Why Athers should consider keeping schtum, and other stories

Christmas 2008: the Third Ump’s review of the year’s cricket TV and press

An article I enjoyed
Mike Atherton’s in The Times on October 29. This was the one when he laid into the ECB’s involvement with Sir Allen Stanford, “English cricket has become Stanford’s wag,” he mused. “The ECB has pawned the national team off for little more than a rich man’s ego trip.”
Happily, Athers is in a perfect position to comment on the possibly malign influence of American billionaires on English cricket. For, as soon as the opportunities became available, he signed up to work for Rupert Murdoch at Sky Sports and The Times on a pair of contracts believed to be worth somewhere north of, roughly speaking, quite a lot. Or, indeed, £600,000.
Those who would suggest that English cricket had already pawned itself off to an American billionaire to the detriment of its long-term interests some time ago – in 2004, in fact, when the first Sky deal was signed – might like to read Athers’ thoughts on the matter in a future Times column. Maybe he’ll even get round to it.
Let’s wait and see.

Something I’ve noticed
Don’t get me wrong: Athers is probably the best of the Sky pundits. But he’s not a Sky man; he’s been forced to progress his career there because that is the only option available to him. He’d have fitted in rather well into the BBC coverage of yore. But it’s 2008 and Athers has to sit grinning sheepishly and mumbling in the hope that no-one actually spots him.
Rather like the dread Tim Lovejoy’s presenting efforts, Athers always appears a bit bashful, as if in his mind he’s better than all this, as if he’s making a silent appeal to the viewers. “Look it’s me! It’s Athers! You don’t think I’m really a Sky man, do you? Oh, I wear the branded polo shirt but you know I don’t mean it! I am with them but not of them”
I half-expect him to hold up a sign saying ‘Help, I’ve been kidnapped! I really belong on Radio 4! I’ve been to Cambridge and everything”
And yet there he is.

Missing in Action
The ECB’s special video to promote the 2009 Ashes logo, due to be launched via youtube and Facebook on Australia Day in January. Advance publicity said it was going to be a take, very topically, on the famous Norwegian football commentary from 1981 (“Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill… your boys took a hell of a beating” etc etc) except themed around the 2005 Ashes win. And quietly ignoring the return beating of 2006. So far so terrible: but the video never appeared, apparently scrapped after media suggestions that it might be a bit rubbish and that no-one under the age of 35 would HAVE A CLUE what it referred to. Wonder how much it cost?

The new Sky deal
Did you spot this one? No-one made much of a fuss about it, did they? In August, the ECB renewed the deal with Sky for another four years, from 2010-2013, a deal worth a reported £75m a year, well up on the current deal which is only worth £55m. Hats off to someone, securing a 35 per cent increase minutes ahead of the credit crunch. Rather as the Natural History museum employs chaps to go round schools showing kids pictures of dinosaurs and dodos, the ECB’s Sky money is partly used to fund teams of coaches to go round the country telling sports fans under 10 exactly what cricket is. “You’ve never seen this on TV,” they say.”But trust us: it’s really good fun!”
Maybe this is a more efficient way of spreading the word than maybe, say, knocking a little bit off the Sky deal and letting terrestrial television show a bit of Twenty20 every summer.
But I don’t think so.

The Test Match Special debate
Mumbling Mike Selvey got offed at the end of the summer by the newish producer and launched some kind of campaign against the decision, based on the fact that he’d been on air with TMS since the early ’80s and had squatter’s rights. Time for someone else to have a go, surely? For me, Selv always sounded like it was just another day at the office – possibly a day when the internet was down and the girl you flirt with by the photocopier is away on holiday with her boyfriend. Compare and contrast Vic Marks who sounds like he’s having a chuckling good time and Jonathan Agnew who is, of course, the don. Tufnell and SPIN’s own Graham Thorpe brushed up well but – like Selvey – I remain to be convinced by the FiveLive mummy’s boys gradually being brought in to ‘freshen’ ‘up’ the gantry. They always sound a bit frightened and eager-to-please to me, as if Agnew is going to ask them Gordon Parsons’ bowling average and they’ll be found wanting and start stuttering and run back to reading the football results on Radio Local. Or, worse, the Boycott is going to bully them for never getting any Test runs and not being socially maladjusted.

Commentator of the year
Bob Willis who has won the award so many times that the gong should really be retired. Beyond Nasser, who always sounds either on the point of tears or lamping someone, Willis is the only one who obviously cares who treats England’s rollercoaster fortunes as some kind of personal affront.

Willis moment of the year
So many to choose from. His rants about Steve Harmison – “If you don’t like going abroad, you’re in the wrong job, mate!” – were good and his reaction to Peter Moores calling the defeat in Hamilton “disappointing” even better. “It’s unsatisfactory. It’s not disappointing,” our man repeated over and over like a miserable mantra. But being a purist, I’m going for a little seen clip from a Kent Pro40 game. As sometimes happens on Sky, Willis was called upon to voice a trailer for an upcoming boxing evening on the channel: the visuals went away from the cricket, and Bob gave the bout the full MC big-up, roaring hyperbolically like a madman for a full 30 seconds. Cut back to the dozing, silent, county ground. Willis gathers himself, pauses and lowers his voice to a near-whisper. “…And here’s James Tredwell.”
Maybe you had to be there. Maybe I should get out more.