The cricketing nation with the most praising/criticising media?

[Days of Grace]

In the build up to the ODI series between NZ and Bangladesh, the NZ media were commenting that Bangladesh were a good chance to beat us. And you know what? I think the NZ media roll around like pigs in mud whenever NZ is not doing well in cricket.

On the opposite end of the scale, whenever Australia lose, their media seems to almost sweep in under the carpet. But when Australia wins, their media turns into hero worshippers.

English media are worshippers when all is well but the second their side shows a weakness, they are like vultures around a carcass.

The India media are almost the same as the English, I think, but a level or two higher in terms of passion.

What do you think?

Which country has the most praising media and which country has a media which loves to see them lose?

 

[Redbacks]

We will praise winners in Australia no matter what they might be doing off the field. It's when you start to lose that nobody wants to know you.

 

[Richard]

Dunno about overreacting to success and failure - success has to be celebrated over here, it doesn't come around as often as it might - but the media over here is the most fickle I've seen. In NSW, for instance, it's predictable - every NSW player is the best ever seen. Over here, it's far more typical to change your mind every 2 seconds or so - if, on Tuesday, you're arguing that Sajid Mahmood is the most promising bowler you've seen for 8 years, 2 months and 14 days, the standard practice tends to be to group him with several others on Friday to use as material to lambast the coach\selectors with for whatever failure has just happened, conveniently forgetting you were as in favour of his selection as coach\selector was.

Really, the cricket media could do with more people like CW posters in it TBH.

 

[pasag]

You really need to live in a country to be able to analyse the cricketing media. What you see on the internet doesn't tell you much about what articles get published, their prominence in the paper, the headline chosen, the picture etc. There are also a variety of different papers around the country and within those papers a heap of different writers. Then there is the TV and Radio reporting. It's all different, I'd much rather discuss each paper, the different writers and pundits and their merits as opposed to generalising about a whole industry which is pretty meaningless, at the end of the day.

 

[Flem274*]

Dunno about overreacting to success and failure - success has to be celebrated over here, it doesn't come around as often as it might - but the media over here is the most fickle I've seen. In NSW, for instance, it's predictable - every NSW player is the best ever seen. Over here, it's far more typical to change your mind every 2 seconds or so - if, on Tuesday, you're arguing that Sajid Mahmood is the most promising bowler you've seen for 8 years, 2 months and 14 days, the standard practice tends to be to group him with several others on Friday to use as material to lambast the coach\selectors with for whatever failure has just happened, conveniently forgetting you were as in favour of his selection as coach\selector was.

Really, the cricket media could do with more people like CW posters in it TBH.

Thats gonna be me hopefully.

 

[sledger]

tbh the british media are all over something like a rash as soon as it begins to go off the boil, a guy (flintoff for example) can be given a great write up of what a superb character on and off the field he is, then about 2 months down the line you will read the most damning critisism of his conduct from the very same journalist.

 

[sideshowtim]

Australian papers are pretty reactionary. Pretty stupid stuff gets written sometimes. A lot of them are calling this the end of the Aussies era of dominance etc....

 

[pup11]

Its really a no-brainer IMO, the Indian media has to be the worse tbh, they can praise and criticise their team in matter of days (without taking much cricketing sense into account), atm they are treating the Indian players as if they have won the world cup or something but as soon as India would loose their next match they would blast the team and individuals apart, tbt they are pretty dire, but having said that media all over the world are like that, after all they need something interesting or controversial to keep their channel or paper going.

 

[Richard]

I'd much rather discuss each paper, the different writers and pundits and their merits as opposed to generalising about a whole industry which is pretty meaningless, at the end of the day.

Seriously, while there are decent writers over here (CMJ, Simon Barnes and Matthew Engel being three of the best) there honestly is a whole load of the same stuff, and from decent, respectable people (who you see on Cricket Writers On TV and who all seem perfectly nice) like Derek Pringle and John Etheridge as well as The Rabble. It might be the same everywhere (I've tended to presume that given the selectorial problems often follow some similar patterns, it might just be) but it's a massive problem over here.

Much of the problem stems from over-willingness to criticise - people say David Graveney and Duncan Fletcher picked loads of rubbish players, but 95% (maybe even more) of the cricket media tend to advocate the same stuff. Then they decide to get on the selectors' back for decisions they themselves endorsed at the time and would almost certainly have taken if they'd been in the relevant position. If you said "Sajid Mahmood's crap and shouldn't ever have been picked" before he played his first ODI\Test, then you've a right to criticise those responsible. If you didn't (and virtually no-one in the media, print, electronic or broadcast, did) then you've no right whatsoever. It really does get my goat, so to speak, that.

 

[cover drive man]

Definitely not England, we're lucky if the cricket even gets in the paper.

 

[Woodster]

With cricket as with any other sport in England, the teams and the individuals are built up to much better than what they actually are. The press love nothing more than lavishing praise and building up a hero status for an individual that has pretty much just begun their career and are some way off being the best.

It happens so frequently, its not the individuals fault when they perform to a level below the standard that the press have had us believe they are at. The press then turns on them!!

Every football World Cup the press build us up as having the best chance since 66 to win it and are amazed when we crash out on penalties in the quarters, then blame the players. Its not the players fault the press get it totally wrong more often than not! We haven't had a good enough team for years and years.

 

[Shaggy Alfresco]

With cricket as with any other sport in England, the teams and the individuals are built up to much better than what they actually are. The press love nothing more than lavishing praise and building up a hero status for an individual that has pretty much just begun their career and are some way off being the best.

