beyond this writing being a job, you know who Pakistan’s last five captains have been, you know the Sri Lankan top six you don’t see England and India as the only opposition of interest. You’re an Aussie through and through but you see way beyond the baggy green.

Ok, so let’s name names; the Geek Pack includes Jarrod Kimber, Russell Jackson, Geoff Lemon, Daniel Brettig, Adam Collins and probably a few more. Right now the freedom of their mediums allows them to exhibit their obvious skill for a yarn and more reverence, knowledge and love for the game with a word-view than anything we see in mainstream cricket media.

The Geek Pack has had a red letter month in February. Last week Dan Brettig released the excellent insider’s account of the last eight years of Australian cricket ‘Whitewash to Whitewash’, going into the detail that obsessive sports fans eat up. Brettig is somewhat an exception to the rule as he’s an established member of the media pack, however he shares many traits that qualify him as

More pointedly and controversial was an article from Geoff Lemon on the Guardian’s website that took aim at the Channel Nine broadcast and managed to wound a few and impress many more.

While some of Lemon’s article seemed to be banging its head up against a wall akin to wondering why credible bands don’t sell many record and Nickelback do, it struck a chord that saw it being shared far beyond the Geek Pack’s usual audience.

Kimber and Collins have both impressed without any profile on ABC Radio stints, and their online presences are growing.

The Lemon article may well be the first flickering of the Geek Pack’s future fire. Forget the content, the Nine critique was being shared enjoyed and agreed upon by the standard intelligent Australian sports fan, of which there are many more than we give credit for.

These were not hardcore fans, and I would guess they would never have heard of Lemon or the others previously. But they have now.

Cricket is the sport that lags behind all others sports on the geekdom front in Australia.

It’s common for all football fans to speak in detail on ranges of on and off-field issues; in fact you’ve been left behind in the social media sports world if you don’t have this knowledge. Fans now know all about the 27th best player on an opposition list and can wax lyrical about the game styles of each team.

In an AFL sense it’s what sustains a 24-hour TV channel, with a nightly ‘football affairs’ shows and endless review and dissection shows.

It started with Talking Footy in the 90s and is now the perfect companion to live broadcasts that make the game such a domineering media presence. There is a sense among footy fans in the digital age that you’ll be left behind if you’re not up to date with what’s being discussed with earnest and (at least attempted) intelligence.

The saturation and sheer minutiae of what is discussed drags people along, casual fans have become solid fans, big fans have become experts and avid consumers as the whole deluge of media is available at their fingertips. Aside from the regular tabloid headlines, there is a sophisticated football discussion (some may say that’s an oxymoron) where there is a race to the top.

So it’s this vacuum that exists in cricket, there’s little to no reviews and little to no context or dissection in Australia of anything that happens in world cricket beyond the Nine broadcast. I

t’s what the Geek Pack do with immense skill and if people in high cricket places are not taking notice, they should.

In cricket’s effort to appeal to everyone they’ve not been able to crack how to appeal to the intelligent sports fan and increase their engagement in the game. These people have an interest in the game, but they need something more than Channel Nine to take them to a higher level – a level that they find with other sports and therefore cricket becomes secondary.

The Geek Pack currently hang on the blogosphere fringes, and as true disciples of Gideon are bolshie types that are not afraid to criticise as they have nothing to lose (Lemon’s article). They’re suspicious of any sort of corporatisation of the game and are forever skeptical of T20.

This leaves it in direct opposition to many of the prevailing views of the decision makers in cricket, and perhaps a view that the fringes are all they’ll ever be.

That’s a short-sighted view.

In writing this I stumbled upon a podcast that featured Lemon, Jackson and Collins, and their inspiration Haigh. It was an hour of cricket discussion that I’ve never heard in Australia, but one that sadly would not seem out of place in football season.

Intelligent cricket lovers speaking in detail about all of the teams in the World Cup without any Aussie cheer-squad leanings, with real dissection of games and criticism where required. Intelligent sports fans would have learnt more about the game today in that hour than a full summer following mainstream media.

The delicious irony is that if the cricket hierarchy assisted in growing the influence of the Geek Pack, despite the fact they will often be thorns in the PR side of Cricket Australia, they may well drag along sports fans to become hardcore consumers of cricket.

Their reverence and knowledge of cricket as a world game will communicate something very different from ‘The Ashes are great and India makes money – so that’s all that matters’.

The Geek Pack discuss Sri Lankan cricket with as much reverence and excitement as any other country – they sell overseas teams. They can build excitement in the pure game in their fringe world that not many in the mainstream will touch.

Whether the Geek Pack want to go beyond the fringes is also up to them, but to steal another sporting term they have the potential to be a most important piece of the pathway.

It’s alright to build an army of as many fans a possible, but those casual fans need to graduate somewhere. At the moment the real sports fan drifts into other sports where the information and discussion is plentiful and more sophisticated and their cricket interest stays at the same level.

The Geek Pack may be the missing piece for cricket in this country.