“What are you blokes up to now?” When explaining to friends and colleagues that I had decided to purchase the radio rights for Australia’s Test tour of Pakistan, the response bounced somewhere between curious and bewildered. Geoff Lemon and I have frequently taken an unorthodox approach to staying afloat as freelancers, but buying the means of production on my credit cards, without a sponsor in sight, appeared a new and preposterous one.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, to the penultimate delivery of the 90th over of the final day at Dubai. Sure, throughout the gripping struggle our vantage point was air-conditioned and comfortable as opposed to the sweat-soaked and heatstroked condition of players on the field. But having called half the Test each and stayed on air through almost every interval, we had logged some 21 hours apiece behind the mic by the time Tim Paine’s stoic defence stuck the landing on his fledgling side’s 140-over Mission Impossible. We didn’t feel the exhaustion at that point, just the elation and adrenaline at describing a classic moment in Test cricket’s grand narrative, and the energy of having listeners from all over the world surge to our coverage to hear the grandstand conclusion. Still, as soon as the mics went off, we realised our condition was what the Australian parlance would describe as “completely rooted”.
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