TELEVISION: The box seat

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Summer is here and sport is all over television, enticing cultureless indoor men like me away from sunshine and idyllic beaches. Unfortunately, it's not all good. Watching sport on television involves listening to the commentators, and for a sports-loving country, the bar here has been set surprisingly low. That a sports commentator is thunderously mediocre albeit famous in that particular sport, hence being hired is sadly a given. Cricket has suffered savagely here, most spectacularly with the early efforts of two of our most brilliant players, Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe.

But Crowe, realising everything isn't in fact sensational, did improve. And commentators do that; it is not an easy job. Jeremy Wells on record as saying he believes every word Ian Smith says, though it is always hard to tell with Wells as he is so ironic was once given a brief stint in the box, by Smith, and proved to be as dull as dishwater. Though it is always hard to tell with Wells as he is so ironic.

Smith, now the doyen of our cricket commentators, presumably earned his talking rights through not just an outstanding playing career, but also the ability to amuse whenever interviewed. Mark Richardson, the funniest of all our cricketing interviewees, clearly got his position at Sky in the same way. But it is not easy to be amusing over the longer stretch and it took a while for Smith to find the balance between information and entertainment. He still has a maddening tendency in interviews to use his own opinion as the question (leaving the player with "that's right, Smithy" as the only possible response) but Smith could rightly argue that so many of our sports people have so little to say, or have been so blandly programmed by media experts, that a pure question would be pointless.

He seems to have gagged and grinned his way into the Australian commentating boardroom and even the arrogant Tony Greig is not too tall a target. Between innings during the final Chappell-Hadlee one-dayer in Tasmania, Greig stated emphatically New Zealand were done for. Smith stood up and said there was no point in continuing with the game, let's just get the trucks and move on out. Panel convener Mark Nicholas was in hysterics.

Comfortably the best cricket commentator we have had is Glenn Turner, who tells the viewers what and why to perfection. Turner never tried to entertain, but ironically one sports commentator who both informed and entertained this month was his brother Greg at the New Zealand Golf Open. Turner read the golf beautifully through all four days. He knows the game and he knows the players. Entertain? He never let up. Educating his Australian co-commentators on Queenstown's depleting ozone layer, he nonchalantly mentioned he was on his seventh nose.

Greg Turner was not only our best sports commentator in December, he was probably our best in 2007. The only one I can recall to run him close was former Tall Blacks basketball coach Tab Baldwin during the national league in winter. There is a weird tradition in basketball that our commentators have to be screaming Americans, one reason perhaps the sport isn't bigger here. Baldwin was a welcome change, a quiet American. And he really knew his stuff.

Unfortunately he was paired with the year's worst sports commentator, the aural asbestos that was Lieutenant Dan. The lieutenant, glowing with wild hyperbole and military metaphor, recalled ESPN's shocking soccer "analyst" Tommy Smyth, in that both were surely recruited by someone who thought voice was all, and perplexingly, they actually had the right voice. The team covering the Breakers on Maori Television now Te Arahi Maipi, Dale Husband, Chris and Tania Tupu have a long way to travel to reach Tab Baldwin's delivery and knowledge, but at least they're from here.

- © Fairfax NZ News