It is fair to say that when TNT Sports announced its broadcast plans for the upcoming Ashes series, they weren’t met with universal delight by cricket fans. TNT revealed it will send a team of analysts including Sir Alastair Cook and Graeme Swann to Australia, but their lead commentators will be watching on TV screens 10,000 miles away in the UK. What’s more, they will not necessarily be familiar voices: Alastair Eykyn is better known for his coverage of rugby union, while cycling commentator Rob Hatch has voiced many iconic moments of the Tour de France in recent years.
Social media critics were not hard to find, while the Daily Mail described TNT Sports’ “half-baked plan” as a “dumbed-down insult to long-suffering England fans”, and questioned Hatch and Eykyn commentating from TV screens with “inability to see anything other than what their monitors are showing them”.
Hatch rejects those points. For one, it is hardly unusual in the modern age for commentators to be watching from afar. He cites the 2024 Tour de France, when his voice was the soundtrack to Mark Cavendish’s record 35th stage win. The clip has amassed more than 1 million views on YouTube and his words still produce a tingle down the spine.
“This is history! This is history! First there was Merckx, now it’s Mark Cavendish, standing on the shoulders of giants … One record breaker now stands alone. Mark Cavendish has 35 stage wins, more than anybody that ever came before. Most doubted. He believed. A day he, and we, will never, ever forget.”
People still ask Hatch what it was like to be in Saint-Vulbas that day.
“A secret, here,” Hatch tells The Independent on a video call from his house. He leans into the camera just a little. “I was sat in this very chair when Mark Cavendish won that 35th stage. And I think, if you listen, you probably don’t realise we’re not in the same room.”
Covid suddenly made commentating from home a necessity and Hatch covered four Tours that way. He doesn’t agree with those who say he needs to be inside the stadiums to bring the Ashes to life. “For television commentary one of the key rules is to talk to pictures. We will talk to the picture, and of course, we have eyes and ears in the stadium as well so if there is anything bizarre happening, we’ll get to know about it.”
Cook, Swann and Steven Finn are among those on the ground with broadcaster Becky Ives, while Hatch and Eykyn will be joined by former England player Ebony Rainford-Brent for stints of commentary. TNT Sports’ cycling and cricket teams share producers so they know each other a little already, and Cook sent a congratulatory video message when Hatch won commentator of the year at the 2024 Broadcast Sport Awards. Less than a month before the Ashes begin, the TNT Sports’ Whatsapp group is said to be lively.
Besides, Hatch may be a cycling commentator but he comes from a cricketing family, many of whom played to a high standard in the Lancashire league. Hatch’s first experience of sport was cycling around the edge of the cricket pitch watching his dad play, and he was himself a decent bowler before committing to a career in the media.
The Tour de France is a passion but the Ashes marks a career pinnacle. “It’s indescribably special,” Hatch says. “It’s a dream come true. I’ve been very lucky to achieve everything I wanted to achieve in cycling. But this was something that blew my mind. It’s made my career being asked to do it.”
The two sports are not so different to commentate over – long days in the saddle and all that, with stretches of nothingness to be filled. Hatch’s commentary heroes were cricket voices like Tony Cozier and Michael Holding, and of course the great Richie Benaud – he paused a Paris-Roubaix broadcast to pay tribute when Benaud died in 2015.
But he was also inspired by commentators who could turn their hand to different sports. “People ask me, how are you going to go from cycling to cricket? All-round broadcasters, the very best – Barry Davies, David Coleman – were able to do lots of different sports. If you are a proper lead broadcaster and you understand what the job is, then it’s not necessarily you who’s meant to shine.”
At the end of a meandering day of Tour de France coverage, how does he find the right words? “It’s an instinct, probably from watching too much cycling. Sometimes it strikes you – and this is a great thing about sport, isn’t it – when you least expect it, and the reactions are probably much more natural. But I don’t think you ever have a script because it wouldn’t sound proper.
“Having that ability to recognise the moment, to react to it and to change the tone and change the pace – in cycling and cricket I think that’s quite similar. You go from nothing to a lot very quickly. Being able to capture those moments is the big key, even more so than talking for hours and hours, because they’re the moments people remember.”
Not that there are likely to be too many lulls this winter. Hatch has a carefully planned coffee routine to get through the long nights but he expects the adrenaline of an intense series between two well-matched rivals to see him through.
“I predict a fast-paced start to the series and then I think it’ll be very close. I can’t imagine there being many draws. But I would say England are going to start very quickly and they’re going to set the tone by winning in Perth … it’s going to be, to use cycling parlance, full-gas cricket.”
Watch TNT Sports’ live exclusive coverage of The Ashes – alongside every Quilter Nations Series match, live Premier League and UEFA club football and more – on
