The Summer Of Cricket Is Upon Us And It Shall Be Streamed
Tomorrow evening begins a new era of cricket fandom in Aotearoa. A most tradition-minded of sports enters the new age of live internet streaming as Spark Sport take charge of their first proper broadcast. While things’ll be business as usual for the Blackcaps and West Indies as they stroll out for the first match of a cheeky T20 series on Friday evening... for us watching at home it’ll be anything but. It’ll also be the first time the Blackcaps have played since the first (and ultimately only) ODI over in Australia back in March and that long hibernation now feels kinda symbolic. Like old mate Rip Van Winkle. Dozed off one day and then woke up twenty years later and everything had changed.
For the longest time, as long as some of us can even remember, the Blackcaps have lived on Sky Sport. The graphics might’ve been updated each season and some of the voices came and went but our plebian viewer routine was always the same. Chuck on the telly half an hour before the Test match starts, gotta catch that pitch report (and make sure it’s not raining), then pile up the snacks and beverages and sloth out on the couch the rest of the day. If you’ve gotta make a dash to the shops for some reason then that’s fine too because Radio Sport’s got ya covered there. All at the press of a few easy buttons and dials.
In theory, nothing will change apart from the middle man. It’s all still a matter of pressing the right buttons, they’re just different buttons. As someone who has a fair bit of experience with these matters I would highly recommend you get yourself a Chromecast or Apple TV – or countless other non-branded alternatives, I’m sure – and screencast it from your phone to the telly. I find the phone app streams way better than on my laptop or direct to the telly, and the casting option has less lag than HDMI cords or whatever. Super easy and you still get the big screen experience. I have dabbled in streaming cricket on the phone alone and it’s fine... but then you can’t use your phone to check the scorecards. Cast it to the telly and you don’t have to worry. Simplest way to do it.
It’s not like the streaming experience is a new one either. Aotearoa got a taste of it when Spark had the last Rugby World Cup and while that didn’t always go entirely to plan (though it was less problematic than I expected, to be honest) that whole saga did clear the path for the cricket to make its permanent home online. Some people will still have a problem trying to stream an entire day’s worth of cricket on sloppy internet connections (or, bless these ancient mariners, on limited data plans). The ongoing roll-out of fibre broadband should help there but without a doubt there’s a generational gap when it comes to knowing how to cope with the technology required. Setting it up and all that, sure, but also rolling with the punches when there’s a spot of buffering. But that’s a small cross section. Most Premier League fans have been figuring this stuff out for years now. NFL and NBA fans for even longer. This is just how it is now.
Luckily for the battlers out there, the first T20 of every Blackcaps series this summer will be shown on TVNZ. Spark and TVNZ have a cozy relationship going back to the Rugby World Cup and having that traditional media link is a bit of a safety net for them in case of emergency. It’s also four hours of bonus advertising once per T20 series, showing off their smooth and assured production to the masses in the guise of a free sample. Keep in mind that while there is a heap of sport on the Spark app these days, this is the first time where they’ve had to fully produce it themselves. Not just on-selling Premier League Productions’ broadcasts for example. Or NBATV. As such they spent ages searching for the right production partner and eventually hooked up with a UK company called Whisper.
All along these yarns from Spark Sport’s PR crew have involved chat about ‘reimagining’ what cricket looks like in this country and ‘appealing to young, diverse audiences’ and all of those things that PR crews always say. But there’s a lot at stake here. If they fail to deliver on the cricket coverage then there’s already a seething talkback-radio-listening demographic out there who’ll pounce on them in an instant and turn that into a recurring media shout-a-thon. We’ve just had an election so we’ve seen over and over how one dumb statement from one dumb person can become a week-long drama. Plus remember that Spark are a spanner in the works for certain media companies. Can’t imagine TVNZ taking shots at their mates but the other channel might be happier to pounce in those circumstances.
Which is why it’s kinda notable that for all the glossy talk... ultimately Spark settled upon a very well established foreign production team (who will use a lot of kiwi freelancers, if you’re wondering) and a commentary team that other than maybe one or two names was nooooot so different from what Sky had been doing in recent years. In fact the only one of the main comms who hasn’t worked for Sky before is Jeetan Patel and that’s only because he’s freshly retired. Pretty sure he would have done so eventually.
