Stephen Fleming has said the following to Mark Richardson -

The transcript of the conversation

Richardson: Ok thanks good luck.

Fleming: Thanks mate (interview ends) Yeah, you’re an idiot, that’s ridiculous, seriously that’s just ridiculous. Two things, you’ve forgotten who your mates are, some of your comments in the changing room? and the other thing is your just an idiot talking about scoring rates and picking up the uh the tempo of games, you were one of the most boring players to watch and from what I’ve seen so far in your commentary position is crap. You’re forgetting who your mates are mate, about six months ago you were with us.

The video can be viewed on Cricketweb.

Why should person x’s opinion in the commentary box matter to the players so much? Even if he is critical of scoring rates or is speaking crap, I don’t understand why players take it so personally.

The team mates bit is an excuse which isn’t acceptable to justify irresponsible, pathetic conduct.

Now this is a common thing, make no mistake - players being disgusted with commentators because they are criticising them, some times justifiably, some times unjustifiably according to them.

Now why can’t a player see that the commentator is doing a job and ignore it like they ignore press? A commentator, even if he is a former team mate, isn’t as important regardless of whether he is speaking right or wrong.

It is always undesired behaviour from a player trying to manipulate commentators and influence them to speak in favour of a specific player. When a commentator, specially a former team mate does the opposite, you get pissed off.

Now maybe Richardson was at fault earlier in the changing room. So what? Fleming is the one playing international cricket at the moment and not Richardson. Fleming is the captain, not Richardson. Richardson is just a commentator right now.

Richardson was doing his job. Now whether he was doing it poorly or aptly isn’t an issue at all. Such insults always happen. This time it has come out in the open and I am glad it has. Will Fleming apologise publicly? I hope it does. However, the tarnished image of Fleming will not be repaired that easily.

Update: Sky sports have said that the story is a spoof. It doesn’t look like spoof to me!

Update 2: Okat it was indeed a spoof. Fleming and Richardson are seen laughing with each other after the footage.

Reason for the shell shocked look on the face of Richardson? He was trying to control his laughter.

So controlling laughter = looks like crying.

Fleming was superb and oscar winning performance from both.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 9:57 am and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.