A Beautiful Game

by Mark Nicholas

  He stood up, which we assumed was the signal for us to go. It was three o’clock. As we pulled ourselves from the chairs, he told us to sit down. Tea and coffee arrived. He picked up an old bat and said it was the one Sobers used in Melbourne in 1971–72. He encouraged us to feel how light it was and then showed us how Sobers defended on the back foot from a front-on position, like Ian Chappell, he said. ‘There’s too much bullshit about playing side-on,’ he added. Then he showed us another bat, Bradman’s. He imitated the Don’s pick-up and asked who else did it like that. I offered Viv Richards and Geoff Boycott. He nodded. We were all talking freely now.

  He asked if we followed golf. Indeed we did. He smiled. From the same corner as the bats came Jack Nicklaus’s persimmon-headed driver. He waggled it and talked about the change in golf-club technology. He said that Nicklaus hit it onto the par-five 18th at the Australian Golf Club with that driver and a six iron. Still riveting. Frankly, pretty much everything he said was gold, even when it was nonsense and there wasn’t much of that. He loved talking sport and touched on rugby league and tennis, too. After the initial broadside, it was as if he had asked some mates around for tea and biscuits.

  At four o’clock, he ran out of steam. ‘Take care of the game,’ he said, ‘because it won’t take care of itself.’ It was with a warm handshake that he bade us farewell. That was it, the only time I met Kerry Packer. Unforgettable.

  EPILOGUE

  At the time of WSC, the establishment attitude to Packer, and to the players he recruited, was excruciatingly arrogant. In England, most administrators, journalists and former players reacted to him with mere disdain. But in Australia there was vitriol. The secretary of the ACB, Alan Barnes, said of the players reputed to have signed for WSC, ‘They are not professionals, they were invited to play, and if they don’t like it there are 500,000 other cricketers in Australia who would love to take their place.’

  A few months after our meeting at Park Street, the board of Cricket Australia, as it had become known, marked its centenary by naming the two most influential figures in its history. The first, Sir Donald Bradman, was no great surprise. The second was a show stopper: Kerry Packer. Bob Merriman, then chairman, said, ‘Kerry still has a deep passion for cricket. He still wants laws changed to make it more entertaining. His ideas are proactive and sensible.’

  Less than eight months later Kerry was dead.

  I took careful note of John Woodcock’s simple advice when opening our broadcast—or ‘telecast’, as Greigy loved to say. ‘Good morning, everybody, welcome to the Melbourne Cricket Ground. We begin today with the sad news that Kerry Packer has died.’ Benaud, Lawry, Greig and Chappell were alongside me and for an hour, as we showed vision of the many people and events Kerry had touched in his cricketing life, they talked about the man, his impact and his legacy. The recollections and anecdotes were at once moving and revealing, funny and inspiring. Almost immediately after play began that day, both Ros, Kerry’s wife, and James, his son, sent us messages of thanks for the way the cricket program to which he had given birth had honoured his passing.

  On the day of the state memorial at the Sydney Opera House, two huge flags fluttered at half-mast high upon the Harbour Bridge. The Queen Elizabeth II, a magnificent ship, lay at anchor—a coincidence, maybe, but also a fitting tribute to a man treated so badly in the UK almost 30 years earlier.

  Packer changed and improved cricket. He emancipated the players for their benefit and for his. To some it was a scandal, to the rest of us it was a brave new world. In his tribute, Benaud—dressed in the cream blazer Packer had suggested he wear in front of camera so as to be ‘different from the others’—told the full story of cricket’s reformation laconically and brilliantly. Benaud, of course, had understood from day one the brave new world Packer would be able to create.

  He followed the Australian Prime Minster, John Howard, and preceded an understated but beautifully delivered reading of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ by Russell Crowe. The finest eulogy came from James, who captured the essence of the man who had steered his life. A single sentence summed it up: ‘There was no more binding contract in my father’s world than when he shook your hand.’

