Here is the full version my post which appeared on Cordon on January 8, 2016. Cordon’s editor reviews posts and makes sure that they adhere to Cricinfo’s style guide and other standards and even preferences. The title and the one sentence summary which appears on top of the piece are provided by the editorial staff. This is not a whim on the publication’s part. The way titles are composed follows an easily discernible pattern. I’ve found that the editor’s work improves pieces and sharpens them.
In this case, I think it will be useful to present the full post, which is longer (too long to fit Cordon’s standard expectation) and in which I’ve attempted to use rhetorical devices to make points because I had some pre-conceptions about the audience (pre-conceptions which the comments to post on Cricinfo and on Cricinfo’s Facebook posting have substantially confirmed, even via the edited version). Basically, my sense was that the mostly male audience would think that this whole matter was blown out of proportion, have great sympathy for Gayle and have no interest whatsoever of the larger structures which enabled this episode.
All good publications have their own voice, and I think this is a great thing, even if, at times, it means that the individual contributor’s voice is knocked into shape to fit the publication’s voice.
Cordon’s editor is aware that I’m posting the full version here. I consulted him before deciding to do so. We went back and forth over this post 3 times. I worked on this after work during this week, and this is the final version that I sent him. My original intention was to write about the official reaction to Gayle and the larger structures which shaped the episode. The news during the week that the authorities were basically going to do nothing about it informed my original idea.
*****************************
On January 4, 2016, the West Indian opening batsman Chris Gayle decided, in his wisdom, that a live post-match television interview was an appropriate place to make a crude attempt to flirt with Mel Mclaughlin, a television interviewer working for the broadcaster Ten Sports. Mclaughlin is an Australian television presenter who specializes in sports programmes.
It was a terrible advertisement for the Big Bash League, which has been systematically trying to build an audience among female viewers. The condemnation from the authorities has been swift, and ultimately toothless. Gayle will not be thrown out of the 2015-16 BBL. He won’t even miss a single game. Cricket Australia and the BBL have not sanctioned him at all. His team has fined him $10,000.
At first, Mclaughlin’s employer publicized the interview with Gayle on it’s twitter feed with the hashtag #smooth. They deleted this tweet, but screenshots are available. Later, they tweeted “Well played to our very own @Mel_Mclaughlin for staying professional during the interview. What a pro”. Their head of sport David Barham covered up later, saying “We won’t be using him in the game anymore. Unless things change in the next few days, it’s not happening. It was totally inappropriate behaviour. Mel’s a working journalist doing a job.”
In the commentary box, the first audible reaction was sniggering as they heard Gayle’s words. A few minutes after the interview, a commentator on Australia’s Channel Ten, Mark Howard said “It must be pointed out that Mel is a wonderful, professional, informed sports broadcaster and a valued member of Network Ten and on reflection, I don’t think that’s appropriate for what’s required in that format….Chris is an entertainer and he’s a joker, but I think he probably went a bit too far there. I hope we don’t see any of it again, and Mel will be back for her next interview, prepared and ready to go as she always is.”
The horrific nature of Gayle’s conduct becomes clear when you consider what his position in the evening’s spectacle compared to Mclaughlin. Gayle is one of the international superstars of the BBL, while Mclaughlin has the marginal duty of conducting extremely short celebrity interviews so that viewers get facetime with the big stars of the day.
As a result, Gayle’s penalty for misbehaving crudely is barely a rounding error in his annual income. Mclaughlin’s lot, apart from being placed in an impossible situation, was to have her male colleagues in the commentary box snigger when they first heard Gayle’s remarks, and then, via Mark Howard, mildly admonish Gayle for being naughty. As if the fact that Gayle is “an entertainer and a joker” is even remotely relevant to what happened. If anything, Howard’s considered observation that Gayle “probably went a bit too far” ought to get him fired. What was Howard implying? That a more good natured, more humorous, less obnoxious flirtation from Gayle would have been entertaining or funny? What would have happened had Mclaughlin played along? It would have made for “quality TV” I suppose.
The initial reaction from the commentary box, Howard’s ridiculous subsequent apologia, the initial description of the interview by Channel Ten on twitter (“smooth”), and their subsequent clumsy attempt to hide behind Mclaughlin’s professionalism reveals just how structurally hostile Mclaughlin’s professional work environment is.
