It’s all over, including the shouting. The fat lady has sung. Bumble has not only started the car but pulled out of the parking lot.
An England international has reached its conclusion and a Sky Sports representative is standing on the podium in readiness for the post-match presentation.
We’re all too familiar with what happens next. The two captains, and the man of the match, trot up to the ersatz stage for a chat with Wardy or Athers.
Platitudes. Cliches. The stating of the bleeding obvious.
And now a cry has gone up – something must be done. Sounds like Alastair Cook, but no – it’s the Daily Telegraph’s Scyld Berry.
I’m grateful to Nigel, on our comments board, for flagging up this paragraph from Berry’s cricketing manifesto for 2015.
Television commentators officiating at presentation ceremonies to ask more probing questions of the captains and other players who are interviewed. “Were you pleased to win today?” and “Are you disappointed to have lost that one?” do the game a disservice and make the players look dumb.
Berry has a cheek. Of which more later. But he also has a point.
Every time you watch a set of post-match interviews, a tiny part of you dies inside. At turns they are facile, cringeworthy, or nails-down-a-blackboard ghastly.
They make for a fairly decent game of bingo.
“We’ll take the positives out of this”. SCORE ONE POINT
“We did/did not execute our skills”. SCORE TWO POINTS
“All credit to [opponent who scored a double century]”. SCORE THREE POINTS
“I think we should bring Kevin Pietersen back for the next test”. SCORE ONE THOUSAND POINTS
Oh, for just a little more insight and candour.
A few words in defence of the Sky Sports interviewers. They perform this task on live TV, and in front of a live audience of spectators, players and officials. Their job requires them to make the cricketers say something. Blank looks and silence aren’t the order of the day.
And the hosts don’t have much to work with. Whether it’s Atherton, Ward, or whoever, holding the mic, their interview subject is a callow professional athlete, often of limited life experience, and picked for their ability to play, not speak. He’s probably shy and nervous. He’s terrified of saying anything negative about his team-mates. And if he’s English, he’s had the party line drilled into him by the ECB politburo.
Meanwhile, one of the three players on the podium will be the losing captain, who’s feeling miserable and humiliated.
So all in all, the Sky man has no choice but serve up a few gentle underarm lobs, just to get them talking.
Would it really hurt the ECB to let their players off the leash when the microphone looms? “Just say what you feel – enjoy the attention, and tell the truth”. That’s what Paul Downton would tell the squad if he was serious about what he said last month:
I don’t want to exclude anybody from English cricket, I want everybody to feel enfranchised. I think as an organisation we don’t communicate as well as we should and it’s something we’ll invest in going forward.
England cricketers only air real views when they no longer have a chance of being selected again. If they’re still in the loop, your best chance of hearing them speak is when a sponsor buys their time. The ECB micro-manage their media and feed crumbs sparingly. Tomorrow there’ll be a media facility ahead of the World Cup squad’s departure for Australia. Peter Moores will do a press conference but no ‘one-to-ones’, and no players will speak at all.
But back to the post-match presentations. Virtually every TV cricket commentator is an ex-pro these days, which is both a strength and weakness when it comes to interviewing current cricketers. They are more likely to gain a player’s trust (but should exploit this virtue better). They have a genuine insight, borne of personal experience, into what the player is thinking.
On the other hand, they’re not professional broadcast journalists by background or training, and that leads to messy technique. Many of the Sky team commit the cardinal interviewer’s sin: asking a closed question. “Was that dismissal the turning point of the match?”. The only answer is “yes” or “no”.
Worse still – and Mike Atherton does this an awful lot – is to fail to ask a question at all and just make a statement. “The performance by your seamers must have been very pleasing…” [pokes microphone back into captain’s face].
Professional interviewers take care to ask ‘open’ questions (“describe…explain…talk me through”) which provoke detail and emotion. Listen to broadcasters like Eleanor Oldroyd or Mark Pougatch, or even Charles Colville, and compare how they phrase the questions (and the kind of answers they receive), with the results you get when an ex-player is in charge.
The majority of the Sky team are former England captains, and they’ve stood in the shoes of the very people they’re now interviewing. They know what it’s like to face the media in the wake of a crushing defeat. It’s the equivalent of John Major quizzing Gordon Brown about losing the general election. And therein lies a trap too many cricket pundits fall into – empathising more with the players than the viewers. The consequences are dilution, matiness, and cop-out.