  My experience was just a fragment of Packer’s output, and yet all the characteristics were there—belligerence and the bully; clarity and the mentor; loyalty and the boss; warmth and the friend. I went into the meeting at Park Street frightened and came out of it enlightened.

  He knew his own mortality better than most. After he took up polo at the age of 50, he had a heart attack and there is some dispute about the length of time he was clinically dead. Some say eight minutes, others twelve. Anyway, he came back to announce categorically: ‘I’ve had a look and there’s nothing fucking there.’ This was not disputed at the memorial service where there were no prayers or hymns but instead ‘C’mon, Aussie, C’mon’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

  Afterwards, on the steps of the Opera House, Shane Warne lit a cigarette and said, ‘Bloody marvellous service.’ For a bloody remarkable man—who may, or may not, still be watching over us.

  TURNING BACK TIME

  Back in April 2005, a strange thing happened at Channel Nine. Lynton Taylor returned as a senior consultant. His brief was to oversee sport, news and entertainment as well as mentor Nine’s executive team. Taylor had been at Packer’s right hand during the WSC years and was now back, at Packer’s behest once more, to ease the load on David Gyngell. The appointment had exactly the opposite effect. Gyngell was already exasperated by the ongoing interference of what he called multilayered management systems, and the introduction of Taylor was the final straw. On Monday, 9 May, he resigned as CEO, expressing his frustration to Packer when he went to Park Street to explain his decision. He was 38 years old and walked out on the job he had coveted all his life. Kerry was his proxy godfather, James his best mate. He must have had good reason. (Gyngell was to return to the network a couple of years later, help save the business from bankruptcy and forge a remarkable new deal for cricket.)

  I heard the details of his resignation a month or so later in London, when Gary Fenton rang to tell me I had been sacked. Gyngell’s silence had been a concern but I hadn’t seen it as quite this terminal. Fenton was genuinely sorry. I was pissed off. I had put a lot into trying to make this work, both emotionally and practically. I had turned down opportunities in England and India, eager to make the Australian adventure fit, and was now left with a mighty hole to fill. Not that I was remotely surprised, having always figured that a call would come one day. The timing of it was odd, that’s all.

  Completely out of the blue, a month later, Fenton called again. He hedged a bit, as was his way, before casually asking if I was free in early October to ‘host’ Nine’s coverage of the Supertest and one-day matches between Australia and the ICC World XI. He emphasised the word ‘host’. Weird. Sacked one day, promoted the next. I accepted and decided to take more of the initiative.

  While covering the matches, I insisted on a few ideas of my own. These included moving out of the studio and opening the program alongside the pitch, in the sunshine, before hosting the toss live. Rob Sheerlock, Nine’s director, who had made such a big impression on Channel 4’s coverage, was delighted to shake things up and said as much to a couple of senior Nine executives standing at the back of the production truck when we went to air.

  There was just the one Test, in Sydney, and then three one-day games at the Docklands Stadium in Melbourne. The series fell flat. No one said a word to me about why I was there or whether there was a future for me with the network. I was booked on a flight home to the UK a couple of days later. Then another strange thing happened. I was walking into a restaurant in Sydney for lunch when the phone rang. It was Sam Chisholm, who introduced himself as the man who used to run Nine and BSkyB and was now back at Nine in Gyng’s job. I had to smile. I had never met him but if you worked in the business and didn’t know who Sam Chisholm was, you were already out to lunch.

  In eff
ect, he said I had been fired by mistake and that he was now in the hot seat and he wanted to correct the mistake. Chisholm had run Nine in the glory days before leaving for BSkyB in London, where he dreamed up the Premier League. If he was back at Nine, some people would be running for cover. I said he had better be quick, because I was flying home the following evening. He invited me to his office at ten the next morning.

