#2: Mark Richardson (part two)
The second part of my piece with Mark, one of my Squad's openers. We talk Lord's, TV, surfing, golf and Ricky Ponting.
Note: this interview took place not long before Mark lost his role on The AM Show.
Was the century at Lord’s your greatest achievement?
‘I think it was. Making the Blackcaps and establishing myself is a bit more than a moment, but getting across the line at Lord’s was my pinnacle. It was coming off the back of 93 in the first innings, too. It was a rare moment when I stood up in one of those big occasions that really mattered to me. So that innings means much more than just the runs on the board. Of course, it is a very special moment for all cricketers, but I succeeded on a day I desperately wanted to succeed. But cricket is such a leveller ... I walked off the park, received all the adulation from the Long Room and my teammates. I was not out at tea and we still had a lot of work to do. All that emotion drained me and after tea I played a terrible shot and got out. England ran through us and won the game. And I started the collapse. The game wasn't prepared to say, ‘This is your greatest moment.’ It had to take something from me - the realisation that I'd given my wicket away before the job was done.’
Mark was a Blackcap for four years only, and he played just six more Tests after his Lord’s triumph. I wanted to know how he left the game behind. How did he ‘resolve his relationship’ with the game that had defined him since he was a teenager?
‘I was just lucky in that regard. I was able to scratch that itch. I was able to go and talk about the game, to become a commentator. But I very quickly realised that it was a summer job in New Zealand at best. It wasn't enough. Doully [Simon Doull] has done really well to make it a career, but he's worked hard at it and he makes more money overseas than he does here. So I needed to find a job that allowed me to keep commentating. I landed The Crowd Goes Wild job but that came from taking a risk with The Cricket Company [Sky TV’s cricket magazine show] which in turn came from that spoof I did with Flem where he let me have it. It was a total setup, but people thought it was real because he did it so well. So it wasn't pure luck but that's what got me started in the media. I was lucky in the respect that I didn’t come out of the game, search frantically for a job and have to reinvent myself. I was lucky to get a job in cricket and it scratched that itch. Commentating is therapeutic for me.’
Unlike John Aiken, Mark consciously courted a career in media:
‘I wanted in. A lot of the things I did towards the end of my career - such as sprinting in the beige onesie - were to promote or develop a brand, to show that I was more than just a bloke who blocked the shit out of a cricket ball. That there was a character underneath who might be of some use. The advice that I would give other sportspeople who were thinking about entering the media industry is that you have to show some personality. Don't just reel off the clichés. It’s a tough industry. I've been sacked and dropped many, many times in my broadcasting career. I probably feel more insecure in this game than I did as a cricketer (after I started playing good cricket) because currency is harder to understand. You can be doing a good job but not rating, or perhaps an executive wants to make a change, or needs to be seen to be making a change. This industry beats you down because they don't want you to feel confident enough to hold them to ransom - ‘Oh, I don’t know if we’ll be reviewing the show next year…”
‘But commentary is what I love the most. It's also my lowest paying job. It can’t be my career. I'm lucky enough that I can do it and I definitely see it as a privilege. I back myself and believe in what I'm delivering as a commentator, and I always try to bring a little humour if I possibly can. When I started commentating with Martin Crowe, he said, “Please promise me you won't commentate like you batted. Have fun. If you have fun on TV, people have fun with you.” Sky Sports were going to sack me, so I thought, ‘Well, if I don't do the cricket then my other jobs are strong enough. I may as well go and buy a beach house in the Coromandel and spend my summers there.’ I was really hurt - to think that I wasn't going to commentate on cricket any longer - because it's the job I love most. Commentary almost dictates what I do for the rest of the year because I always want to be able to work a main job that allows me to do the commentary. I absolutely love it.’
‘When we were young, we used to idolise that Australian Channel 9 team. Trying to emulate them is a thrill. To be working alongside some of the genuine greats of the game is a thrill. But it's also a skill that you want to master. There were a couple of close women's games last year and I was lead-caller through the last overs and they were cliffhangers. They were great games, and I reckon I'd nailed the commentary - you walk away feeling so pumped. You hope it’s a win: win. You hope you've done the players justice and that you’ve added to the entertainment and portrayed it genuinely. It's just a good all round feeling.’
In your book you talk about your demons: anxiety, facing fear, self-talk and expectation. Are you the same person in the media now? Does the little man still come into work on your shoulder?
‘Not so much in my daily job. I have a lot more belief now. In fact, I get frustrated that I’m not allowed more responsibility. My role in The AM Show is basically to be the clown. I'm allowed to give an editorial, so long as it comes across a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I don't do any MC-ing, I do very little public speaking because I fear the expectation. People expect me to be humorous and I get petrified. I can look down the barrel of a camera and crack a joke and be quite comfortable making an idiot of myself, but in a face-to-face public speaking role, I struggle, and the demons return. So many people ask me to MC and that's not my bag at all. I turn everyone down. There’s probably some ego involved, too. ‘Shouldn’t I be the guest speaker, and not the MC?’ [we laugh] It annoys my agent - I basically cost her money because I turn everything down.’
What allows you to tell a joke down the camera?
‘I don’t know. You get feedback when you can hear the control room laughing, for example. Or if you're on The Project and the audience laughs. I guess I'm comfortable in that studio environment if I'm prepared and I know what I'm doing. I'm not really into fronting the cricket coverage - I'd rather someone else does. I just want to commentate when it comes to cricket, but if Scotty's [Scotty Stevenson] not there, I’m meant to be the front man. To me, it feels too much like MC-ing. I get nervous because of that pressure of expectation … which is probably the reason why I struggled towards the end of my playing career and why I refused to play cricket afterwards. I don't like other people expecting something of me that I can't guarantee. They expect me to be a polished presenter, so I worry about not being able to fulfil that. As a consequence, I work harder so I leave nothing to chance. It’s just like sport - you practise, you prepare.’
