Take One For the Team
There’s a new kid in town, Channel One HD, Channel Ten’s sport channel, which has hitting, throwing, jumping and sweating all day long. It’s similar to the cable channels that specialise in one form of entertainment, but it’s free.
Specialist sports that cater to a niche, but if you’re a sport head, you’ll find something to watch. For the rev-head, there’s the motorbike Grand Prix, the formula One Grand Prix and even a show called Drift, which is cars racing each other around an elaborate serpentine course, mostly going sideways. The golf nut can watch Tiger chase the tail of other competitors in the US Masters, or there are girls in short skirts, running, jumping and throwing a ball in Australia’s most popular sport, called netball. If you prefer sport of a more testosterone-filled variety, you can watch KOTV, a boxing show of classic bouts, or if you’ve got a bit of time on your hands, while away the hours watching the American baseball.
The nature of the beast that is a channel devoted only to sport is that there is a lot of time to fill with ‘sports’ such as competitive paintball and poker. If cards are a sport, then it won’t be long until we see mauling marbles, contact crosswords and who can pick the most lint from their belly buttons.
At the moment, Channel One is dominating my late-night viewing with the IPL 20/20 cricket. No one ever said the 50 over game was the perfect short version of Test match cricket, especially with the middle overs consisting of the eminently tedious ‘taking singles’ before hitting out at the end of the game; 20/20 cricket removes the fluff of the short game. There are blokes being paid wads of cash, wearing coloured clothes and whacking the white ball with ferocity and abandon, which should be a soulless grab for a big pay packet, but the IPL 20/20 upholds the spirit of the gentlemanly game by removing the flag-waving mentality and making it just a game played by talented athletes. Obviously, world conflicts can’t be decided by a sporting fixture or Australia would end up as a super power, but when I watch an Indian and a Pakistani sitting on a bench next to each other talking and laughing, I think that maybe sport has something to teach the world.
The biggest thrill for me is still grabbing a last chance to watch Warnie at work on the cricket field and to marvel at his captaincy; here is a man who can win a sporting game with innovation and the sheer force of personality. As one of the commentators noted, Warne’s style of captaincy will be the benchmark for those who follow. So I sit on my couch in the cold of winter watching cricket late into the night, thinking of what might have been if Warnie were allowed to be the captain of Australia, as a small, manly tear of regret falls into my stubby.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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