Adam Collins
Born
Adam Collins

Dandenong, Victoria, Australia
Occupation(s)Cricket journalist and sports commentator
Years active2015–present
ChildrenWinnie (b. 2020), Peggy (b. 2023)
Websitefinalwordcricket.com

Adam Collins is an Australian cricket journalist and broadcaster. He was named the 2020 Cricket Writers' Club Christopher Martin-Jenkins Broadcaster of the Year.

Early life

Collins attended Lyndale Secondary College in North Dandenong before completing his final year of secondary school as an exchange student at East Aurora High School in New York. It was whilst studying Politics & History at Monash University that he first became involved in the Labor Party, joining the staff of Tim Holding MP whilst still a student.

Political career

Collins worked as a media advisor to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and was on the staff of federal treasurer Wayne Swan. He also worked on the London 2012 Olympic Games and 2012 Paralympic Games organising committees.[1]

Journalism

Print

After trialling working in journalism in 2015 and then going full time, Collins has written for publications such as Cricbuzz,[2] The Cricket Paper,[3] The Evening Standard,[4] The Independent,[5] ABC, The Daily Telegraph, the Cricinfo website and Wisden Cricket Monthly. Collins won the 2017 NRMA Kennedy Award for Outstanding Sports Reporting for a David Warner front page exclusive in the Sydney Morning Herald in which, during a pay dispute, Warner revealed Cricket Australia wouldn't have a team for the upcoming Ashes series if they didn't meet the players demands.[6][7] For The Guardian in 2019 Collins wrote the story in which Nat Sciver and Katherine Brunt came out.[8] In the 2019 edition of the Wisden Almanack Collins wrote the essay honouring Tammy Beaumont being named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.[9]

Broadcasting

Collins initially cut his teeth on radio via the short lived cult classic show 'Believe The Hype' on Melbourne's SYNFM 90.7. Collins had helped create the guerilla cricket commentary website White Line Wireless with Geoff Lemon, amongst others, which Collins described as “alternative, quite sweary and silly”. In 2018 however, with no official broadcaster taking them, Collins bought the radio rights to the Australian national cricket team Test match series against Pakistan for a five-figure sum. He hired Geoff Lemon as a co-commentator, with Brendan Julian, Mike Hussey and Bazid Khan as pundits, and struck a deal to stream the commentary on the Wisden website.[10][11] Collins said to the Sports Gazette “I realised I had the means at my disposal, albeit on the credit card, I’m not going to pretend I’m wealthy, I’m not. I knew there was a way of monetising it, commercialising it. I had a confidence we’d be able to secure the money back once we got the rights and once we had paid for all the talent, which was a very expensive process with my limited amount of money.”[12] Collins has since continued to call ball by ball cricket commentaries for the likes of Talksport,[13] Middlesex County Cricket Club,[14] Test Match Special,[15] and has also called international cricket in West Indies, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. For Sky Television in the UK, Collins has commented on men’s and Women's Test cricket and One Day Internationals,[16][17] whilst also featuring as a guest on Sky television shows such as Cricket Writers on TV,[18] The Debate & The Cricket Show,[19] as well as BBC Breakfast and BBC News.[20] Collins was part of the world feed commentary team for the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup and for ABC Radio Grandstand for the 2017 Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.[21] With Cricbuzz, Collins has been hosting video analysis since 2018 Harsha Bhogle and Michael Vaughan.[22][23] In 2018 Collins was on for 1116 SEN as the 2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal unfolded. In 2019 Collins and Geoff Lemon made a short mockumentary entitled The Holy Ground about Ben Stokes trip to Mbargo nightclub in Bristol.[24] In 2019 Collins was commenting for SEN on the denouement to the 2019 Cricket World Cup Final at Lord's between England and New Zealand which he described as a career highlight.[25] Collins was named the 2020 Cricket Writers' Club Christopher Martin-Jenkins Broadcaster of the Year.[26]

Podcasts

Collins co-hosts The Final Word Podcast with Geoff Lemon. In 2020, the Wisden Almanack recognised The Final Word as the best cricket podcast in the world.[27] He has also guested on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast.[28] In 2020 Collins co-hosted, with Daniel Norcross, a 6-part documentary series on the history of cricket commentary called Calling the Shots which was made for the Pinch Hitter, which was a pop-up digital mag made during the COVID-19 pandemic.[29] He also co-hosted The Greatest Season That Was with Daniel Brettig and Shannon Gill.[30] The 2021 Wisden Almanack fulsomely praised Collins work describing Calling The Shots as “a slick history of cricket broadcasting that revealed, with Reithian ideals, everything from Brian Johnston’s conflict with Andy Pandy to Cricinfo’s battles with bankruptcy, and Big Brother. It cemented Collins’s standing as the doyen: his other shows, The Final Word (with Geoff Lemon) and The Greatest Season That Was (with Dan Brettig and Shannon Gill) maintained exceptional standards."[31]

Personal life

Collins is a supporter of Hawthorn Football Club.[32] He commented on the positive impact watching Victoria and Australia cricketer Dean Jones had on him as a youngster.[33] Aged 18, Collins drove to the Australian Cricket Board’s headquarters to complain about the dropping of Mark Waugh from the test team.[34][35] He now lives in North London with partner Rachel and daughter Winnie. He is a relative of Australian novelist Joseph Furphy and Collins' father changed the family surname to Collins because Tom Collins was the pen name Furphy used.[36] As well as being a member of the Australian Labor Party and British Labour Party Collins is a former chairman of the Victorian branch of the Australian Republic Movement.