‘If I am going to do a piece to camera or an intro to a challenge on The Block, I’ll get shitty if I don’t have the script a day in advance. It might only be an A4 sheet, but I want to know it back to front, inside out so that I can present it and not recite it. Later, if I see myself reciting the words on TV, it annoys me because I didn’t know it well enough. If I’m presenting something, I can go off-script and come back seamlessly because I know it inside out. Those are my little professional quirks, non-negotiables for me, and it's probably driven by the fear of not living up to people's expectations. As a TV or a radio presenter, I'm far better as ‘the interrupter.’ I have achieved a level of skill at solo-presenting, but I'm better at bouncing off people. The other person in the team has to forge on and keep the pace going but my role is to interrupt that - inject myself here, take it over there and then they have to bring it back. Otherwise you try too hard to be the entertainer, and you fall into stand-up comedy. And I’m not a comedian.’
But I suggested humour had been a constant companion for Mark.
‘Humour has always been my pressure release. I think it's a good way of making other people feel comfortable. It is also a good way of endearing yourself to people in New Zealand. One brand I’ve tried to cultivate as a broadcaster is, ‘Is he for real? Does he mean that?’ I want to leave them guessing. My producers always say, ‘Look, you can give the strongest, meanest opinion in an editorial, but if you can say it with a twinkle in your eye, with an element of tongue-in-cheek, you'll get away with it,’ and that has carried me through. I've said some stuff which has got me in hot water for a time, but if it was delivered with a twinkle, generally it has been met with a, ‘Surely, he doesn’t mean that?’
I think TV presenting is a magnification of yourself. I don’t think you want to act, but if you are just yourself, it often comes across a bit flat. In that respect, I think The Crowd Goes Wild was invaluable to me. I used it as an opportunity to be someone I've always wanted to be but never could. That arrogant, say-what-you-want persona. You know, I cringe at how I was as a youngster in Dunedin. Any arrogance then came from a sense of self-doubt. But I've always wanted to be the cocky person I’m not. Television gives me the opportunity to live out an alter-ego. It’s really just a magnification of who I want to be.
‘Do you still surf?’
‘I still do and I love it. Rubbish at it. Never been any good at it, but it’s my number one pastime. If I had the choice, I’d surf, then I’d fish and then it would be golf. I reached a level where I'm comfortable in fairly serious waves, but I'm like the guy who keeps wicket in the 6th grade team at the cricket club, who's always first to training, who stands behind the net shadow keeping, who picks the team, bats at eight and has never scored more than 25.’
‘There’s something about it that’s hard to explain to the uninitiated. I used to surf a lot on my own in Dunedin - I wouldn't do that now - and all you are doing is concentrating on the waves, when the next one is coming. If there's a good day at Raglan - the waves are pumping and it's solid - I could catch one wave in two hours, but if it's a good wave, I’ll jump back in the car and drive two hours back home to Auckland, thinking, ‘Man, that was awesome!’ But I can get the same rush if I catch and ride a one-foot wave in the Coromandel during summer.’
‘Golf is my bowling now. OK, that’s not quite true - I can actually play good golf. You can't go fishing or surfing all the time, but you can generally play a few holes or practise some golf. I’ll go to the range and I will chip and putt like a pro but then in a game the same jabbing motion that has plagued me for years will return, and I just can't get rid of it when it matters. I've reached a stage where there's no point practising. I think back to my bowling and tell myself, ‘Hold on. As a cricketer, you worked this out, you overcame all the nerves and you succeeded.’ And then I remind myself, ‘Well, no. You gave up bowling ...’
What advice would you give your younger self?
‘I cringe when I think about myself as a younger cricketer. I think I would have told my young bowler, ‘You’re not that good.’ I would have grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and try to give myself an element of self-awareness. But if I went back to myself as a test cricketer at the end of my career, I would like to say the complete opposite: ‘You’re actually really good.’ And have the confidence to try a few things. I missed a lot of test centuries because I didn't recognise the times in the middle of an innings when I could have dominated and scored more quickly.’
‘One of the greatest things ever said to me, about six years ago … I always feared Ricky Ponting. The first time I went out to film the toss, I was really nervous and the microphone was shaking, right in front of Ricky’s nose and I thought surely he will notice. I was still intimidated, and I think I used to piss him off when I did the toss because I would ask too many questions. I was so nervous that I kept throwing questions at him. But then we were both at the NZ Golf Open, and we got talking. Someone else said, ‘Mark, you were always a bit of a grafter, but you made the most out of your ability,’ and Ricky said, ‘Rubbish. He was a really good batsman. He just didn't let himself play.’ Coming from him, that made me feel 10 feet tall. I think that's what they did to me on my second tour. They just stopped me from playing. They knew I didn't have enough self-confidence and they just beat me down. But Ponting made me feel great that day, and I wish I had said similar things to myself in the latter stages.’
‘In some ways, you are in a luckier position because what you did or didn't do on a cricket field probably doesn't matter any longer. It doesn’t matter to most people around you. Unfortunately, where I sit now, what I did do is still intrinsically linked to what I do now. So while I'm done with it, it's not done with me. Don’t get me wrong - It's still an ally. Without it, I wouldn't be where I am today. But I can't go, ‘Oh well, that was a past life.’ Because it's not - it's a life I've dragged with me. Who knows - maybe if I was flying planes, I’d be just as happy?’