The Big Interview

Should cricket be more like politics?

During a commentary stint in the latter stages of England’s mismatch against Ireland on Saturday, Michael Atherton gently chided Nasser Hussain for his “Paxman-like” interview with Ben Stokes which was spread across two pages of The Daily Mail. We had just seen Stokes stumble badly, in evident pain, taking a catch off the bowling of Joe Root. It was clear, from this incident and from the fact that he didn’t bowl at all in the game, that Stokes is not properly fit. Yet, in his interview with Hussain, Stokes had insisted that he was “fine”. It was an assurance that Hussain took at face value, with no follow-up. Paxman against Michael Howard it was not.

There is something about the cricket interview that has the air of “is there anything further you would like to tell the nation Mr Douglas-Home?” It’s all very deferential and respectful of authority. The political interview used to be like this before Robin Day took Harold Macmillan to task in 1958. After that the political interview was used to hold power to account, not just to allow power to broadcast uninterrupted to the nation.

So, let’s be blunt about it. When it comes to the truth about the captain’s knee, Stokes and Brendon McCullum are not telling the truth to the interviewers. No doubt they have their reasons. I am sure they would prefer to talk about something else. They don’t want the Australians to know there is a problem. I can quite understand why Stokes might not want to disclose much about his injury. But I cannot understand why the questioner should yield so easily. The people covering the game need to wonder whether they mind that their close access is coming at the price of pieces that fall some way short of the whole truth.

The same problem afflicted Ian Ward’s interview with Brendon McCullum that was broadcast during the Lord’s Test. Ward, to his credit, did ask the searching questions about Ben Foakes and Zak Crawley. But when McCullum gave answers that would be considered, in the political world, embarrassingly poor, Ward let them go. Talking about Crawley, McCullum said the selectors were not so much looking at “statistics” as if statistics were anything other than accumulated performance. He was, in effect, saying that we are not looking so much at “runs”. It was a foolish answer but it slid by. McCullum then pointed to a few occasions that Crawley has “impacted” a match. Even a trainee Paxman would have pointed out that any batsman in the history of the game who averages close to 30 will have an “impact” on a game every now and then. It’s not some special Crawley gift. Gently, Ward could have pointed out that McCullum was talking nonsense. He let it go outside the off-stump.

I am not blaming Ian Ward for this. He was merely carrying out the cricket interview as it is now conducted. If he had been more searching, as I am suggesting, his colleagues would probably have berated him for being unnecessarily aggressive. The question is wider than this one instance. Since old players have dominated in the press box, the questions have got softer. The question is whether we are happy with the cosy chat rather than the genuine interview.

There is a case to be made that we should be. The political interview, for example, has been fought to a stalemate. Assuming that the interviewer is out to get them, the politicians respond with rehearsed defensiveness. Evading the question, parading party platitudes, reciting the lines to take. Occasionally, some light is shed. David Frost once persuaded Tony Blair to pledge spending on the NHS at the average European level. Andrew Marr got Gordon Brown to confess that ignoring the banking system had been an error. Most of the time, though, it’s a boring score-draw.

Perhaps we don’t want to import these techniques into cricket. It’s not the government of the nation, after all. But maybe the interviewers could raise a sceptical eyebrow every time the management say something factually dubious or conceptually incoherent. And it wouldn’t hurt if, in turn, the management could work on their lines a bit. Don’t start inventing new currencies for cricket. Just say we think the guy is going to score loads of runs against Australia. And don’t say you are fine when you are palpably not. Otherwise we will have to get all Paxman on you and I doubt anyone really wants that.