Earlier I mentioned Berry’s cheek. As Nigel said on the comments board.
How hypocritical is this? You (Berry) and the vast majority of the print media have failed in the last year to seriously question anything the ECB has done. You have meekly toed the establishment line whilst they have stumbled from one shambles to another.
You make a reasonable point about post match interviews but perhaps you should put your own house in order first!
The print press operate in a much easier environment than the Sky team at the presentation ceremony. The hacks are given a pooled press conference with the captains and man of the match, but it’s not filmed and effectively takes place in private. If a question gets no proper response, it doesn’t really matter. There’s no ‘dead air’. They can just ask another one.
Sky Sports might argue it’s not their job to hold people to account. They provide the coverage, analysis and entertainment. The newspapers have no such excuse. Which is why Berry’s lament is more than a bit rich. In 2014 the ECB spun a story so full of holes even Geoffrey Boycott’s proverbial grandmother could have told they were lying from fifty paces. But with a small number of exceptions, the hacks lacked the curiosity, independence, and cohones, to ask any difficult questions.
There’s only so much insight a cricketer can provide during the emotional tumult of the post-match comedown. There’s a hell of a lot more explaining cricket bosses could do. Berry has aimed his fire in completely the wrong direction.
In other news
Sam Robson and Adam Lyth both made centuries, and Alex Lees 82*, in the opening day of the Lions tour.
His rebel tour aside, I’ve always had a very soft spot for Geoffrey Boycott. A week after David Collier was made an OBE, here’s why the Yorkshireman hasn’t been knighted, and his reaction.
“He was very, very upset and still a bit raw”. James Anderson’s heart bleeds for the Dear Leader.
An enthralling conclusion to the New Zealand-Sri Lanka test is in store. South Africa are on course for victory at Cape Town.
“There will be people around the world today watching and thinking ‘He doesn’t even play for England – why oh why?'”. Said who, about whom, and why? The answer’s here.
Plus a month’s worth of quality posts in just one weekend from Dmitri.
“… makes the players look dumb”????!!!!!
Come on, Scyld.
With the trite garbage that comes out of the mouths of England players – at press conferences, in interview and post match presentation – they ARE dumb. To a man.
Find me an England cricketer with a bit of personality. Anyone. Please.
They sacked him!
Matt Prior was the team comedian I hear!
Scyld Berry just cannot be taken even vaguely seriously these days…. I’m sure he used to a terrific writer, but its getting far harder to remember now. He’s incredibly out of touch – makes it very hard now to think the Khawaja comment last year was, um, a sub-eds slip of the keyboard, shall we say?
He completely lost it for me right here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/11079171/England-must-focus-on-the-Ashes-and-2019-World-Cup-time-to-drop-Ian-Bell-and-James-Anderson.html
Right down there with Newman’s deranged pre-emptive strike on The Book and Selvey’s puke-inducing hagiography of Andy Flower as the worst thing I read all year.
Although the worst single lines of 2014 were “I do know the intention was to have feted him properly when the dust settled” and “The case against him goes much further than the pathetic leaked charge sheet.” I’m sure no-one needs a link to that article, the 750 comments below it or the 150-odd that were moderated in the space of just two days. Comment is free!
“Tomorrow there’ll be a media facility ahead of the World Cup squad’s departure for Australia. Peter Moores will do a press conference but no ‘one-to-ones’, and no players will speak at all.”
I wonder if it’s got to the point where the journalists never get to interact properly with the players and actually they’re speculating just as much as we are. Or making things up, as the case may be.
No different to football really. The reluctance to ask difficult questions of managers is the same. On the rare occasions Man U lost under Ferguson the hapless reporter would say something like “Well, Sir Alex, what did you make of that?” Instead of something like …. “you put out a week side, you got what you deserved.” But then none of the football reporters ever stood up to Ferguson. Even when he banned them, they behaved like little giggling school girls. If they had an ounce of pride or professionalism they would have got up on mass and all walked out.
How many times does a reporter ever ask a manger why he made such ludicrous substitutions?………. ” you were winning with 15 mins left, and then you took off you best player, do you feel you let the fans down?”
