Culture Etc.
The first XI
Once a thorn in the side of New Zealand sports media, the Alternative Commentary Collective have become Kiwi sports royalty over the last decade (and a year).
Since 2013, the ever-expanding crew at the Alternative Commentary Collective has given Kiwi sports fans an all nonsense, entertainment first alternative to dry play-by-play analysis, a POV North & South’s Art Director compared, favourably, to “watching the game in a shed with your drunk uncles”. Their new book, The Alternative Commentary Collective Almanack, delves into the “bowels of New Zealand sport”. Mere hours before boarding his flight to Oktoberfest, ACC CEO Mike Lane called N&S to chat cricket, hot dogs and why Kiwis sometimes struggle to be really good fans.
N&S: You first became known to cricket fans in the late 90s for the Beige Brigade, which was such a force at Basin Reserve and Cake Tin matches in the early 2000s.
Mike Lane: They were great times, and I think they were great times because the team wasn’t that good. So you needed something else to hang on to, and if you could hang on to your beige shirt, that was enough. Our slogan was, “It’s about passion, not fashion.” If we win we’ll party like there’s no tomorrow, and if we lose, man, maybe we’ll just party.
How has cricket culture changed in 25 years?
Honestly, the biggest change is people’s attention. 25 years ago, it was pretty easy to rark up a few thousand people, go to the cricket and have a bit of a laugh. Now, with the NBA, NRL, TikTok and all that stuff, people are overloaded with options on what they want to support.
And if you want to listen to sports banter on a podcast, you’ve got 400 options in 27 languages.
Podcasting is the medium du jour at the moment, but way back in 2006, when we first launched The BYC podcast, there was Ricky Gervais talking rubbish and that was it. We didn’t know podcasts were going to take over the world. The difficult thing in sports podcasting now is that you can go straight to the source, you can subscribe to a podcast from the San Francisco 49ers or whoever and get direct access.