COMMENT

DESPITE what recent performances by the Australian Test team might suggest, cricket is booming in this country. Monetarily, at least.

The shortest form of the game is where the cash is at. The domestic T20 competition — the Big Bash League (BBL) — has grown exponentially since it came into force in 2011. Mostly played over the festive season on days where there’s no international cricket scheduled, the franchise-based league continues to attract huge crowds and massive TV audiences.

Channel Ten secured the new TV rights deal to the league in 2013, when they agreed to pay $20 million a year. But they can expect a fight to keep the rights. The Australian reported Channel Nine’s interest in making a play when the current deal expires in 2018.

“Any future deal that we do, we want everything,” Nine’s director of sport Tom Malone said several days ago. “We want Test matches, we want one-dayers, we want (international) Twenty20s and we want the Big Bash.”

The BBL’s undeniable success has led some media commentators to suggest the rights would now be valued at approximately $60 million a year. If Nine is prepared to fork out dough like that, then Aussie cricket fans have every right to be worried about a looming disaster.

It means more Ian Chappell, more Ian Healy and more Michael Slater than ever before.

The Channel Nine commentary team has a reputation — justifiably so — for being an old boys club where ex-teammates reminisce about how good they were back in the day. Remember this hilarious article from a couple of summers ago detailing the phenomenon? The one about being “the matiest mates who ever mated”.

So often conversation during a telecast seems to drift to that great catch someone took on the third day of a dead rubber in 1994 or that dodgy curry the team ate at a hotel in Kolkata on an under-19s tour. Really, who cares? I watch the cricket because, strangely enough, I actually want to see some cricket, not receive a history lesson.

Far more painful than watching Australia lose the first two Tests was listening to Ian Chappell recall a story from his playing days during the Adelaide day-night match. He mentioned how an opposition player with the surname Boothill (we think that’s how it’s spelt) once advised him that a 40 not out would do the future Aussie captain no harm in a game earlier in his career. Chappell then cleverly used this anecdote as a segue into making the brave call that an unbeaten 40 from Matt Renshaw in the second innings run chase wouldn’t do the debutant any harm either.

No s***, Sherlock. I think we all could have figured out scoring 40 not out would be better than getting bowled for 11. The most interesting part of this commentary was actually Ian Healy trying to clarify Mr Boothill’s surname.

If Nine gets the rights to the BBL, then more of this idle chat awaits us.

I don’t hate on the current callers nearly as much as some people. I enjoy Shane Warne’s analysis of batsmen’s techniques before telling us how a bowler should bowl accordingly. Mark Taylor’s input is often astute and to the point.

Yes, they’re far from perfect, but it’s not all bad.

I’m not calling for a commentary box cull like that which just happened to the Test side, but there’s absolutely no way I want to listen to those same voices in the BBL in addition to international fixtures. That’s just way too much Chappell, Healy, Warne et al for me and, I imagine, many others.

Take a look at what would happen in the middle of next month if Nine got the rights. The first Test against Pakistan starts in Brisbane on December 15, then there are four BBL games on consecutive nights starting from the 20th. If the First Test went for five days, that’s nine days straight of hearing the same commentators.

We doubt each person on the Nine roster would head to every BBL game — it probably wouldn’t work logistically. And given the frenetic pace of T20 cricket, you can argue there’d be less time to recall the glory days anyway. Those are valid points.

But the fact remains, one of the reasons I enjoy the BBL is because of the variety it offers — not just in terms of the spectacle but because of the voices behind it.

I’m not a T20 enthusiast — I still love the five-day format — and I struggle to watch T20 World Cups and the Indian Premier League (IPL) because the sheer volume of the slog-a-thon contest bores me. Yet I’m glued to the screen for as much of the BBL as possible.

Part of this has to do with the excellent commentary on offer. While not an overly-experienced broadcaster just yet, Ricky Ponting’s cricket experience means he can explain to an audience what a batsman is looking to do often before he even does it.

Damien Fleming’s dad jokes make me laugh, and Mark Waugh — as a national selector — often has a good grasp on the younger players in the competition you mightn’t know much about. Adam Gilchrist has taken to his role at Ten admirably, too.

Throw in cameos from Kevin Pietersen (who’s called the Big Bash previously but is currently commentating with Nine) and Andrew Flintoff and you’ve got the right ingredients for a solid few hours of entertainment.

Last month it was reported Darren Lehmann, Andrew Symonds and former Kiwi skipper Brendon McCullum would join the team behind the microphone for the BBL’s sixth instalment. In my eyes, this would only be a boost.

The play-by-play work done by someone like Ten talent Mark Howard also ensures the action at hand takes priority.

Commentating sounds like an easy gig, but we know it isn’t. With so much time to fill in Test matches especially, there must be the temptation to fill the silence with anything that comes to mind, so you can understand why the Nine guys — most from the same era — resort to familiar tales of yesteryear.

But still, there’s a limit to how much of that the Aussie cricket public can cop, and that limit would be far exceeded if the same brigade started calling matches involving the Sydney Thunder, Melbourne Stars or Hobart Hurricanes.

I enjoy nothing more than a double-coated Tim Tam — you know, the ones that come in the blue packet — but if I had to eat a whole pack everyday, you can be sure I’d get sick of them and never want Tim Tams in my life again. It’s the same with Channel Nine commentators.

So Nine, do yourself a favour. Keep the $60 million a year in your pocket for now and let cricket lovers in this country take a break over Christmas and the New Year. We all deserve it.