  James Erskine is the best manager/agent/deal-maker in Australia. At Mark McCormack’s request, in the late 1970s he set up IMG’s Australian arm, with Michael Parkinson as his key client and sales point. In the mid-1990s, when Mark McCormack refused Erskine’s request for equity in IMG, he left to set up Sport and Entertainment Limited—in effect, his own version of the same sort of thing. Michael is still on his books; Shane Warne too. James steered the Australian Cricketers’ Association through the uncomfortable waters of its first collective bargaining agreement with the ACB—the issue Packer referred to while we were in his office. He knew the field, the players, their masters and their paymasters like no one else. He was also a close mate of mine. I called him for help with Chisholm. He said to call him back and tell him there would two of us the next morning. Chisholm laughed and said he was much looking forward to it.

  For more than half an hour, the pair of them talked about the old days—Bert Newton, Paul Hogan and Kerry, of course. Sam told a very funny story about going to the Ascot race meeting in the UK with Kerry and Bruce Gyngell, David’s father. Apparently, Kerry kept an old Mercedes at the Dorchester Hotel but fancied something smarter for the trip down the M4 so wandered over to Berkeley Square to see what he could find in Jack Barclay, the world’s oldest and largest Bentley dealership. He liked the look of the dark-blue one in the window, asked the young lad at reception if it had a full tank of petrol and, when assured that it had, wrote out a cheque. The next day, Sam and Bruce arrived at the appointed hour and the three of them set off in this beautiful car, Kerry reading the paper and the other two chatting away. By Knightsbridge, an agitated Kerry told his driver to turn around and head back to Jack Barclay. Kerry climbed out, had a look in the window and then went back to reception. It was the same lad at the desk. Is the white one for sale, asked Kerry, and has it got a full tank of petrol? Yes, and yes, came the replies. Whereupon he wrote out another cheque. Then he walked out to the street, poked his head in the window and said to Sam and Bruce: ‘You blokes drive yourselves to Ascot. I want to read the newspaper in peace.’

  Sam asked me what I wanted to do at Nine. I said, ‘You called me, you tell me why I’m here.’ He said Kerry liked the Channel 4 coverage of the Ashes and wanted Nine’s cricket to have the same feel. The board concurred, he added. He said Kerry wanted me to front it and commentate on it. When I left the room 45 minutes later, I had a four-year contract with Channel Nine.

  GOING TO AIR

  Each day, on each outside broadcast production, is pretty much the same. A couple of hours before play, the producer holds a meeting with the crew. Sometimes I go to that, sometimes not. It depends on cameras and whether any hosting positions are complicated. Channel Nine have some exceptional camera men and we all know each other well enough to read what the other is thinking. This is hugely valuable on live TV, where we frequently wing it. All of us have input but the director makes the final decision. Sheerlock can think on the go like few others and therefore our morning preview shows have a nice loose feel to them.

  I have never worked to a script on cricket, or with autocue or teleprompting. I prefer to note down bullet points and then ad lib. Structured television is fine in a studio, often necessary in fact, but the great outdoors is for exploring.

  There is a run sheet that details the various segments of the show and their timings. We have usually discussed this the night before with the producer. Mark Taylor is always good for an idea, as is Warne. In fact, all the guys have thoughts about the day just finished or an overall picture of what might be interesting for the viewer the next day. Everyone has their strengths. Ian Healy is brilliant at summing up the previous day’s play in any prescribed time frame. Michael Slater has the rare ability to take you inside the mind of a top player with his animated batting demonstrations. Any of Warne’s masterclasses are a must-see and, in general, his alternative thinking makes for terrific television. Both Warne and Taylor are expert at crystallising match situations and explaining where they might lead. Healy thinks laterally about all aspects of cricket and Slater does drama like no other. I like listening to Ian Chappell talk about technique and, in particular, the need to simplify it. In England, coaches always seemed to overcomplicate the game. In Australia, they mainly keep it simple. Or the best of them do.

  The commentary box is far more relaxed than visitors expect. Everyone has their own space and taps away on laptops, one eye on the play, the other on lunch. We have half-hour commentary shifts that are mapped out on a daily roster by the producer. These used to be 40 minutes long but David Hill noticed that if the game was not ‘blazing hot’, the commentators drifted off, especially later in the day and if the spinners were on. So he shortened the time on air which, in turn, meant there were more slots to fill. Bill loved that.

