One hundred: not cricket as we know it, but nothing to fear for skeptics Hundred

What really is: it was what many cricket fans had quietly wondered after the hundred was announced, and at least some of those who are tuned into the BBC and Skys first game at the same time have hoped to indulge in a little light watching the anger. We had been told that this was cricket, but not as we knew it. As it turned out, it really wasn’t that bad. During the match, commentators repeatedly told us that in a hundred matches, games are decided above all by tactics. For broadcasters, the strategy was equally important. How, for example, how would they react to the inevitable fact that the tournament, which they were now official cheerleaders, was about as popular as the poor conservatives of Britney Spears?

To the BBC, the answer was: go meta. Hosted by Tailenders, a loosely cricket-based podcast, Greg James, Felix White, and Jimmy Anderson had to present this loosely cricket-based game. They did it with tongues on their cheeks, eyebrows curved and in Andersons’ case a little disbelieving eyebrows that have become his field trademark (You know I don’t like the changes, he growled at the timeout mention).

True in style, there were silly words, jokes and expressions like cricket, but shorter! they repeated together. And because Tailenders has built a dedicated audience that includes cricket diagnosticians and converts, it was a good place to start.

You imagine that, as the host of Radio 1’s breakfast program, James is a key figure in the BBC who lends credit to attract the millennials for whom a hundred were invented. The BBC has gone big on this music / cricket distribution, selecting DJs and musicians who play live in every game, publishing special playlists in their Sounds app. When Isa Guha said he would get down to Vic, it wasn’t, as TMS listeners have hoped, Mr. Marks, but Rick DJ, Vick Hope, who did interviews with young fans and former members of The Saturdays. . Even in his absence, James succeeded in a repetitive small area when Hope recounted his travels at a camp at Chester Zoo, where he was locked together in getaway tricks. For the cricket business itself, we were given the safe hand of the ordinary.

This was not a brand for the previously unannounced Middlesbrough-based team, but a term coined by Phil Tufnell and Michael Vaughan, who were supposed to be a couple of our main comments throughout the evening. It was an early sign that Beeb wasn’t trying to try anything too funny, that they wanted everyone to feel comfortable and involved, even true cricket friends.

With all due respect and respect for gentlemen, a tan-linen jacket has nothing on a thousand-year-old t-shirt, even if you design it with a jazz pocket square. Their double show had a Cannon and Ball scent that was only reinforced by Tuffers ’father dancing to the stadium beats, or Vaughans seriously announced that Becky Hills made it rock here in Oval! (Cue Tuffers: It’s nice to hear a little live music, Mike).

You certainly got a sense of the excitement and novelty of the opportunity from everyone in front of the camera, especially the nervous moments leaking from the field where there were sandwiches on the border and one awful early judging decision in the editing series where someone forgot to remove the chopped sound from the first montage. The lively atmosphere, we were told, was buzzing, and it was significant: the empty seats look worse than they are in a big stadium like Oval, and the noise of social media confirmed the crowd was big and lively.

On top of Sky were stylishly sure VT packages that drew big beaters who got to cover Flintoff, Pietersen, Broad, but even more so than the BBC, their coverage of this first match was surprisingly conventional. While Ebony Rainford-Brent is the face of their very cool campaign, the only real nod to youth was Rob Key, who was wearing a shirt, and talking to us through Maddie Villiers ’bowling next to the marginally awful Avatar. When the always prestigious Mel Jones and Nasser Hussain called a tight goal home, a hundred already developed a patina of respectability. Skeptics have nothing to fear here.