What a player he was, out and out champion.

I’m going to throw in a few different ones here, firstly yep Andy McLeod for the Crows no disrespect to Roo.
Melbourne and Essendon I’m going some old timers in Norm Smith and the great John Coleman. For Brisbane I’m going to throw out a curve ball and if we can include greats from the Fitzroy era also than maybe Kevin Murray can get a nod but hard to go past Vossy. I can’t agree with Tredrea at Port I’m going with Wanganeen as I guess Russell Ebert is ineligible because he played mainly in the SANFL.
Collingwood is a tough one Louie the Lip has to come close but for me it’s Jock McHale. Carlton everyone loves the doormat but Jezza must be close. Great article it’s bound to get fans chatting and arguing bring on footy season.

He played for South Mildura, the mighty Bulldogs but in the Geelong hoops.

He’s definitely one of the smartest that’s for sure. He gets a lot of grief for the fact he’s struggled in Australia but his record in Asia is fantastic. Again one of the things most who do not see Anderson on a regular basis fail to mention is, that’s it’s not what he does but when he does it. He will win a test single handed on the first morning or the 4th afternoon or the last day. He’s a whipping boy Jimmy but he’s a match winner and incredibly skilful. The fact he doesn’t have a great record with a kookaburra shouldn’t be a knock on his greatness.

7 complaining is high end funny. They didn’t pay 1 cent for exclusive international coverage which is terrible business.
They jumped all over the BBL when crowds and viewing figures were dropping and wonder now why that’s becoming a quick irrelevance in a summer that sees a blockbuster international series with India. Also thinking the BCCI will adapt to them is hysterical. Nobody but themselves to blame.

From memory India already had reached 700 and Ganguly pulled the pin after Bing got the double ton.

I realise it must be tough to be a Melbourne supporter. As one poster pointed out 2 Grand Finals since 64 for a 158 point combined loss. The spoons the draft picks but in the AFL era and especially in the last 20 years are they any more irrelevant than say Carlton? The Blues personified everything about them that is “whatever” tonight against Hawthorn. I understand that both clubs have huge supporter bases but Melbourne fans tend to get kicked a lot more. Carlton are a basket case every time there’s light at the end of the tunnel they find new ways to turn it off.

What a brilliant article. I love your knowledge Tigerbill and always find your articles and comments fascinating. I never knew Alan Davidson bowled left arm wrist spin. Look forward to your next article. I’m contemplating writing one on what happens when you work with your heroes and they either break your heart or surprise you with their awesomeness but might be a touch controversial. Lol.

The question marks were Bee emojis by the way.

I lived in Ealing for 10 years mate and adopted the Bees as my 2nd team and had some great nights at Griffin Park. About 6 months ago my 5 year old who was born in Brentford announced that he had decided that he was a Brentford supporter and even tho we had left London and moved south to Hampshire there was no reason for him to choose any other club. I’d never even heard of Brentford when I moved to London but I’m glad I have and love the fact that my West London born lad has adopted a club like them to support. I can’t wait for the final but I’m kinda gutted that his first match at Wembley can’t be this one. Go Bees ????????

I beg to differ. Indian batsman are raised on spinners to say he did very little is not entirely correct. The West Indies struggled with Abdul Qadir, Bob Holland bamboozled them they struggled against leg spin full stop. The best leg spinner ever would have had a field day.

Dujon, definitely scored a ton in that series and Gomes got 3 of them. It was the same thing seemingly over and over. Oooo we’re a chance here………….no we not Gomes has got another ton. Marshall was terrifying but they were definitely light on outside the top 6. Gus Logic almost seemed like a novelty act, this tiny little bloke surrounded by giants. As great and as daunting as they were that Australia team of 01 would have been victorious all because of Warne. Of all the marvellous brilliant iconic cricketers we’ve been able to watch over 40 years, SK Warne still stands on the shoulders of giants.

Nothing like an all time opinion piece to get the comment section and fired up.
Firstly for me the omission of Graeme Pollock is an inexcusable oversight especially when Warner makes the side.
I saw Pollock once in an exhibition charity match and my uncle rang me and said “It doesn’t matter how old he is now you’ll get the chance to say you saw Pollock”. He made 80 odd must have been in his 50’s and got a standing ovation as he left. I was gutted that I wasn’t old enough to have been able to see this bloke in his pomp. Thanks to YouTube this majestic master batsman can be viewed anytime one desires and for me he’s first picked then Sobers then Lara then Sanga.
Hayden I can live without also as like Warner did nothing in England and I would happily look at numerous options already mentioned. The bowling attack is pretty dam impressive I never saw Underwood live but I saw a hell of a lot of Herath.

