The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Wanted: Channel Seven cricket commentary team

Can Davey claw back some respectability by taking on Rabada? (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Roar Pro
26th April, 2018
12

With the Australian team imploding in South Africa, the public is now focused on selections for the Channel Seven commentary team next summer.

Avid Test fans are salivating at the thought that Kevin Pietersen, Michael Clarke or Michael Slater might be excommunicated from all microphones and reeling in horror at the idea that James Brayshaw, Bruce McAvaney or other Seven insiders might take their places.

However, insiders reckon Seven is likely to recruit a hefty sprinkling of pundits with experience on the real hot-button issues in cricket – ball-tampering, cheating and bringing the game into disrepute. Plus a much-needed dash of humour.

On ball-tampering, Seven is blessed with a smorgasbord of local and international talent to pick from.

Top of the list naturally is David Warner and Cameron Bancroft whose diaries will be freed up from their usual engagements next summer.

Seven has apparently been inundated with pleas from a Sydney Lamborghini dealer to hire Warner, fearing they may go bankrupt if their main customer is deprived of adequate income.

Bancroft is tipped to head a new special segment that will put Tony Greig’s ‘Weather Wall’ in the shade.

‘Bangers’ Bunnings Bonanza’ will provide a handy guide to the wide array of home hardware items that can be deployed to make the ball go ‘Irish’.

Advertisement

However, hopes that this segment will be hugely popular with grassroots cricketers may be misplaced with many of the techniques regarded as old hat.

Seven is allegedly sceptical that Steve Smith has enough specialist knowledge on ball-tampering, despite serving a twelve-month ban for complicity.

Legal experts say the statements released by Cricket Australia and Smith himself were so opaque, that it was impossible for outsiders to know how much he knew, if anything, what was going on.

The real heavyweight expertise in this area will be provided by the overseas contingent. Mike Atherton, Sachin Tendulkar, Shahid Afridi, Waqar Younis and Marcus Trescothick will be the main recruitment targets.

Faf du Plessis and Vernon Philander would be ideal guest commentators with their up-to-date knowhow if their commitments in South Africa permit.

To deliver an extra punch to the conversation, a must-have panel member will be England all-rounder Ben Stokes.

Ben Stokes holds up the ball and grins after taking his sixth wicket

(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Advertisement

Viewers will find it particularly instructive to learn just how evil ball-tampering is when Stokes tells how, for bashing the bejeezus out of someone, he was banned for less than half the time Steve Smith received.

For inside expertise on the finer points of bringing the game into disrepute, Seven need look no further than its TV rights partner – Cricket Australia.

CA’s CEO and Chairman, James Sutherland, can surely be lured on air to tell us how undermining the anti-siphoning legislation, crafted in the interests of sports fans on lower incomes, isn’t as bad as fibbing to umpires or delivering a clumsy press conference.

Canberra insiders are tipping that Communications Minister Mitch Fifield will make a strong bid for a guest commentary gig by allowing the TV deal to go through to the keeper.

Seven’s gurus will be particularly impressed by his ability to show there are many ways to bend the rules other than ball tampering, and to make far-fetched statements with a straight face.

Real comics are an ingredient that past commentary teams have sorely lacked. Mr Fifield is only one of a number of politicians putting their hands up for selection, with our Prime Minister and Opposition Leader opening the batting.

Sources in Parliament House claim such excursions into cricket ethics, by a profession with a track record of spin doctoring and broken campaign promises, can only be explained by ambition to join the commentary team as a resident humorist.

Advertisement

But the politicians are likely to be pipped to the post for commentary selection by a group that has consistently shown even greater chutzpah and a peerless skillset around tampering, rule-bending and high farce.

Explains one executive, “Audiences are going to be falling off their couches when India’s cricket groundsmen show us how they magically transform the hard and true pitches we see in IPL games into the raging turners they prepare for Test matches that crumble into dust bowls from the first morning of play.”

Sledging expertise was also initially touted as a must-have for the new team, but this idea has been discarded. Sledging has apparently been so ingrained in grade cricket in Australia for over twenty years that celebrity pundits are unlikely to add any new ideas.

close