Nick Knight is still the Sky Sports Test cricket weak link

I have written before about how great the Sky Sports coverage is but the piece wasn’t just about praise. It was entitled Why mess with nigh-on perfection? *glares at Sky Sports Test Cricket* and the main crux of the issue was the addition of Nick Knight to the rotation of commentators for Sky Sports Test Cricket coverage.

Well the summer Test season started on Thursday and sadly for this (and many cricket fans) Nick Knight is still on the team. I don’t know Nick Knight and I certainly don’t have any personal vendetta against him but the truth is he just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the team. I saw a great tweet yesterday which said ‘Nick Knight just talks too much and likes the sound of his own voice’ which I think is bang on the money.

Cricket is a sport where you don’t really have play-by-play commentary. Instead you have chat about the game and of course those chats are known to shall we say get off the subject. It is part of what makes cricket coverage great and TMS do it just as well as the radio and around the Globe the teams are known to just chat cricket and whatever else takes their fancy. It is a huge part of why the coverage is different to many other sports and it is something we all enjoy.

People like talking about cake on TMS. They like hearing about Bumble’s missing lawnmower. They like Michael Holding talking about not trusting a bungee rope just as much as they do him talking about how awfully the West Indies Cricket Board have treated Jerome Taylor. The six of them – Gower, Holding, Botham, Hussain, Lloyd and Atherton just work despite Botham being a distinct notch below the other five.

Atherton is becoming the new Benaud and he does this not by talking a lot but by saying insightful things. It is quality over quantity when it comes of cricket commentary on the TV. It really is. Also there is a feeling that Nick Knight – a man who didn’t even average 24 in Test cricket – isn’t the right man to talk about players who were far better than him with regards to their technique. You can understand any of the other six discussing it but it just doesn’t work from Knight.

I get the feeling that he tries just a little bit too hard to be smarter and more insightful than the other guys but it just doesn’t come off. If Sky need an extra voice bring back Paul Allott to the Test rotation as he has an easy style to listen to. Shane Warne has been involved recently and if Sky could bring him on board full-time like they have with Michael Holding then that seven man team would be out of this world.

As for Nick Knight he needs to learn to talk less and remember the pictures tell the story and he is there to add to the story not to tell the story again. That is his biggest problem in this Sky Sports Cricket viewers opinion.

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