Channel Nine cricket commentary team anchor Mark Nicholas. There was a time, not that long ago, when the most salient question for some was the jacket colour of broadcasting doyen Richie Benaud. Was it the cream, the bone, the white, the off-white, the ivory or the beige? While the remarkable 81-year-old remains on air, the coverage is now anchored - in a dapper, tight-fitting, darker-coloured suit - by the Englishman Mark Nicholas. The 54-year-old came to Australia first as a teenager, to play grade cricket in Newcastle during the second year of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket. He returned in 1986-87 and began writing about the game as he played professionally in Hampshire. He was offered a job with The Daily Telegraph covering England's Ashes tour in 1994 and became enamoured of the country. In 2003, while covering the Rugby World Cup, Nine offered him a job calling cricket.

A glimpse of the team's tea-time broadcast activities. At that stage, Channel Four's British cricket coverage, which Nicholas hosted and produced, was being lauded for its innovation and broad appeal. Mostly unknown to Australian audiences, he was introduced in 2003, during the Brisbane Test. To an audience reared on Benaud, Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Bill Lawry, he initially proved polarising. ''It's been a slightly rocky road to get here today,'' he acknowledges. Inside the broadcast box in Hobart. Nine's head of sport, Steve Crawley, sagely notes Nicholas hails from a showbiz family. His mother and sister were actors and his stepfather a senior figure in BBC current affairs. His father worked in newspapers.

''I always did impressions of commentators,'' Nicholas says. ''Richie was a big hero. I loved communicating the game. I always thought cricket was misunderstood. My dad was a good player, my grandfather played for Essex. So we just lived and breathed it.'' There is a hive of distracting activity in the box at all times. When he arrived at Nine he instantly felt the impact of those in the box. ''It's a hugely opinionated and massively respected room,'' he says. ''I was very wary. I was deferential to the game and less theatrical than I had been in England.'' When Channel Four initially won the rights from the BBC in England, the channel had entrusted Nicholas with attracting a younger, more diverse audience.

Looking back, he says he may have become too theatrical, too flowery with words, too over-hyped when a wicket fell. At Nine, however, he was studious. ''I wasn't leading the production like I did in England, so I fed off others. As it's evolved, I've had more of a lead role setting up how the day appears to the viewer.'' And Nine's coverage of the game itself has developed further. ''More cameras have provided more options,'' he says. ''In addition to the cameras, there is technology that nobody dreamed of in tracking the ball. Adding to the picture has been a different exercise for us. In the past, you let the pictures do the talking. Now, there's a lot more to explain to viewers.'' With the exception, perhaps, of Sky's outstanding roster in Britain, Nine's group of commentators is the most potent combination of proven ability to play the game and broadcast it well. There is a contrast in styles. Compare say, Chappell's quiet authority with Michael Slater's enthusiastic exclamations.

The box itself, which Green Guide visited in Hobart during the recent Australia-New Zealand Test, is larger than expected. Up to 15 staff are accommodated over three tiers of desks. In the front room, statistician Max Kruger holds court along with a team of analysts and producers. Nicholas, on a break from calling, is also in the front row, using the space for a quiet kip. Behind him, new Nine recruit Brett Lee taps away on his laptop, alongside Greig. Chappell leans on the back wall, scanning a newspaper. In an adjacent room, a small studio houses Kiwi import Ian Smith and Slater. The three commentators on air - Mark Taylor, Benaud and Ian Healy - sit in the far-right corner of the box in front of a phalanx of screens. Their task is much harder than it appears from the couch.

There is a hive of distracting activity in the box at all times. Remarkably, most of the box's extraneous noise is inaudible to viewers. The commentators are often handed pieces of paper with information that must be communicated to viewers, be it sponsored content, Nine promotional activities, information about play or statistical analysis. Multitasking is a prerequisite for the callers. And in the box, play seems to move remarkably fast. When two wickets fall in succession, the mood is exhilarating but the pressure to capture the details of the dismissals pervades the excitement. Producers will call out stats to the commentators or relay instructions to cameramen outside. Then there is the vast crew located in several production vans deep in the bowels of the stadium. They are responsible for the constant loop of replays and graphics. Each commentator wears an earpiece allowing him to hear the director's instructions to crew and cameramen. A director utilises the earpiece to bark ''back on air'' at the end of each commercial break. This is important, as the commentators spar playfully with each other off air.

