Leading cricket journalist Robert Craddock has discussed who Channel Seven and Fox Sports could target to fill their cricket commentary teams for the summer.
With Seven and Fox acquiring the rights from the Nine Network and Channel 10, they’ll need to put together commentary teams from scratch and Craddock has explained who he thinks will be head-hunted.
“Shane Warne will be in heavy demand, Adam Gilchrist will be in heavy demand, Ricky Ponting as well, my private one I love is Kerry O’Keeffe,” Craddock told SEN Mornings.
“Kerry O’Keeffe is the best research commentator in any sport I’ve ever seen.
“It’ll be very tense early because it’ll be two completely freshly minted commentary teams going up against each other for the same broadcast and sharing the same production costs. Someone will win and someone will lose.”
Craddock expects Seven to target some big names to lead their commentary team and could target a few left-field options.
“They’re talking about luring back Dennis Cometti and I’d love that because he started on cricket,” he said.
“I think there’ll be that element of guys who weren’t necessarily superstars who might get a go like a Chris Rogers or someone like that, just a good commentator.
“Fox will trial a lot of guys in the interstate one-day competition at the start of the year and think which of these guys are doing homework.”
Seven and Fox will split the Big Bash League rights, with Fox simulcasting every game, but only broadcasting 16 exclusively.