David Leggat: Reduced cricket cover thin end of the wedge

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Let's start with dipping the feet into a ripple of nostalgia.

Hands up all those who grew up with, and have fond memories of, listening to the Plunket Shield on the transistor?

Be it out the back of the school grounds, at the office with an earpiece, dozing in the garden on a summer's afternoon.

It was a staple of Sports Roundup's programme for years and names like Iain Gallaway - for whom it didn't rain in Dunedin, just occasional bouts of Caversham mist - and Alan Richards were as well known to listeners as the best of those on whom they commentated.

In more recent times, Allen McLaughlin, Bryan Waddle, Steve Davie, Peter Sharp, Kevin Hart, Philip Stevens, Ron Snowden, Garth Gallaway are voices we've come to know, all with their own idiosyncrasies and delivery style.

They are all ball-by-ball men, by the way, not the expert analysts who sit alongside them on international days.

Their relative anonymity (compared with their television equivalents) helped listeners - who wouldn't recognise a Hart from a Sharp if they passed on the footpath - form a picture in the mind (although one who appeared on a televised programme some years ago evoked a response from an elderly cricket fan that while she admired his radio style "I didn't really need to know what he looked like").

The Radio Network's decision this week to scrub live commentaries on the first-class programme in favour of an anonymous voice reciting bare-bones scores from an Auckland studio means you'll hear less of them.

The network will still be providing live work during the 50-over and T20 competitions.

You might imagine the decision was made solely for pragmatic, economic reasons, in which case if the numbers don't add up something needs to give. That's reality for you.

However Dallas Gurney, general manager of talk programming for the Radio Network, rather gave the lie to that notion.

Yes, there were financial imperatives, but "it is as much about providing the best possible coverage for our Radio Sport audience as it is any money that we might save by not having a commentator at every single Plunket Shield game".

Plainly it won't be anywhere remotely comparable with the service available with voices at each of the three venues used in all 10 rounds; voices to explain to listeners why a bowler has been out of sorts, how a batsmen got himself out in the nineties, who took a spectacular catch at gully.

No matter the electronic devices you use, that cannot be got from someone reading scores off a website.

This sounds suspiciously like the thin end of a large wedge.

Ask those commentators how they cut their teeth in the job - some have been sitting at the microphone for 30 years - and you'd wager that first-class cricket experience helped them hone their skills.

There's another argument advanced that first-class games attract negligible spectators, therefore there's little interest.

So wrong. How many people can afford to give up seven hoursmid-week to indulge in a sports passion?

This is an example where bums on seats are largely irrelevant in terms of the size of interest.

Cricket forces are massing to try to persuade the Radio Network to change its mind. There is an online petition for starters.

On an economic level, the decision is not surprising. That doesn't mean it's not a shame.