But I agree with you Maxie there is a limit to what the reporter can achieve. I can’t think of many post match interviews that I have ever learned anything of interest from a manager. Occasionally a player will slip up and say something stupid. Like Cooks petulant outburst about Priors retirement…… “It’s up to Matty if he wants to stand down.” That told you a lot about the way England was run and the complacency about playing unfit players.
But the idea that the cricket writers of England should be complaining about holding people to account in interviews is too absurd. In light of the last couple of years of lazy pro ECB dross most cricket writers should be ashamed to walk out in daylight.
The media is very hypocritical. They talk about there not being any characters anymore ,but as soon as anybody says anything remotely interesting, even if it is controversial they then jump on the player. Is it any wonder players say nothing. Doesn’t pay to venture into areas that will get the media all worked up.
England cricketers only air real views when they no longer have a chance of being selected again.
That’s not completely true.
Anderson, for example, was quite happy to give his fairly vehement (and negative) views of Pietersen when asked recently on R5.
As Nigel said on the comments board…
I should point out that I was quoting that comment from below the original Berry article – though I very much agree with the setiment, it wasn’t my words.
My greatest bugbear with England’s public communication isn’t the post-match interviews or even the sponsors’ links when they give a press interview (see Jimmy Anderson in the Mail for another example of one of those). It isn’t the cliches and it isn’t the twaddle. Not that all these aren’t infuriating!
What I feel is worse than any of these are the non-attributable briefings. These are bad enough in politics but this is sport FFS! What is so precious that you can’t appear in front of a microphone and say it? When combined with a lack of proper media appearances it becomes a way of spreading opinion (poison, if you like) without anyone quite being certain where it is coming from and thus denying a right of legitimate reply.
Take this recent piece by Paul Newman in the DM:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-2896555/Jonathan-Trott-begins-bid-Test-return-former-England-No-3-makes-international-comeback-Lions-captain-South-Africa.html
The article clearly gives the impression that the pecking order among the Lions’ openers is Robson, then Lees and lastly Lyth. Is this Newman’s view or has he been briefed? It feels very much like the latter but the point is that one can never quite be sure. The low regard for Lyth seems almost entirely age related (only Lyth and Lees have their ages quoted in the entire article). This isn’t the first piece I’ve read holding Lyth’s age (27 – he’ll be collecting his pension soon) against him – how old were Strauss and Trott when they made their debuts?
Some may feel I am thinking particularly of a certain member of the England hierarchy here. You may very well feel that – but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Ah, you’ve reminded me of another nadir for cricket reporting in 2014:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-2703435/Clamour-Joe-Root-England-captain-shows-dearth-leaders-county-game.html
Who can forget that, at precisely the point at which Alastair Cook’s captaincy was under its most severe pressure, two days after the shambolic defeat at Lord’s against India, we could read about:
– Joe Root being too young
– Joe Root giving up 472 runs in the fourth innings when he captained in a first-class match
– County captains being too old/unexciting/crap
And of course, everyone’s favourite revelation of 2014:
“the unofficial vice-captain Ian Bell is surely unsuited to higher office, particularly while he cannot buy a run himself. Ask anyone involved in the England bonding trip a couple of years back — which saw Bell make a total hash of his leadership task — whether he really could take on the mantle of captain of his country.”
Simon, it would seem the Newman/Flower, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back handbook is still working overtime. When Newman published all the allegations that later turned up in the dodgy dossier you saw laid bare the insidious relationship and dirty dealing that goes on. No surprise that Newman immediately ran anti Bell stories when Cooks job was on the line after the Lords test.
Newman is The Lord Haw haw of cricket journalism. “ECB calling, ECB calling.”
Ah yes, the ECB and ageism.
Boring, unimaginative Flower and Moores would never have picked Chris Rogers. More open minded Darren Lehaman did.
Didn’t turn out to be too bad a Test cricketer, Chris Rogers, did he?
On further reflection, it seems bizarre that there already is a pecking order among the alternative openers.
Isn’t the whole point of the Lions to discover the best alternatives in each position? Instead the point seems to be confirmation of views that has already been formed. How many more runs will Lyth have to score to force a rethink? He scored 50% more runs last season and fat lot of good that seems to have done him.