It happens so frequently, its not the individuals fault when they perform to a level below the standard that the press have had us believe they are at. The press then turns on them!!

Every football World Cup the press build us up as having the best chance since 66 to win it and are amazed when we crash out on penalties in the quarters, then blame the players. Its not the players fault the press get it totally wrong more often than not! We haven't had a good enough team for years and years.

That's football. By and large the media doesn't care about cricket.

 

[Woodster]

That's football. By and large the media doesn't care about cricket.

Yes I did mention football, but I thing the same principles applies to cricket. It doesn't get as much exposure, but same rules apply.

 

[Shaggy Alfresco]

Yes I did mention football, but I thing the same principles applies to cricket. It doesn't get as much exposure, but same rules apply.

The only time I've ever seen the English media build up the cricket side is after the 2005 ashes, when we were comfortably the 2nd best side in the world. It's much more common for the media to bemoan about how terrible the team is when I look at it.

 

[sportsnob]

In the build up to the ODI series between NZ and Bangladesh, the NZ media were commenting that Bangladesh were a good chance to beat us. And you know what? I think the NZ media roll around like pigs in mud whenever NZ is not doing well in cricket.

On the opposite end of the scale, whenever Australia lose, their media seems to almost sweep in under the carpet. But when Australia wins, their media turns into hero worshippers.

English media are worshippers when all is well but the second their side shows a weakness, they are like vultures around a carcass.

The India media are almost the same as the English, I think, but a level or two higher in terms of passion.

What do you think?

Which country has the most praising media and which country has a media which loves to see them lose?

nice question!

Indian media is OK- there are some good sensible writers and journalists around but there are a lot of morons as well.

The worst of the lot has to be the journos from Times Of India (was a great paper but now is more like The Sun). What irritates me the most about television channels is that because of the sudden explosion in new channels, most of them employ PYTs to go and cover cricket! I have nothing against women covering cricket but they have no clue! (and I am not guilty of generalizing!)

 

[Woodster]

The only time I've ever seen the English media build up the cricket side is after the 2005 ashes, when we were comfortably the 2nd best side in the world. It's much more common for the media to bemoan about how terrible the team is when I look at it.

How many next Ian Bothams have we had due to the press ? It does depend on the newspaper also. The tabloids are more likely to make such outrageous comparisons. The Times is the best for cricket, imo.

 

[Richard]

The only time I've ever seen the English media build up the cricket side is after the 2005 ashes, when we were comfortably the 2nd best side in the world. It's much more common for the media to bemoan about how terrible the team is when I look at it.

Are you serious? I don't know how regularly you read or how long you've been reading for, but I gurantee you, there's usually plenty of "England are on the way up"; "England have a much better chance than last time"; "England have the best chance since <insert date>"; "A is the new C" (not that that's unusual in any country of course); "with the new blend of youth and experience England are now looking good to emulate <insert>"; "now bring on <insert> and it should be different to last time"; "England's failure can be laid squarely at the door of <insert, whose inclusion I was probably hankering for before the series and saying he'd do so stupendously> and whoever picked him has to go" etc. etc. It's pretty common, as I say, and it broadly tends to cover broadsheets, tabloids, rags, good journos, bad journos, print, electronic, broadcast, and many other things besides.

I fair got sick of it a good 5 or 6 years ago now TBH, and I only really started to notice the recurring pattern in about 2001 sort of time, having first started following English cricket studiously enough to read\watch the press in 1998.

 

[Chemosit]

At least most of the journos in countries like India/England/Australia actually know something about the game. In Kenya, cricket is often reported on by general sports reporters - individuals who would not even know which end of the bat to hold, let alone the intricacies of a cricket match. Reporting is often widely known to be funded by certain political factions within the cricket community and hence you get articles about how Kenya has not won anything cricket related for years a week after they won the WCL Div 1.

One of the most painful things about reading anything written by these guys is the terminology that gets so mangled. Some prime examples that come up fairly frequently:
Refering to a batsman scoring 4 runs: 'X visited the boundary twelve times during his innings' - sounds like he had sever food poisoning rather than a good knock.
Bowlers frequently 'scoop wickets' - using buckets presumably.
Apparently it is also possible to 'cover drive through long on'

Not surprising perhaps that the articles favour the highest bidder - the author would have no idea who the better cricketer was.

 

[Richard]

At least most of the journos in countries like India/England/Australia actually know something about the game. In Kenya, cricket is often reported on by general sports reporters - individuals who would not even know which end of the bat to hold, let alone the intricacies of a cricket match. Reporting is often widely known to be funded by certain political factions within the cricket community and hence you get articles about how Kenya has not won anything cricket related for years a week after they won the WCL Div 1.

I seem to recall our friend (well, not my friend lately, sadly) Clapo mentioning a certain journalist in Australia who referred to Shaun Tait as a left-armer.

Completely incompetant journos might be mingled with the decent ones in Australia\other-major-cricketing-country rather than exclusive entities, but there's certainly plenty of rubbish around. It shocks me when I compare the odd few people who are employed to report on cricket (many also general sports reporters) in this country - more on radio than in the papers - to the 30 or 40 pretty decent standard CW posters from this country. The standard on CW is inestimatebly higher.

 

[Flem274*]

Milmow called 22 year old Daniel Flynn a teenager the other week..think the sentence was "teenager barely out of nappies" or something, Heath will know.