It was the great cricket writer David Frith who referred those who inhabit the media centres which have replaced the traditional Press Box as “history allergic writers.” It sums up many of the modern era sports writers to a tee.
If you ignore history you end up with no past and no future.
Most writers to whom Frith refers have no concept of the history of their sport beyond their formative years and will be quick to tell you that they are “fans” of the said sport. Yet fandom has no place in the media. A love of sport and the written or spoken word does. Also essential is a passion for one that you may be covering that will enhance your work. Like any job it helps if you enjoy it and believe in the product.
On an almost daily basis you can read a story – not just a sports story – and find that the writer has not checked their facts. To those who love that particular sport there is an expectation that the writer should know whether something is true or untrue. If they do not know one expects them to have checked to ensure that the information they are sharing is correct.
Yet sadly the media in so many cases is no longer there to report facts and have us the reader form opinions of our own, it is there to influence those thoughts.
Case in point a board member of one sport advising that they told one reporter what to say in their articles. This seemed hard to believe. Yet when said reporter was contacted after reporting incorrect information, their response was that this was what the sport had told them!
We see some reporters receiving payment from player agents to “break” a story that a player is unhappy and wants to move clubs. The player is still under contract, but such a story often will result in a transfer eventuating.
There is no doubt in this writer’s life sports reporting has evolved. As a young boy my headmaster wrote that he longed for the day in which I would “read a newspaper from the front to the back rather than starting on the back pages.” Apart from the fact that few are worth picking up to read today, the routine is still the same.
Yet whereas in my youth I would pore over the pages, now often it takes only a few minutes to read. There are of course some newspapers where that is not the case, and they do still carry well thought out and well written articles of interest.
It was said that years ago writers were essentially supporters of the sport that they covered; this meaning of ‘supporter’ being very different to the modern interpretation being of a ‘fan.’ As cricket writer JM Kilburn put it “their basic object was to advance its cause or at least preserve its existence and traditions.” Those writing about the various sports cared about the sport they were covering.
So when did that change? Certainly the tone and the quality of what is being served up has changed dramatically. So rarely is a reader transported to the game by the writer’s words and can sense a shot, a goal, a try, a winning passage of play. Often a match report will even omit the names of the goalscorers. Instead we read fatuous cliched comments from coaches that are politically correct. They have to be or they will be fined and their employer could be sanctioned. Few are allowed to say what they really feel or think.
Clubs have become propaganda machines now with in many cases well-oiled disciplined media set-ups which brief the players on what they can and must say to the press. In many cases the players are not allowed to individually talk to members of the media, as was the case many years ago. Gone are the days when players and media would mill about chatting. Those relationships are in many cases a thing of the past as a paranoia has understandably in many cases taken over. The key in those days was knowing what was okay to publish and what was shared in confidence.
The reason for the change was a shift in what sports reporting was about. The emphasis was on selling newspapers. Of having a scoop, often unverified, but as long as it was a story that would attract people to buy the paper nothing else mattered.
In sports circles this has often been seen as ‘the chicken and the egg moment.’ Was it the increase in payment to players that prompted the shift or was it the media’s shift from covering games for the public’s entertainment to focussing on the controversial? Over a short period of time the focus shifted from describing the day’s play to the focus going on a controversial moment in the match.
Of course this shift had another massive impact on many sports that could not have been foreseen. With attention focussing on controversial moments in a match and the impact on the result, and the subsequent reaction by the players and the coach, the pressure and attention went onto the officials. That attention suddenly became far more negative and it stirred up fans.
These incidents put the officials under far more scrutiny. Suddenly fans started to know the names of officials, whereas previously they had simply been ‘the man in black.’ Banter between players and officials that had been a key part of the game for decades and was a key part in an official’s man management skills became a no-no. With that gone it appeared that the abuse and haranguing of officials increased in certain sports.
Many sports fans had spent a lifetime enjoying reading well-crafted observant writing describing a match and the key moments, both good and bad, as part of the whole painting of a picture. Now this has been replaced by sensationalist pieces where the focus is on mistakes or disagreements, and their impact often being blown out of all proportion. For at the end of the day it is just a game. A game that is supposed to be a part of public entertainment.
Over the years it has been interesting to see how many of those who serve up the sensationalist scandals or stir up discontent survive in the media for the long haul. Many of the craftsmen and women who veered away from such tales and focussed on telling the story of the sport survived until redundancy or retirement, whichever came first.
The sad fact is that the modern day writer whose job it is to write a story that may help sell a few more copies has no need to appreciate or have any knowledge of the history of yesteryear, of those who have gone before and who in some cases were truly great, and far superior to the many modern-day “greats.” The past is being forgotten which is very sad.
