There’s a fantastic article on the Oz Grauniad from a couple weeks back by Geoff Lemon on how the current channel 9 commentators with Mark Nicholas are killing the legacy of Richie Benaud in the commentary box. The article is fantastic, but the comments thread is astounding. If you like cricket that is. It is the only public comments thread I’ve gone more than two posts through (outside this place and the old places anyway). The comments are just shy of 800, with I’d guess 99.99% agreement on the article. Amazing.
In fact it seems like there’s been a toning down the banter in the last couple of World Cup games on Channel 9, although that might be SkyTV related as there are other commentators piping up besides the usual 9 club. Mark Taylor has been much more to the point, and thankfully I haven’t heard James Brayshaw at all.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/feb/13/channel-nine-destroying-cricket-legacy