Gideon Haigh, in the Weekend Australian, 29-30 October 2011 with different title… Gideon Haigh is one of Australia’s best sports writers and has expertise in financial analysis as well. He has now joined the Weekend Australian’s columns and must be listened to avidly. Web Editor.
HYPOCRISY, the saying goes, is the homage that vice pays to virtue. In cricket, it is the homage administrators pay to Test matches. Time and again, administrators assure us of their continued regard for Test cricket as the game’s ultimate form. Then they pull sneaky little manoeuvres like winnowing Australia’s planned three-Test series against South Africa away to two, and England’s promised five-Test series against South Africa next year to three.
Their recent decision to welch on playoffs for the World Test Championship is perhaps their most destructive move yet. Destructive and also instructive: because it demonstrates how far the game’s welfare now falls behind self-interest and short-term financial expediency as a governance priority.
At their July annual meeting inHong Kong, the executive board of the International Cricket Council, on which Cricket Australia’s representative was its chairman Jack Clarke, agreed to advance plans for playoffs to the World Test Championship: semi-finals and a final among the top four ranked countries. It was welcomed as a much-needed innovation: a chance to contextualise the game’s most skilful and historic format, and enrich it with a finale worth the name. Continue reading →
When Channel Nine was castigated in January 2018
Sam Duncan, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 January 2018, where the title ran “C’mon, Channel Nine’s cricket commentary isn’t as bad as everybody is saying”
Channel Nine’s coverage of cricket has been copping it from all angles this summer. Cricket viewers and media commentators alike have lined up to stick the boots in, labelling it everything from outdated, stale and boring to too matey and chummy. Many fans reckon there’s far too much banter from the Nine commentators about their careers from the “good ol’ days” at the expense of insightful analysis about what’s happening on the field. On the flip side, Channel Ten’s Big Bash commentary has been seen as cutting edge, punchy, informative and entertaining.
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