Fire Nick Knight

An occasional blog, in homage to baseball's excellent http://www.firejoemorgan.com/
web-site, which is sadly no longer criticising bad sports journalism, picking up on their misuse of statistics and bad food metaphors. When I am similarly enraged/can be bothered, I might add my own comments on bone-headed cricket commentators/"experts" stuck in the past, and actually backed up with logic and where possible statistics rather than a knowledge of what the conventional wisdom was twenty years ago.

Joe Morgan was probably the greatest second baseman in baseball history, but as a commentator for ESPN he gathered a cult following for his awful commentary and his JoeChat specials, in which he'd (a) try and answer every question using the word consistency at least twice in every sentence; (b) mangle the English (well, American) language; (c) refer back to his day, his only point of reference - as despite being the face of ESPN baseball he didn't appear to watch any modern baseball; and (d) rubbish (and misrepresent) baseball statisticians and the use of modern statistics. So hypnotically bad was he, that it attracted my attention from the other side of the Atlantic through the scribblings of FJM.

If his cricketing equivalent is Ian Botham, it is only because Nick Knight doesn't have the career to match Morgan's. Regardless both Knight and the knight are likely to feature heavily on this blog going on past performance in the commentary box. Botham is well known for his sense of humour, and there is a possibility that his "I just don't understand what they are doing, in my day we didn't do it like this" routine might actually be a big joke, playing on the disdain he held during his on field career for the out of touch likes of Fred Trueman (RIP) and Ray Illingworth. I'm however beginning to suspect it isn't.

This is a shame as Beefy is my all time hero. I was once fortunate enough to be in the presence of a lifesize cardboard cut-out of Sir Ian and I found the 'tache and mullet combination awe inspiring. A few years later I bumped into the real thing, maybe it was because he was shorn of porn star 'tache and dyed mullet that screamed "look how good I am, I can get away with looking like this because I'm going to slog a hundred before lunch, sink 10 pints and then take 5 Convict wickets before tea" but whatever the reason the real thing just didn't have same impact. This experience convinced me that Sky should replace Beefy with a cardboard cut-out and we should save the knight of the realm for his magnificent charity work and diplomatic duties down under, both of which Fire Nick Knight fully endorse.

Nick Knight's redeeming qualities are far less obvious. How he got chosen it somewhat of a mystery. The Sky producers were presumably after a "safe pair of hands with international playing experience" for a commentary vacancy, but someone had got the wrong end of the stick and had recommended him based on his fielding expertise. I for one don't believe this rumour, not least because Sky would surely have learnt from the Colin Croft "we need a high-flyer" misunderstanding.

As a player Knight had risen to prominence as the first English pinch-hitter to use his feet to dance down the pitch and make the most of the fielding restrictions by hitting over the top. Sri Lanka had Jayasuriya (career strike-rate of 91.03), Australia responded by selecting Adam Gilchrist (strike-rate 96.94) so England had Nick Knight selected especially to capitalise on what would become powerplays, with his forays down the wicket and hitting over the infield allowing him to score at a heady strike-rate of 71.52. A stalwart of the England side from 1996-2003, he was the perfect choice to explain to the Sky viewers how English one-day cricket had failed to keep up with the times.