References

  1. ↑ "Adam Collins - ABC News". Abc.net.au.
  2. ↑ "Stories by Adam Collins". Cricbuzz.
  3. ↑ "Adam Collins Archives". Thecricketpaper. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  4. ↑ "Adam Collins | Evening Standard". Standard.co.uk.
  5. ↑ "Adam Collins". The Independent. Archived from the original on 6 January 2018.
  6. ↑ Wallbank, Paul (12 August 2017). "Nine reporter wins top prize at Kennedy journalism awards". Mumbrella.
  7. ↑ Collins, Adam (15 May 2017). "Australian star David Warner says pay dispute puts Ashes summer in doubt". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  8. ↑ "'We knew it was right': cricketers Nat Sciver and Katherine Brunt get engaged". The Guardian. 11 October 2019.
  9. ↑ "Tammy Beaumont: From Rock Bottom To World-Beater | Wisden Almanack". Wisden.com. 11 May 2019.
  10. ↑ "Trailblazing broadcaster Adam Collins is Australia's one-man answer to Test Match Special". Telegraph.co.uk.
  11. ↑
  12. ↑ ""There's a reason why people who listen to cricket on the radio call it the soundtrack to their summer" — Adam Collins on purchasing broadcasting rights and the influence of new media". Sportsgazette.co.uk. 2 January 2019.
  13. ↑ "Indian Premier League". talkSPORT.
  14. ↑ "Middlesex Unveil Live Streaming Plans for 2021 Season". Middlesexccc.com.
  15. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - Test Match Special, England v Australia, the 2nd ODI from Old Trafford". BBC.
  16. ↑ "Exclusive: Sky To Show Live County Championship Match In Full In IPL's Absence". Wisden.com. 4 May 2021.
  17. ↑ "Roses Match live stream to be broadcast on Sky Sports Cricket". Cricket.lancashirecricketc.o.uk.
  18. ↑ "Cricket Writers on TV - July 23". Sky Sports.
  19. ↑ "Is Zak Crawley England's long-term No 3? Lydia Greenway, Adam Collins, Bazid Khan on The Cricket Debate". Sky Sports.
  20. ↑ "BBC One - Breakfast, 09/09/2019". BBC.
  21. ↑ "Adam Collins". ABC Radio National. 6 January 2016.
  22. ↑ "Indian bowling attack was at its finest today - Harsha Bhogle". Cricbuzz.com.
  23. ↑ "Watch The Ashes 2019 Season 1 Episode 3 Online | The Ashes 2019 Clips on MX Player". Mxplayer.in.
  24. ↑ Byrom, David (27 September 2019). "Cricket fans in 'pilgrimage' to Mbargo after Stokes' amazing summer". Bristopost.co.uk.
  25. ↑ "World Cup Daily: Day 46 - The Final Word Cricket Podcast". Omny.fm.
  26. ↑ "ECB: 2020 Domestic Cricket Journalism Award winners announced". Cricexec.com. 16 March 2021.
  27. ↑ "THE FINAL WORD". Badproducerproductions.com. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  28. ↑ "Sky Sports Cricket Podcast on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. 10 January 2024.
  29. ↑ "Calling the Shots - The Final Word Cricket Podcast". omny.fm.
  30. ↑ "93 - The Greatest Season That Was Presents..." omny.fm.
  31. ↑ 2021 Wisden Almanack. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. 2021. p. 182. ISBN 9781472975478.
  32. ↑ "What led me to buy the gigantic blue Batmobile from the 1991 AFL grand final | Adam Collins". The Guardian. 30 September 2020.
  33. ↑ "Dean Jones was a cricketing trailblazer, say Mike Atherton and Adam Collins". Sky Sports.
  34. ↑ "My favourite cricketer: A Mark of greatness | The Cricketer". Thecricketer.com.
  35. ↑ "A Letter To My 17-Year-Old, Too-Clever-By-Half Self, By ABC Grandstand's Adam Collins". Junkee. 29 February 2016.
  36. ↑ Collins, Adam; Smyth, Rob (5 January 2020). "England build lead of 264 over South Africa after day three – as it happened". The Guardian.
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