  Steve Crawley, head of sport after Gary Fenton until he moved to Fox early in 2016, expanded the idea to three commentators per shift partly because the network had employed so many of us and partly because he wanted more conversation applied with a greater sense of urgency. I think this works but it’s only at its best if each of the three commentators understands their various roles. Historically, every shift had a lead commentator and an ‘expert’ summariser. Now there are two summarisers and they need to watch each other like hawks, avoiding repetition or exaggeration. To a degree this format was introduced by Gary Franses on Channel 4 cricket, which launched the ‘Analyst’; then Sky appointed the ‘Third Man’. Other networks have caught the bug, notably Star Sports in India and SuperSport in South Africa. At Nine, the third person is another commentator rather than an expert with a specific brief. As I say, it’s fine if the discipline is good but I worry that it is used to show off more ‘names’ and ‘voices’ rather than to enhance the experience for the viewer.

  Getting a day of Test-match cricket to air is a challenging task. There are 26 cameras, eight video desks, audio, lighting, racks, editors making numerous play-ons and play-offs, as well as music pieces to open and close segments and for highlights packages. There are two production assistants, two vision mixers, three people on graphics, many miles of cable and stage hands to move it and the rest of the equipment around, three large production trucks and three smaller ones. There are teams for Hawkeye, Snicko and Hot Spot, engineers, technicians and an entirely separate production unit for the lunch show with Slats. Add in nine commentators, a scorer and statistician, the director, the executive producer and the head of sport, and you have about 90 of us to be transported, housed, fed and watered. This is a job done uncommonly well by Nine’s head of sports production, Ron Castorina. The man is a marvel. In fact, with a load like that it’s nothing short of ‘marvellous’ that we get on air some days.

  In mid-February 2015, our coverage received an almighty roasting in The Guardian from a young journalist, Geoff Lemon. His angle was that we had diverged from the subject, which was the cricket itself. Instead, we had gone in-house and blokey. He had a point. As a group, we have never openly discussed Lemon’s piece—a wise move, I think, as doing so might have led to personality clashes. But we all saw it and during the summer that followed made significant moves to bring the whole thing back down to earth. Only others can judge whether we managed to do so. Now we have a new head of sport and a new executive producer of the cricket coverage. They will have their own interpretations of how we best move forward.

  We have missed the patrician air provided by Benaud. When you heard it from him—and remember, the modern commentator is both caller and promoter—it was believable. Many a ‘beeyoutifull topspinner’, for example, was simply the one that didn’t spin;
many a promo for The Farmer Needs a Wife was explained tongue-in-cheek, which gave it perspective within the coverage of a tight session in Test-match cricket. Officially or not, Richie was our captain and our conscience. From the very beginning, Lawry called him the ‘captain of the commentary team’, something that Billy Birmingham—aka the Twelfth Man—picked up on with enjoyable mock motivational speeches to the rest of the team. Actually, Richie gave nothing of the sort. Instead, he gently encouraged while only occasionally offering little pearls of wisdom that could not be ignored.

  Of all his sayings on the art of commentary, the one that stands out to me is ‘engage brain before mouth’. This would save us all a lot of embarrassment. The idea that you ‘don’t speak unless you can add to the picture’ is all well and good but most cricketers who have played at the top level can find something within the game, if they know where to look, that might not occur to the majority of viewers. Richie preferred minimalism; it’s as simple as that. In others, he liked enthusiasm, and in Lawry he found the perfect antidote to his own self-styled economy. He adored Bill, or Phanto as he called him, and they bounced off one another with a timing and presence given to few comedy double acts.

  In a way, he rode above the game, keeping his opinions to himself and, whatever the provocation, carrying on regardless. Goodness knows how often he must have despaired of all that went on around him—the two things that really made his blood boil were throwing and match-fixing—but somehow this never invaded his television space, a space he reserved, almost wholly, for affection and appreciation of the game that was his life. In general, things were ‘quite brilliant out there’ or just ‘marvellous’, and they left the viewer basking in his friendship and knowledge.