Yeah I’m sure the thousands of people who are employed by the AFL outside the players would appreciate adding to the growing unemployment figures that Australia like the rest of the world will soon have to deal with. As mentioned before just switch off if you think it’s a shambles.

One of the most revered figures in the games history. It is sad that with the passing of time we lose more of the giants of our great game but that is how it goes. Apologies to who said it earlier but a few cold beers and the 71 GF on YouTube is a fantastic call.
Vale Mr Kennedy, football is richer for having you in it and your legacy.

How good is having the footy back is probably the most overused cliche of recent weeks but it rings true.
Hawks will need to make a statement against the Tigers tonight and whilst I doubt they win I think the Cats will be boosting their % against many sides just not used to the highway run. It’s stuck in my head now but Greater Waste of Space will roll a Dogs outfit who are hard to get a gauge on or are St Kilda harder? Danger game for the Pies on Saturday the defence will hold up the Saints will show plenty and folks will start asking if their 8 material. WCE and Brisbane arguably the match of the round and a tough one to call I going with the Eagles as I think ego and arrogance got the better of them last week. Carlton will get smacked, North and Port will show the importance in a 17 round season of beating teams you are better than and getting off to 3-0 starts to set their seasons right up. The Suns have a massive chance at home to take a bigger step in 2020 and the clubs history against Adelaide. (could the Suns become must watch TV? Somebody will win between Essendon and Melbourne and I couldn’t care less.

The problem is mate for countries like Thailand and PNG two fold. Firstly they don’t have the crew with the experience nor would they have the service providers. It’s one thing to sit in a room in Colombo and direct women’s matches over the internet it’s another to broadcast them live on FTA in nations like the ones you mentioned. The cost of hiring an uplink satellite to beam the pictures around the country itself would put fta channels off let alone the hiring of OB trucks and flying people in to be part of the production crew. You’d be surprised how many people it takes to put a cricket match on TV even if it’s bare minimum coverage, it’s a totally different infrastructure to streaming and the cost is considerably higher. Even If PNG wanted to broadcast their matches there would have to be a tender put out for production companies to bid for and service providers to facilitate the equipment. All the equipment needs to be supplied. Then you have the problem that on a global scale there aren’t that many service providers really who have the equipment required unless you want to risk hiring some dodgy two bit operation with crap equipment or a board with no money? How would Thailand cricket pay for it all. Do you remember the ICL the precursor tournament that led to the IPL? That’s a classic example of a cowboy operation. Strong crew, great service provider dodgy crooked production company and crooks running the tournament Nobody got paid (the last year of the ICL first year of the IPL is an article in itself) I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when Packer was pushing into India and cricket production. My brief along with the other westerners on the crew (mainly Aussies) was train local Indian operators to the levels expected by Channel 9 when Packer was running cricket. We were paid well and over the years forged some great friends and memories. The easy part was that India is cricket mad and has a billion people .Doordarshan had been producing the cricket in India for years our job was to make it better because Packer and a gentlemen who ran a company called WorldTel were going to launch 9 Gold (which never happened) point being it took two multi millionaires money to get cricket production to the level it is now in India because at the time the BCCI didn’t have it. They do now as a result of those early 2000 years but they didn’t then.
There’s currently not the interest nor the money in cricket to have developing countries striking up FTA deals. It’s hard enough to get stuff happening in the WI at the moment and has been for years. Companies don’t want to get involved with WI cricket cause the board never has any money to pay anyone. It’s a long winded reply and for that I apologise. Comparing the 6 nations tho doesn’t correlate. There’s no shortage of broadcast money in the U.K. and the BBC is funded by the public. There’s no shortage of interest in Rugby over here in the U.K. either. Cricket has problems going forward and free to air coverage for smaller developing nations simply won’t happen anytime soon. The future is streaming for them. I mean if Cricket Italy are prepared to pay for a small streaming set up to help Cricket Spain stream matches between minnow European nations from Spain (which is being rumoured and considered) it’s the way forward for developing nations in Asia also. Sorry again if I rambled.