Alistair Cook was ridiculed for talking off the top of his head. I’m not surprised that most of the others prefer to stick to the ECB script. Sure fire way of avoiding stepping into the elephant poo. Well done Jimmy. Not for what he said but for saying what he thinks. Not for the first time.
I lost all respect for KP the moment he said “That’s the way I play” during the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash. Translation: “I can’t be bothered to make the effort to change and improve myself as a Test batsman.”
That’s not just arrogance; it’s complacency, laziness and mental defeat. “That’s the way I play” are the words of a guy who has given up on trying to make himself a better player. And when a guy gives up on himself, you get rid of him immediately, without hesitation.
If the ECB had sacked him for that reason, rather than because of political bullshit, it would have been completely justified.
@Anonymous – yeah that attitude did grate at times, but to be fair, he did dig in during the Fourth Test with a gritty 70-odd if memory serves correctly.
“That’s the way I play” are the words of a guy who has given up on trying to make himself a better player.
Which is clearly incorrect.
Few players have put more effort into honing their technique through long hours of practice. What Pietersen meant is that he is an attacking batsman; always has been, always will be – and that was always his role in the team.
You are effectively asking that he turn himself into an opener.
I am agnostic on whether or not Pietersen ought to have been dropped, but I’m not going to ‘lose all respect’ for him for stating the obvious.
Nor can I condone the extraordinary ukase from the ECB, declaring the impossibility of his ever again being selected.
Well said, Nigel.
Pietersen would have got much less flak if he’d said “We talked it through a lot in team meetings and came to the conclusion that my greatest strength is as an attacking batsman and that’s what I should stick to, even if sometimes it doesn’t work out as well as I could wish.” Which would surely have been true. But he prides himself on plain speaking (alas) and knows the value of a snappy quote for the media, though in this case it was an unwise choice as Anon’s post shows.
But even those who are most critical of him acknowledge that he trains and works harder than almost anyone else and has always been very receptive to new ideas.
No doubt he’s arrogant – aren’t most top athletes? – but “complacency, laziness and mental defeat”, surely not. Insecure, manic and ultra-competitive would be nearer the mark, I’d say.
“Insecure, manic and ultra-competitive” – I think you may well have hit the nail on the head there, Zepherine.
The “it’s the way I play” thing is an interesting one. I was at the WACA test when KP holed out on the fourth evening, and I’ll confess I was livid. On top of other careless shots in Brisbane and Adelaide, it felt complacent to me, even though intellectually, I realised that probably wasn’t it. I wanted to hear something a bit less glib than “that’s the way I play”. From the small sample size that I spoke to in the bar after play, I wasn’t the only one.
I think the issue with KP was more around whether he was still capable of playing that way, without getting out more often. It seemed over the last 12 months of his test career that the same methods were producing lesser returns. Everyone has to adjust their game to some extent as reflexes or eyes decline even fractionally – “that’s the way I play is no longer an option if it’s not working as well as it once did.
Was KP at that point? We’ll probably never really know.
“If the ECB had sacked him for that reason, rather than because of political bullshit, it would have been completely justified.”
I don’t know of any player ever having been sacked for failing to make the most of his abilities while out-performing everyone in the team.
Gower?
“That’s the way I play”…Moeen Ali
“Thats the way I play”…Jos Buttler
“Thats the way I play…Alex Hales
“Thats the way I play”….Eoin Morgan
This is how i can play.. Kevin Pietersen
Is Scyld reading this blog ?
I only ask as he has come up with a decent article, with some fairly forthright criticisms of the selectors (though his quixotic attachment to the Cook cause appears to continue…):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/11329354/England-will-have-no-excuse-this-time-for-World-Cup-flop.html
Analysis of the unbalanced team, pretty well spot on, even if missing the fundamental reason for the selectorial constipation (Cook blindness),
Thanks to all of you for your excellent and very thoughtful replies. Apologies for not responding in detail or individually – pressures of time caught up with me, alas.
Taking the negatives? There are no negatives, only plateaus….
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jan/07/england-schedule-peter-moores-test
Some good points Maxie.
One small thing on the Boycott non-knighthood – his “I was wrongly convicted” line is rather similar to that used by Ched Evans – which no-one’s buying a bar of. While there’s a case for the fact that Boycott’s conviction was 20 years ago being mitigation, you can be sure that if Boycott had been knighted there’d have been a media storm over it.