''They are very different people,'' says Crawley, who is responsible for on-air rostering. ''It's important. There are subtle changes for each game. Bill Lawry, for instance, will open Boxing Day, as he does every year. There are those that do and don't work as well together. Richie doesn't do as many but he accepts it. Greigy always wants to do more. But that's Greigy.'' Benaud, who carries himself with a measured coolness that if possessed by someone half his age could be described as swagger, is fascinating to watch. He is sharply wry in much of his commentary. That he wears tinted shades while calling the game only adds to his rank and prominence. During a session calling with Nicholas, the two continue their conversation through the commercial break in the same tone as they did on air. Slater, however, is at the other end of the spectrum. He calls the game with a fervour lacking in other elements of the box. Taylor, too, is proactive in the chair. He often calls on producers for replays and statistics. One recent change of the Nicholas era was moving from having two commentators on air at a time to three. ''It changed the dynamic,'' Nicholas says. ''It made you slightly more conversational. You think more clearly about what you say, rather than babble on remorselessly.''

Another was his transition to host. He is frequently asked if he considers himself Benaud's replacement. ''You don't want to sound like you're always justifying yourself but you kind of are.'' It was not an entirely smooth transition. In 2005, Nicholas received a call from Nine during the off-season saying he had been cut. ''I was beside myself,'' he says. ''I was expecting a new contract.'' Within three weeks, however, Nine called back offering a one-off hosting role for its ICC World Eleven Super Test. ''I hadn't hosted up until then, just commentated,'' he says. On that tour, he was offered a new four-year deal. At the time he had been asked to audition as host for Dancing with the Stars in Britain. Rumours suggest Kerry Packer himself insisted Nicholas be retained. ''Mark's now the first person you see in the morning's coverage,'' Crawley says. ''He sets the tone of everything we do for the day. He's been a leader in that. He's meticulous and demanding and we're proud of the work we do in that half hour. He also leads the tea coverage, which is also very important.'' For almost two decades, Billy Birmingham's 12th Man alter ego sold millions of albums, lovingly skewering the Nine commentary team. Today, Birmingham says he has hung up his microphone as the landscape in Nine's box changed. ''Richie's no longer team captain,'' he says. ''Tony doesn't stick keys in the pitch, the weather wall and the player comfort level reading is gone, too.''

Not that Birmingham is critical. "Mark does an excellent job in the central commentary position,'' he says. ''He's very likeable on TV. He's always been very comfortable and ticks all of the boxes.'' The 12th Man's legacy, evident in the merchandise selling briskly on his website this summer, was apparent inside the Nine box. This much is obvious when the first reference to Birmingham's 12th Man arises. On air, discussion of weather and batting conditions are taking place, with Healy leading a spirited dialogue. Off air, however, Healy, who retains a wicked sense of humour, jokes opaquely about ''player comfort'' levels, a nod to Birmingham. Greig, sitting on the other side of the box, laughs knowingly as Healy continues during the commercial break. ''The first two 12th Man albums were so original, fresh and daring,'' Nicholas says, later. ''I always felt they were affectionate. To all of us, there was no sense of disrespect. In a way, it almost increased their myth and gave these guys a greater sense of importance in the Australian sporting firmament.'' As for the monstrous publicity generated by the new, pay TV-driven Big Bash League, which has been programmed around the Boxing Day Test, Nicholas remains circumspect. ''I don't get it. Should all the focus be on the Boxing Day Test? I think so.''

His boss is pragmatic. To Crawley, the ignominy of the Big Bash overriding the Boxing Day Test appears unfounded. ''I'm happy to have Boxing Day on Nine,'' Crawley says. ''There'll be some Twenty20 clashes that are mind-blowing but there's no way you'd be able to have it full-time [on free-to-air]. There will always be a place for Test matches. It's a wonderful television product. The one thing the Big Bash doesn't have is history. Test-match cricket has stood the test of time.''