It is sad to also witness the renaming of long standing competitions. The England Cricket team is currently playing a Test series in the West Indies. For over half a century this series saw both teams compete for the Wisden Trophy. Yet in 2020 this famous trophy was “retired,” placed in a museum and renamed the “Richards-Botham trophy.” After Sir Vivian Richards and Sir Ian Botham, lifelong friends and both great servants to the game; yet many would question their place as role models.
Richards finished his Test career with a batting average of 50.23, and his best average against any other nation was against England where he averaged 62.36. Not surprisingly Botham’s batting average against the West Indies who had an awesome bowling attack in his era is 21.40; his lowest against any opposition except for Sri Lanka. HIs career average was 33.54. He finished his Test career with a bowling average of 28.40, but against the West Indies finished his career with his highest bowling average against any opponent, 35.18.
So while it is understandable that Richards’ name would be on the new trophy one has to wonder why Botham’s is. Was it purely because everyone knew what mates they were? Or was it because he still has a high profile and the younger generation today would know of him?
What is likely to happen now with this new trophy is the victories between the two nations when they played for the Wisden Trophy will be forgotten. It will be “England has won the Richards-Botham Trophy two out of three times…”
The Wisden Trophy it has been said had become too fragile over time and therefore it had to be replaced rather than repaired. It came into being in 1963 which happened to be the year of the Cricket Almanack’s centenary and was named after John Wisden. Ironically the MCC were against the trophy being named after Wisden, but the West Indies Cricket Board was in favour, and won the day.
When it was decided that the trophy would be replaced you can imagine that many names were bandied about, including that of Sir Learie Constantine. This seemed to be an obvious choice, not just because of his cricketing prowess but also because of his relevance in the modern day. Sir Learie, who came from Trinidad was the grandson of slaves, and he had settled in England, he spoke up for black people at a time when few did, and would go on to become the first black peer in the house of Lords. Constantine would have been an ideal choice, it would have encouraged the next generation to look into who the man was and be inspired.
Sadly his time was too long ago and the lack of understanding and interest in the past sees an opportunity missed. The greatest irony of all was it was Sir Learie Constantine who suggested that a trophy be created for test matches between the West Indies and England, and having been one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the year in 1940, understood the importance of the Almanack and put forward John Wisden’s name for the trophy!
If ever there had been an opportunity to have history come full circle this was it, but once again it has been missed. Can we put this down to the history-allergic media who covered the retiring of the old trophy and the creation of a new one?
History in all facets of life is so important. So much can be learned from it. It also has an impact on our future, if it is known and lessons can be learned. There is no need to keep trying to reinvent the wheel.
Sports and clubs want to increase revenue as do newspapers and other media outlets, but sensationalism only attracts interest for short periods of time and ultimately only appeals to a small segment of the population. While focussing all your attention on that market you lose others.
Sport used to be about public entertainment when match reports were just that. Now it is about business entertainment, and how much money each component can make. In the pursuit of money we have lost one of the best promotional tools ever, the history of a match being recorded in detail.
The fact that many newspapers no longer send journalists to cover games tells a tale. Some are required to file a match report based on the television coverage and a phone call to the coach post game.The further down the pecking order you go, the sport or club sends in its own report, the veracity of which is never even checked.
Elite level sport we are told is now business. That has been reflected in the sometimes theatrical production that surrounds a game. No longer is the game believed to be enough, it is not strong enough to stand alone. Financial success off the pitch is more important than the contest on it. Ambitions for many are now solely commercial.The match itself has become secondary.
In some sports the performers are rewarded well for their part in the production. In others that is not the case. The sad thing is fewer people are attending games and walking away and talking about the special moments that they witnessed. Those moments are being lost forever as the focus switches post match to searching for the controversy, the mistake or the scandal.
When people look to go back in history and find information on the matches from this era, they are going to find little detail on the matches themselves, just banal comments from the coaches and players. This in turn will result in the stand out teams and players being reduced to standard teams and players, for we will have no written account to back up the statistics. Every one knows what they say about statistics…
The history allergy is plaguing the sporting world. Hockey in Australia had a senior national Championship that was approaching 100 years of history, but they threw that away with a new tournament replacing it, rather than trying to create a fresh tournament around the history of the past (Who’s Idea Was It?). Time will tell if this was the correct move for the sport…
If you know what questions to ask history can give you the answers you are looking for.
It should come as no surprise that it was a historian, American Henry Glassie who wrote, “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveller.” Something all involved in sport should remember.
