How will playing behind closed doors affect cricketers?
about 5 years in The guardian
England’ series against West Indies will be played behind closed doors. How will the absence of fans affect those on the field?
By John Stern for Wisden Cricket Monthly
They can’t hear you scream in space but at a completely empty Ageas Bowl, they most certainly can. In the forthcoming lockdown Tests, every energy-boosting exhortation and maybe even a smattering of expletives will be broadcast live to the world.
“They might need to polish their chirps,” says Jeremy Snape, the former England spinner turned psychologist. One presumes, though, that TV audiences won’t be faced with the watershed-busting barrage of profanity that accompanied the introduction of stump microphones during the first season of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC) in Australia in 1977. Stump mics “had given a new, sometimes blue, perspective on the game,” wrote Gideon Haigh in The Cricket War. John Crilly, the director of Channel 9’s groundbreaking coverage, recalled: “The count for the first season was something like 13 shits, 14 ‘you bastards’, three fucks and one cunt that got on the air.” Continue reading...
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