Cricket's need for colour commentary

RANT: Broadcasters know all the facts, but don't express how it feels to watch the game.

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For the last couple of days, I’ve been writing my newsletter roundups while watching the NBA Finals and the FIFA World Cup. The timings just line up, and I love having live sports playing in the background of my day-to-day life. Yes, I am one of those idiots who would live in a sports bar with screens covering every wall if I could.

Beyond my own oddities as a human being, watching today’s football game was an interesting experience with an overeager American in the commentary booth. The guy obviously knew ‘soccer,’ and was armed with a dossier of stats for the momentous South Korea-Czech Republic match (it actually was a great game!).

He knew all the facts, but couldn’t express how it felt to watch the game - which is basically all I need from a live commentator. Empathise and validate my excitement for the game. Make me feel like my need for multiple floor-to-ceiling TVs blaring sports at me isn’t weird. And the American commentator just couldn’t do it. He gave me statistical context, but no emotional catharsis.

[Sidebar - I noted this issue because I’ve been doing a review of our own coverage at Best of Cricket and realised we had the same problem. Hence, why we got Sarthak Dev - one of the most emotive writers on cricket - to join us as an editor!]

It’s a high bar - but one that basketball pulls off well. Yesterday’s NBA Finals game between New York & San Antonio was an instant classic, and the broadcasters rose to the occasion. The constant shots of an excitable crowd, the pumped-up music during every break, the commentators who knew their data but were just so engaged by the moment that it was hard for me not to be excited. They turned a great game into a “where-were-you-when-this-happened” memory.

Which is - unsurprisingly for uber capitalist America - an actual science. It’s called colour commentary. It started as a way for radio broadcasts to add “colour” to the drab match reports in the 1920s, and has evolved into a very specific type of enthusiastic (and informed) commentator whose primary job is to evocatively emote the biggest moments in the sport.

Cricket has its fair share of colour commentators; Harsha Bhogle is the one that comes to mind as 90s kid. He made cricket come alive. He taught you the game, but he also taught you when to care about the game. Bhogle’s lost his way in the last decade, and cricket hasn’t come close to replicating his effect on a regular basis. Ian Bishop is good, and Andrew Leonard was spectacular when covering associates at the T20 World Cup, but most cricket commentators are drab speakers (who often don’t even have expertise on the players and matches they cover).

You can’t accidentally watch a game on TV anymore since streaming took over, and there are too few matches outside the English summer for a random kid to discover cricket. One of the greatest drivers for discovery amongst Gen Z viewers is social media and YouTube - both of which cricket barely exists on because a) highlights aren’t allowed, and b) our commentary of cricket is too serious.

A century on from America’s discovery that match analysis also needs excitement, cricket has yet to replicate that ideal. We need more colour commentators - and luckily we have a pool of them. A lot of podcasts are genuinely fun, with The Grade Cricketer at the top of that list.

Why in the world aren’t broadcasters tripping over themselves to give commentators like that a chance in the booth?

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Bangladesh pull off the improbable

🏏 Cricket Roundup: BAN beat AUS (again), Shreyanka’s comeback, & Wilde on RCB.

• 🇧🇩🇦🇺 BAN BEAT AUS | Mohammad Isam on BAN’s first ODI series win v/AUS. |

• 🏆 WOMEN’S WC | Gomesh S with Shreyanka Patil on staying strong through injury. | Andrew Fernando on SL’s second star; Harshitha Samarawickrama. | S Sudarshanan thinks SCO & NED can cause upsets. | Nathan Johns asks which IRE will show up. | Aayush Puthran has a primer to the nuances of Women’s T20s. | 🔒 Jarrod Kimber/Shayan Khan have team maps. |

• 🏏 CRICKET ROUNDUP | Shuvaditya Bose talks to Freddie Wilde about turning around RCB’s fortunes. | Shashank Kishore on IND’s new wave of talent. | Paul Radley on UAE-W’s ability to sniff out child prodigies, and their latest talent. |

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An imperceptible analysis of Smith

📚 Best Features: A graphic breakdown of Steve Smith’s batting, & the 2017 WC winners in their own words.

• “Cracking the code”
  ✍️ Mark Doman, Alex Palmer & Nathanael Scott have a fantastic graphic story breaking down Steve Smith’s batting style, which gives us a great look into the attention to detail needed by elite players and analysts.

• “In their own words”
  ✍️ Matthew Henry talks to the ENG-W players who lifted the 2017 World Cup on home soil about the experience.

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🗞️ Quick News: The Stokes saga continues.

• 🔒 Will Macpherson/Nick Hoult on the 72 hours where Ben Stokes considered retirement, 🔒 Nick Hoult on the shifting balance of power from Stokes to Rob Key, & Josh Forde is sick of ENG’s shenanigans as a fan.

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How Lauren learnt to ring the Bell

📺 A/V: Bell on the WPL aiding her development.

• “Bowling, Beckham & Winning the WPL”
  📽️ Katherine Sciver-Brunt & Ebony Rainford-Brent talk to Lauren Bell about becoming one of the deadliest bowlers in the Women’s game. [YouTube]

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LEGEND:

• 🚨 = Shameless plug (i.e. a BoC piece!)

• 🏆 = Tournament Cricket

• 🔒 = Behind a paywall

• 📊 = In-depth statistics

• 🤖 = AI-generated (take it with a pinch of salt)

• 🎤 = Podcast

• 📽️ = Video

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