BT SPORT'S ASHES DEBUT DIDN'T FOLLOW BENAUD'S EXAMPLE

The first hour of the first Test was high in energy but left this viewer struggling to keep up

Does anyone else have a bit of a headache?

This was always going to be a tricky session for BT Sport, stepping to the crease for the first time as the TV guardians of English cricket.

They are the rookies in the dressing room, after all, and taking the place of an old favourite is never a particularly enjoyable experience.

But there’s no shame in trying to emulate your predecessor and Sky Sports generously left behind a near-spotless blueprint of how to effectively cover Test cricket when they vacated the role for this series.

Why, then, the new broadcaster-in-charge seemed adamant to abandon Sky’s most basic premise - that getting people to listen sometimes means not saying anything at all - was bemusing and confusing in equal measure.

After a solid if unspectacular pre-match hour - the tried-and-tested emotive VT, a rambling presenter backstage at the Gabba and a pitchside panel discussing the day ahead - it all went wrong once the first ball was bowled.

The greatest of them all, Richie Benaud, had it right when he described what makes a commentator worth a listener’s ear.

“If you can add to the pictures, do so,” he said.

“No one ever complained about silence,” he said.

“Silence can be your greatest weapon.”

BT got it wrong.

^{Ricky Ponting is part of BT Sport's commentary team}

There’s very little need, for example, for a summariser to interrupt a bowler’s run-up to remind everyone it’s the final ball of the eighth over when the man in charge of graphics has already told us just that with the touch of a button.

There’s very little need to describe motion-for-motion what a batsman is doing at his crease when we can all see it taking place right in front of us.

Yet, for the first hour of the first day, the commentary line-up on duty in Brisbane seemed intent on filling every available second. There’s no need to be allergic to peace and quiet, chaps. It’s okay not to speak every now and then.

With Graeme Swann and Adam Gilchrist at the mic, trying to get a handle on the conversation was like chasing the kids up and down the stairs after a particularly excessive Haribo binge.

In the space of one over, the pair wove a curious path between Queensland’s humidity and Nathan Lyon’s fishing trips via the qualification process for the football World Cup and how upset English and Australian umpires will be not to be officiating in the Ashes.

It was bedazzling, dazing and at times just a little nauseating, as if ripped from a Hunter S Thompson screenplay. Only with added LSD.

This type of commentary has become more and more common in cricket - particularly in the shortest format, where being boisterous has for some reason taken on increased importance - but it’s not stretched too far into the red-ball side of the game. Not for English viewers, at least.

Once upon a time, Sky Sports experimented with the idea of two rival fans commentating on Premier League games. They gave each a microphone, sat them next to each other in a soundproof booth and made the subsequent nonsense available via the red button.

^{Geoffrey Boycott is another man on the BT Sport team}

Mostly, the FanZone was a melting pot for inane banter and rudderless conversation, and it could give a viewer a migraine quicker than you could say Alka-Seltzer.

At times, BT’s coverage felt just like that. Loud and excitable, high on energy, low on authority.

Only when Alison Mitchell and Geoffrey Boycott took over, in the third half-hour slot of the day, were viewers offered a breather. Suddenly the pauses were back, the pictures were allowed to talk for themselves. For fans who’d made it to this point - 1am back in the UK - it was the first time they had a chance to regain their senses.

Ricky Ponting’s partnership with Damien Fleming followed suit, mixing gentle tones with intelligent discussion of the game’s complexities, but how costly will that first hour prove to viewers back in the UK switching over to BT for the first time?

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