“Admired him as a player, but as a person…” Ian Chappell began. It is the prefix to a familiar line of enquiry at cricket clubs across the country. “But what are they like as an individual?” The question typically arrives after the villain’s ability has stood out, and the answer delivered over a beer, attendees’ necks craned in; the informant happy to colour in the character behind the performer, possibly in the absence of any runs or wickets of their own. You must contribute somewhere.
In reality, that scene extends beyond the club cricket arena. Work, family, the new partner of a friend. From Homer’s Iliad to Masterchef, the person behind the player adds critical meaning to the hero’s journey, and is probably why Ian Chappell’s comments last week about Bradman not buying a round 90-odd years ago somehow still felt interesting. “Good cricket brain,” Chappell posed, sitting opposite Julia Zemiro in her excellent Home Delivery series on ABC, “but vindictive mind.” Cue sombre piano in the background, and viewers eventually in the millions.
The phenomenon is partly connected to this week’s annual 48-hour outrage about the efficacy of the Gabba as a Test venue. Though its crowds have largely remained flat, and Australia again won, it didn’t “look good” on TV. Which is relevant, because cricket, as with most sport, should be understood as a TV show. And as has been pointed out by a few commentators this week, as a TV show it is doing pretty well.
More than ever, the screen is permitting the sort of drama and character development simply not possible when watching live at the ground. Peep the latest innovation from Fox Sports. No, not the pace of the ball off the wicket (is there anything to glean beyond the original insight, that the ball slows after bouncing?), but the mid-innings interview. After a wicket falls, viewers can now gain a titillating POV shot of the remaining batsman. For a few brief seconds, we can now feel as though we’re out in the middle with Marnus Labuschagne, about to start a meaningful partnership for the country. He is eyeballing us, we can see the sweat beads on his face, the asymmetrically applied zinc, smeared just-so.
Labuschagne is on 158 not out. He appears to be trying to hydrate after half a day at the crease.
The question comes in. “What are the tactics?”
“Well, look, ahh,” he starts, before sneaking some water. “The big man’s comin’ in now, so I’m just battin’!”, he says before drinking more water. “Trying not to throw it away…”. Amazing.
The “big man” is of course skipper Tim Paine, who now enters the picture, shattering our short fantasy of batting out in the middle with Australia’s No 3. Spidercam glides away, and we return to normal programming. Given how much we know about the purity of Labuschagne’s cricket passion, it’s no stretch to suggest he would have dreamt vividly of his debut century, at home. Though it’s doubtful a mid-innings Spidercam interview entered that fantasy.
Closer, closer. If the mid-innings thoughts of Test players flicks your switch, you will love the recently announced documentary that “follows the Australian men’s team from the fallout in Cape Town to their Ashes defence”, coming to Amazon Prime in 2020. It comes hot on the heels of the two-part, fly-on-the-wall documentary on the women’s Ashes team, which debuts on Channel Seven this week.
Produced by CA Films in partnership with Whooshka, the docuseries promises “unprecedented access to Justin Langer’s side”, and follows Manchester City, Juventus and the All Blacks’ respective forays into the sports doco realm. If the preview is anything to go by, we will see Langer delivering impassioned speeches to the squad in team meetings, and Paine addressing the group after their devastating loss at Headingley. Apparently cameras were fixed in the showers. While a certain type of club cricketer will rejoice at the advent of TubCam, you wonder how sacred the team song might have felt to those singing it at Old Trafford, with multiple cameras in the mix.
But it’s all new, all exciting, all eminently consumable. It’s here that sport sharply morphs into entertainment, and continues the trend of sport as episodic drama, where the team’s on-field fortunes don’t necessarily drive interest and popularity, so long as you’re “box office”. Two years ago, Manchester United reported soaring profits, despite a violent dip in footballing fortunes. It was theorised that their then-manager, José Mourinho, was such compelling viewing in both press conferences and on the touchline, that ‘eyeballs’ grew – such was the drama he was able to cultivate.
If we extend the Netflix analogy to the Australian men’s team, you might say this is the team’s difficult third season. If season one was the high drama of Cape Town And The Sandpaper Scandal, and season two was the Nice Guy Revolution, what is this year? While some characters have come and gone, and some characters have reset, the plot feels a little thin. Maybe a little calm is welcome, with a few episodes of Warne v Khawaja to tide us over, while the overarching story – The Summer of Marnus – builds in earnest. Whatever the case, we’re probably watching, but probably not at the ground.