Turning the knife

The demise of Radio Sport’s coverage of domestic cricket has been a case of Death by a Thousand Cuts.  And today saw the knife slash deeper with a pretty obvious air of disdain.

Frist there was the reduction to one commentator per game, the interweaving with talkback callers and Biomag ads, the refusal to cover Plunket Shield matches, and the non-coverage of less than glamorous New Zealand overseas tours.

Year by year we have got used to the bath being drained, but today Radio Sport shoved two fingers in the face of the New Zealand cricket fan.  Just when we were getting used to Plunket Shield updates being provided via someone at Radio Sport Towers reading scores off an internet page they managed to find a person completely unsuitable for the task.

Those on Twitter are probable familiar with the US Cricket Guy parody account. It’s not bad; talking about Cricketball, 20/20 shootouts, tonnage etc. But it has no place on non-ironic NZ radio.

Some samples from today.

Franklin has 12 runs for no wickets”

“Otago are currently on 111 / 1 at the bottom of the 29th over”

“”The Current Partnership is naught off naught balls””

“He was bowled lbw by AJ McKay.”

“Jesse Ryder is on nil”

AJ McKay is on 32 for 1.” (As an aside, McKay was pronounced McK as opposed to McKai)

AJ Redmond was bowled AJ McKay caught L Ronchi” Putting the order to one side; whatever happened to Aaron, Andy and Luke?

Some may see this as cricket fans being precious, and they would be completely wrong. Cricket is a sport that has its not overly complex terminology. It is universally used, and is not hard to understand. And when you set yourselves up as a sports broadcaster you should learn to obey the simple rules.  This is verging on offensive.

As an aside, and New Zealand Cricket should be concerned about this; the main feedback today has been that of resignation that domestic cricket no longer got covered in New Zealand.

It’s when people stop caring that there is a real problem.