An aggressive makeover

Has anyone else noticed the change that comes over ex-cricketers as soon as they migrate to the commentary box? Even the most conservative of them suddenly see the action unfolding from a bird’s-eye perspective and advocate a far more attacking philosophy than when they played the game.

Throughout the last few months, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the variety and diversity of the Sky Commentary team in England. The ‘regulars’ bring their own unique regional accents and personalities to the table, complemented by guest commentators like Shane Warne and Greg Blewett who seem to have fitted in seamlessly to the professional, neutral and slightly irreverent tone of the coverage. They provide serious analysis of the game but yet don’t seem to take themselves too seriously. They make the game fun without trivialising it.

What’s interesting though is the tendency among commentators the world over to be far more aggressive in their analysis than in their playing days. It makes me wonder if it is a phenomenon that occurs naturally when you have the luxury of viewing the game from afar, generally from a lofty height, compared to being caught up at ground level on the field where the gaps in the field may look wider and less defendable.

It is rare indeed to hear a commentator refer to a fielding captain as being too aggressive with his field placings. It’s almost always the case where commentators are advocating more catchers or more fielders in the circle. In almost every ODI game, there is a period when the captain has the minimum four fielders in the circle and the commentators reckon they should block up the singles. More often than not, it happens as a new batsman comes to the crease. From the commentary box or studio, there seems to be a general consensus that giving away the easy single, especially down the ground to the spinner, should not be allowed to happen.

Yet, many of these commentators probably did exactly the same thing when they were playing the game (apart from Warne who always had a reputation for keeping the field in). Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton were probably fairly conservative types, Ian Botham and David Gower played in different eras under slightly different playing conditions and Michael Holding rarely worried about dropping sweepers back when he was thundering missiles down at 99 mph. Across other networks, Sunil Gavaskar and Geoff Boycott were hardly the most attacking players or captains, wonderful batsmen though they were. I won’t go through the entire list from around the world but I’m sure you get my drift.

It’s probably not a deliberate ploy to belittle the current captains. Instead, perhaps watching the game from a different angle or height and not being caught up in the pressure of being a combatant subconsciously allows us to be a lot less conservative. Even in Test cricket, you rarely hear a commentator analysing a field setting as being ‘too attacking’. They’re forever bemoaning the lack of an extra slip or a short-leg. The current fashion of dropping a cover sweeper out relatively early in the game is one that is very rarely applauded by the armchair experts. I must confess to agreeing with them on that one!

Warne is the surprise package of the summer for me. Much to my surprise, his commentary has been insightful, fair, eloquent and balanced. For someone who did not necessarily show such maturity in some aspects of his life, his on-air persona is a very marketable entity. As the most recent cricketer on the commentary team, he sometimes seems to be the most forgiving of captains who go on the defensive, although it is clear that if he was bowling, things would be a lot different!

I haven’t quite had the time yet to see if the bowlers or batsmen lean more towards aggression when they commentate. Mikey Holding of course is clearly in the camp of those who believe in the ‘attack, attack, attack’ philosophy but his pedigree and background may explain that. To be fair to Botham, he always played his cricket that way too but when it comes to the mere mortals like Hussain, Atherton, Mark Taylor, Bill Lawry, Sanjay Manjrekar, Ramiz Raja, Kepler Wessels etc, it will be interesting to listen to them over the next few months and see if they advocate a slightly different philosophy with microphone than with bat in hand.

At least that will give me something to focus on during those middle overs of an ODI when the field drops back and the game goes into a bit of a holding pattern until the Powerplay is taken. Now there’s one thing I agree 100% with the commentators on – why do they leave the batting Powerplay so bloody late?