The Problem: Too much cricket documentary is dull, reducing the widespread appeal of the game.
The Solution: Get comedians onto commentary to make the cricket viewing and listening a much better experience with broad mass appeal.
I’m a big fan of the Test Match Special live text service from the BBC Cricket website. The webpage provides updates every over or so in a pithy paragraph, immediate updates when a wicket falls, and some good quotes from the verbal commentary on the radio to provide in-depth insight.
The real reason I enjoy it, beyond its reporting the game I love, is it is humorous. The writers use humour sparingly but very well, providing entertainment as well as information, and they also share tweets and messages from the public, which are very funny, and they set competitions for various cricketing puns, and share the best responses from the public.
In contrast, verbal commentary on the radio and on Sky Sports is dull. Although very informative of the game and the tactics being used, it is thoroughly dull. And it is now even worse as there is no crowd noise because of the Covid restrictions.
Many people describe cricket as like watching paint dry, and the dull commentary only serves to re-enforce that perception.
So, I suggest the commentary teams should all hire comedians, some of whom have a good understanding of the game, some of whom have absolutely none, and they pair them up with the cricket experts.
That would mean they continued to provide genuine insight into the game for the purists, but also provided more entertainment to reach out to a wider audience. The BBC has launched a podcast, the Tailenders, to do just that, which seems to have been successful, yet the live game commentary remains thoroughly turgid.
It may be that there needs to be a choice, that the comedy commentary is run on a specific frequency that people can choose to tune into, or choose to have over the TV pictures, so as not to annoy the cricket traditionalists, however I don’t think that should be necessary, as long as the humour was family friendly and entertaining, it should appeal to purist and newcomer alike.
It is noteworthy that ‘Blowers’ was possibly the most popular cricket commentator of all time; he had never played the game professionally, but had a love of cricket and a way with words that was thoroughly entertaining, and he is sorely missed. It is time for a new generation of Blowers to come on our airwaves and inject cricket with greater energy and entertainment.
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