Ian Bishop and Mel Jones are imports, obviously. Bishop will presumably hang around for the West Indies tour while Mel Jones will presumably be part of the White Ferns’ tri-series with England and Australia. Scotty Stevenson has been the face of Spark Sport for a while now so you’d imagine he’ll be the lead broadcaster/host guy. And Sonia Gray, whose presence was by far the most intriguing one... turns out she’s not actually a commentator at all. She’s gonna do the American style sideline reporter role with a bit of fans-in-the-stand engagement too. Laura McGoldrick’s old job, basically. In her own words, talking to Stuff: “I won't be in the commentary box, I’ll be down on the ground with the fans and a few quick interviews with the players as they come off and getting the atmosphere”.
She should do great at that too - sorta wish more kiwi sports coverage treated that role as seriously as they do in the States. Ironically that’s now Ian Smith’s main job, working on the rugby tests now that the cricket’s been taken away from him. Would expect we still get a few more trips of Smithy chumming it up in Aussie as a guest commentator though. Maybe even the odd ICC event if he feels like it.
As to the rest of the crew, it’s gonna be fascinating to see how they mix and match them in rotations and between Blackcaps and White Ferns games. You’d hope we don’t see Frankie Mackay mostly doing women’s games and Brendon McCullum and Stephen Fleming skipping the women’s ones... wouldn’t imagine so. Although yeah Frankie Mac would surely be of more prominence for the White Ferns given how much added knowledge she brings there. Rebecca Rolls too... shout out to Rollsy who has played international football and cricket for Aotearoa and now will have commentated on international cricket as well as domestic football (she’s done Premiership games for Sky). Maybe Spark will get the rights to All Whites and Football Ferns games one day and she can complete the cycle. The All Whites and Football Ferns would actually have to play games for that to happen though.
Brendon McCullum is the headline analyst. Stephen Fleming is the major scoop. Two of the finest cricketing brains this country has ever produced and two guys who’ll bring slightly contrasting perspectives too... McCullum as the risk-taking innovator and Fleming as the sturdy grandmaster. Grant Elliott seems a guy cricket fans can happily spent time with while Jeetan Patel also has the right kind of personality to take to this gig like a fish to water. S’pose there’s the point of diversity as well with a kiwi-indian getting the job... but that’s secondary to the talent on show, same as with Frankie Mackay who always impressed on the Sky broadcasts (and after a few years where Sky made a point to bring in female voices... but only the female voices who were already deep in the establishment which really defeats the purpose – FM was the first of them who felt like more than a token inclusion). She’s also the youngest of the Spark crew.
Mark Richardson and Craig McMillan are less exciting... but maybe in this fresh context and with an actual host broadcaster in Scotty Stevenson to keep them on track it’ll be a different story compared to the very chummy Sky TV comms box. Basically what I’m saying is I don’t wanna hear about anyone’s golf game... although B-Mac is probably the keenest golfer of the lot so we might not be so lucky there.
So all things considered, you can’t exactly call that a groundbreaking commentary crew. Nothing crazy or out of the box there at all... but that’s the same point as with the production crew. Spark have already upset the apple cart simply by existing. The lesson we’re getting from their pre-coverage plans is that they’re not gonna serve up crazy, they’re not gonna serve up out of the box. What they’re attempting to serve up is excellence to show that online broadcasts don’t all have to be youtube vlog quality. That alone should be reassuring.
To be honest though, I’m not sure this transition is even about Spark Sport. This is the first of six years that Spark has scooped the rights up for and with that much time and money invested we’re in the ‘too big to fail’ category that our precious modern capitalist system enables. They can’t afford to fail, therefore they won’t. It’s all business. Nothing more. Where this gets fascinating is in how the public take to the change, because that could go one of two ways. The chaos and criticism hinted at earlier... or it could be such a smooth transition that nobody’s really bothered at all. The fact is, the world is not gonna wait back for every last person to catch up to it and the internet is going nowhere. Might as well hop aboard the train.
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