Cricket Commentary Radio Australia

[Cris Luczak]

Inthis new series, Arunabha Sengupta pays homage to some of the greatest figures in the history of broadcasting. To start with, he tunes in to the voice of Australian cricket, Alan McGilvray.

The rapt listeners could hear the crisp sound of the willow striking the leather, as also some scattered applause. Some of them kept their own scores, pencils jotting down numbers and facts with the commentary.

The clunk of the harder hit was heard on the radio, along with gasps from the crowd as the half-chance went abegging, followed by loud applause. Thousands of Australians around the land slapped their foreheads and cursed.

A collection of recordings of loud cheers, polite applause, crowd annoyance reaction and so on were used as applicable by a sound effects man. The sound of the bat striking the ball was generated by a pencil in the hands of the commentator tapping on a round piece of wood on the desk, the harder the stroke seemed on the cable, the more resounding the tap of the pencil!

Only once did an unsatisfactory cable lead to a disastrous error. The dispatch came through announcing MC was out. The two men at the crease at that point had been Stan McCabe and Ernie McCormick, resulting in severe confusion.

The next cable announced that it had actually been McCormick. A good thing for Australian cricket too, for it was the innings in which McCabe got 232, prompting Don Bradman to call his team to watch it from the dressing room balcony. There was nothing for McGilvray to do but to explain the error honestly with profuse apologies.

However, McGilvray did show the world what he could do with synthetic broadcasts, and when Test cricket resumed after the war, he became the voice of Australian cricket, forming an immensely popular team with Vic Richardson and Arthur Gilligan.

McGilvray had been a good enough cricketer to lead New South Wales, and once added 177 with Bradman in a benefit match (his own share being 42). Although his pre-World War II voice sounds tinny on aged recordings, he now developed an impressive timbre and fluent delivery, and became the first choice cricket commentator in Australia, and went on to cover over 200 Test matches across the world.

However, that did not prevent TMS stalwarts from famously embarrassing him in characteristic light-hearted manner. Brian Johnston once timed his question perfectly, forcing the dignified Australian to try and answer with his mouth full of cake.

On another occasion, Johnston innocently asked him a question, when, off the air, McGilvray was fast asleep in his chair. Yet, generally, he did not stick around in the box when his stint was done, hastening for a drink or smoke or a chat with one of his many mates, always returning in good time for his immaculate twenty-minute periods.

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at )

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Let's talk about the other aspects of broadcasting that are important. One of them - neutrality. Was that something you had to cultivate within your work simply because you are this iconic Australian captain? You were identified as an Australian, you are in the box for Test matches involving Australia all the time?

I found it pretty easy. I mean, I think you should - it should say "impartial broadcast" on your CV. It came pretty easy to me because I remember being in England in 1972 for the Ashes series - the first time I captained overseas. And the Olympics were on right near the end of that tour, in Munich. We had the Olympics on television quite a bit and we were getting the English commentators. They were barracking rather than commentating and that annoyed the hell out of me. I thought, "Jesus, I don't like blokes who start barracking and I'm not gonna do it."

But I think also it's part of your job. If I'm listening to cricket commentary and I can hear certain blokes - particularly a couple of Englishmen I'm thinking of - barrack for England, and as England start to go down the mine, their commentary goes down the mine. You can hear from their voice: "This is not going too well."

If Australia have a good victory, you run into somebody the next day or a couple of days later and they will say, "Oh, you must have had a great party after that Australian victory." I'll say, "No, mate, I was on the first plane out of there, as quick as I could. And I always say, I stopped worrying about winning and losing cricket matches in March 1980 and there is a simple reason for that. Before March 1980, I could do something about it. Now I can't do anything about it.

There were a couple of incidents that were quite prominent, that still get talked about: the underarm incident involving your brothers, and the incident between Javed Miandad and Dennis Lillee, where you were quite critical of Dennis Lillee, weren't you? Do you remember those broadcast moments? And was there ever a thought in the back of your mind, "These are my brothers", or "This is my leading fast bowler"?