What is Ten’s response to the very public initial reaction to Gayle’s performance from the commentary box, which betrayed the fact that the commentators first audible instinct was to think Gayle was being funny, not insulting? Will the person who runs their official twitter feed be fired? Will the commentators in commentary box at the time be fired? Keep in mind that Mclaughlin, whose professional fortitude was so lauded, showed up to work the next day to work with these guys. She may well have taken it in her stride, but does that make it right?
Cricket Australia’s boss James Sutherland seems to understand this. He observed that anybody who saw humour in the situation was delusional. He has not ruled out sanctions against Gayle. When and where will the possibility of such sanctions be discussed? Will the professional cricket press (dominated as it is by men) maintain pressure on Sutherland to initiate action against Gayle? If Gayle’s conduct is beyond the pale, then there must appropriate punishment to make the point stick. His team, which clearly has an interest in winning, cannot be expected to fire or suspend him. That must come from the BBL or Cricket Australia, or failing this, from the ICC. Will it? Or will they wait for the season to end so nobody’s interests are hurt? Will Cricket Australia and the BBL to consider sanctions against Channel Ten? Such sanctions would give teeth to Mr. Sutherland’s view of the matter.
Perhaps the damning initial reaction from the commentators and Ten’s twitter feed, and the fact that this reaction has not received either official attention or sanction can only be understood by considering the roles women are granted in cricket broadcasts. George Orwell once observed that “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” It is a stretch to describe a television sports presenter as a “journalist”. The veteran journalist Sharda Ugra observed in an interview with Subash Jayaraman about women in cricket broadcasting and journalism, “I don’t think those girls that come in as colour reporters or whatever they are called, come there for a particular purpose of journalism. They come there to be seen. It is a stepping stone for them to get a film or television or a presentation programme.”
It is far from clear how well Ugra’s observation, which was made in the context of the Indian Premier League, applies in the Australian context. Women professionals may well be taken more seriously there on the whole, but it is clear from the composition of commentary boxes at the BBL and in the Australian Test and ODI summer, that live cricket commentary is a man’s game. Further, it is no longer even a serious, thinking cricket fan’s game. The journalist Geoff Lemon of The Guardian described it wonderfully as being “all about being the matiest mates who ever mated.” Marginal interviewing duties are granted to women television presenters who are then described as “journalists”. They exist for the world of TV show-business because, to paraphrase Channel Ten, they provide a “smooth” show.
Chris Gayle was wrong. He let himself and others down by showing contempt for the fact that he was professional speaking to another professional. When it comes to evaluating Gayle’s actions, it is irrelevant that the interview was purely about giving viewers facetime with one of the big star performers of the day. It is equally irrelevant that there was no significant information to be exchanged in the interview.
It is a truism that celebrity is more profitable than argument on television. As a result, under the show-business of model of presenting sport which all the franchise league broadcasters and organizers have embraced, a cricketing version of the red carpet interview at the Oscars is integral to the presentation. It is a matter of saying the usual routine banalities, to the usual routine questions. Mclaughlin was performing a chore, and as a professional she was doing her duty with the necessary diligence.
The structural demands that show-business creates on an individual in Mclaughlin’s position are deeply complicit in what happened here. Cricket Australia, the Big Bash League, and the Melbourne Renegades have played the public relations game to perfection. But their real sympathies are evident from the ridiculously trivial punishment they’ve meted out to Gayle. Gayle would draw a bigger fine and possibly even a suspension for disagreeing vehemently with an Umpire’s LBW decision than he has for violently invading the personal space of a fellow show-business professional on live television.
If the only place in the cricket broadcast for women is as a presenter whose tedious duty it is going to be to perform pointless celebrity interviews, then women will never be equal, empowered participants in the sport. There is no shortage of women in the cricket playing world who are expert observers of the game. The Big Bash League or Cricket Australia would do well to insist that some of Mel McLaughlin’s sniggering male colleagues be replaced by some experienced women cricketers who are the cricketing equals of the Waughs and Nicholases. Had there been an experienced woman cricketer in the commentary box as Gayle was being interviewed, would Mark Howard would have gotten away with his ridiculously sexist, patronizing observations?
Sadly, one fears that the show will just go on. It is too profitable not to. Women will continue to feature marginally in cricket. The Gayles of cricket will continue be let off by cricket bosses. Perhaps, as a concession to the times, they will add “how terrible!” in the end.