Really good article Shounak, well done mate.
It’s an article that rings quite close to me as I’ve spent 20 years in sports broadcasting and a lot of that has been working on international cricket from starting on domestic NZ cricket when I lived there right thru to being on the crew of last years World Cup and Ashes coverage. I’ve worked in the replay department and I’ve directed tournaments also and my wife and I met on the IPL so cricket broadcasting runs deep thru our household.
The major problem I see going forward is free to air coverage and it’s been a problem for quite a few years. One of the reasons is I personally think that traditional TV as we know it is slowly dying. Streaming services are slowly taking over and it’s the quality of programming that has seen this shift. Cricket on free to air is not looked after anymore by sports departments that work for that particular network it’s not like the golden years of 9’s coverage when everyone involved worked for 9. Sports broadcasting is a freelance industry there is only a tiny percent of people involved who are employed by that company who broadcast the game and free to air TV is a $ dominated industry. ODI cricket doesn’t rate like it did in the 80’s and 90’s the big bash when it was 10 was treated more like light entertainment than it was a sporting production. Slowly but surely free to air TV is turning away from cricket and post Covid there may be even more of a shift as network TV relies so heavily on advertising. Sadly that’s just the way it’s going and was heading this way before Covid. The ICC do a really ordinary job promoting associate cricket if it’s not a T20 or T10 league and for the time being it seems that probably won’t change. I’ve directed matches between Ireland and Afghanistan a few years back that were on its website and YouTube and these were teams playing for test status. Cricket still has a market and a place but it would seem that place is going to be predominantly on pay tv but as people look to recover from Covid pay tv might be a luxury people have to get rid off. Cricket from a production view can be done on the cheap 5 cameras at a minimum but 2 of them have to be able to shoot the ball out of hand and follow so really 7 cameras is the minimum if the crew isn’t that good or experienced. The ICC can get the people happy to do associate cricket with a minimum budget for streaming and a possible app if they want to but for international cricket pay tv will probably continue to be the main source until streaming platforms slowly take over. The world of free to air unless there is a second coming will most likely slowly die off.

Great article Tim, really hard to find fault with. As a Viv and Lara fan I tried to find justification for their omissions but couldn’t really. I never saw Barrington play but I’m happy to take the word of those who did and his record in Oz speaks for itself. The bowling attack is scary good and I’ve had it said to me more than once that Knott was in a field of his own as a keeper. My two best mates and I had a great debate re the Oz all time XI that was posted recently but I reckon this is pretty spot on. Well done.

Ahh you might be right mate. I was sure I heard it was his kids but could well be wrong.

Joke sorry not job.

His kids used to give him obscure songs where he would have to try and work a line into if the opportunity presented itself as a kind of family job. Brilliant commentator.

Good question? Apparently it was Roy Cazaly’s young daughter who came up with the name of the Hawks during his coaching tenure in the early 1940’s. They became the Hawks in 43 after she told him there’s nothing scary about a flower. I think she was about 8 at the time and so Cazaly approached the club and they changed it.

I’m finding this an interesting read Les and as somebody who threw a chair thru a TV after the 94 Qualifying Final and got hit by a car after the 2010 GF draw I feel your passion. I don’t see it as half glass empty fandom although Pete makes some valid points re who we got but the big difference is I’d rather lose Prelims than Grand Finals that’s for sure.
As for this article I’m still angry that Daicos went the way he did. I was at the G that day he did the lap of honour and I cried like a kid finding out about Santa. The new Magpies were part of the reason we now have an AFL as clubs were paying overs for players they couldn’t afford. As much as I love Collingwood I hate football fans who bitch about the non Victorian clubs the Pies needed the expansion clubs almost as much as any others. Your take on John Cahill is interesting because Victorians are in my opinion quite ignorant to just how good the SANFL was in the 70’s to late 80’s and Port Adelaide were a phenomenal club under Cahill and he was a great coach records get broken and Cahill was on the end of one shared with John Kennedy but apparently if you’re not a Vic and you go home you can’t cut it in the VFL. You didn’t say that but it’s the consensus amongst football fans of a certain age demographic. Bucks also gave his word to North first not us but pressure from his old man saw him at Collingwood and just like Brisbane supporters like to remind him he missed 3 flags so do North people and players that he missed 2 there.

I’m sorry you had an awful time Angela and I appreciate the cost involved. For what’s it worth I’m all for the GF being played away from Melbourne in seasons that non Victorian clubs earn the right, the problem is the AFL simply are not going to budge on the issue because of this contract.