I don't think I was actually commentator. I was in the commentary box, but I wrote a column. I was writing for the Sydney Sun in those days and you know, I was quite categorically against what he did.

Very funny, because I don't see Greg after the underarm. That was in Melbourne, the next game was in Sydney, and I am living in Sydney, so I drive to the ground. We used to park in those days on the SCG Number 2 ground. As I parked there, a big bus pulls up right next to me and the band who are going to play before play get off the bus. The Australians are practising down the end of the Number 2 ground. I haven't seen Greg since the underarm. I thought, right, now is the time. So I'm walking past the nets and Greg is bowling and I go, "Good day mate, how are you?" He looks around, there is no hello or anything. He says, "Thought you would have come on the bus." And I said, "Mate, you know I live in Sydney, I've got my own car, why would I come on the bus?" "On the bloody bandwagon like the rest of those bastards." I said, "Well, mate, if you don't like what I write, then perhaps you should not read the newspapers." He paused for a moment and said, "Probably just as well you disagreed with it," he said, "because I ordered it, Trevor bowled it, and if you'd agreed with it they would have thought we're all bloody mad." So that sort of cut the ice and everything was fine from that time on.

And the Lillee thing, yeah. In fact, David Hill, our producer, said after the day's play, "Get down there and interview Dennis about the incident with Javed." That did create a bit of a dilemma because I didn't think Dennis should be saying anything about it. At that stage I doubt that he'd had the hearing to decide what his punishment would be, and just as a mate I thought he's probably better if he didn't say anything.

So I went to him and I said, "Mate, David Hill wants me to do an interview with you about the incident, but as a friend I am suggesting that you don't do it." He said, "Okay, I won't do it then." So I went back and told Hilly, "No, he hasn't agreed to it." But I've never had a problem with Dennis. You know, Dennis knows how I feel about it. We had that relationship. One of the things I always felt as a captain was important was honesty. The players needed honesty from you and whether they liked me or they didn't like me very much, they always knew they were getting honesty from me.

You continue to be part of the Channel Nine coverage. There are a lot of recent Australian players coming into the commentary box who are openly biased and sound like they are supportive of the Australian team rather than objective commentators. Is that a fair assessment?

It does annoy me a bit when it's a bit jingoistic. See, I was very lucky again. I said to you originally that I drove to Sydney chasing Barbara Ann, and I was lucky that I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Sydney was the right place, but also, we were just starting out. I mean, the cricket coverage had been going for three seasons, but also Wide World of Sports, the Saturday afternoon show, was starting up and I got a gig there.

But the main reason why I was lucky was because both David Hill and Brian Morelli - David was the producer, Brian the director - were very, very brilliant at their job, and they had time to help you learn from them. After cricket, let's say a five-day Test match, I reckon two of the five days we would be up in Brian's room or David's room. All the commentators would sit around, have a drink - "That was rubbish", "What was that all about today?" I remember Hilly one day saying to Richie, "Now, Richie, just go through that business about legspin bowling again, will you?" and so Richie explained it and Hilly said, "Ha, now I can see, and I see how we can use that on television." So we kicked all these things around and they had time to tell you things about commentary - don't do this, do this.

Now, I get the feeling that, you know, with the ex-player who comes into the commentary box, it's: "Right, that's your microphone, here's your earpiece, good luck, that's your training now." I had much better training than that and I feel very fortunate that I did.

Have you ever sat down with a few of the guys who come in? Do you ever feel as a senior broadcaster that you've noticed something, or they are wandering off into areas that you feel are troublesome? Do you see that as part of your mandate or do you stay away from that?

It goes back to the days when I was a player. I didn't like old players coming up to me and saying, "Oh son, your grip is wrong, you know, you should be doing this, you should be doing that." If I had a problem with cricket in some form, I'd ring Richie or talk to Keith Miller and Lindsay Hassett a bit over a drink. So if somebody comes to me and asks for my advice, I'll give it, but I don't like to start foisting my advice on people. If I feel there's something that I should say, I'll say to the guy, "Mate, do you want to hear my opinion?" and if he says, "No, I don't", well, he don't want to hear it.

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