A Freudian Slip

Broadcasting the inexact word

Hugh Lunn

Feb 20, 2026

Hard-of-hearing people, like me, often put so-called “closed captions” (words) up on the screen when watching TV.

Because we sometimes find it difficult to pick up American (or Scottish) accents.

Yet each word that is said (or written) is always vital to any story or event.

Just one wee mistaken word can make all the difference in the world.

Despite that, the wrong word appears so frequently in those closed captions that I wonder if the TV stations ever bother to check them at all.

Though they can be, sporadically, hilarious.

This summer I was watching the Australian Open to see if Swiss star Stanislas “Stan” Wawrinka, on the comeback trail, still had the best backhand in the world. (I admire it so greatly because the backhand is my favourite shot.)

Stan the Man, as I call him in my mind, was playing the handsome young American rising star, Taylor Fritz, and the match was much closer than Fritz had obviously been expecting.

Though Fritz did win in the end.

Anyway, I’m sitting there in my lounge room thinking how the commentators cocooned in the safety of their air-conditioned glassed-in boxes are often too tough on the men sweating it out in the middle.

I guess because I’m reminded of the time at Wimbledon in 1966 when I advised my best friend Ken Fletcher not to serve so many double-faults. He came back like a rubber band: “Hughie, you would be the world’s greatest off-court tennis player!”

Well, Fritz misses an easy shot off Wawrinka’s forehand … and one of the American commentators yells:

“Frustration for Fritz!”

Up comes the AI-generated closed caption:

“Castration for Fritz!”

Wow, I thought, that’s quite a severe punishment for missing a tennis shot! And with his beautiful blonde influencer girlfriend Morgan Riddle sitting in his supporter box too!

Will these commentators stop at nothing in their condemnation of losing players?

Don’t let AI anywhere near me on a tennis court!

So you see it’s important not to use the wrong word.

It happens in cricket too.

What does “timeless” mean to you?

During this summer I also watched some of the Ashes Test cricket series Australia versus England which has been going for 142 years.

When I wrote about some Test matches decades ago, the biggest criticism of them was that most ended in a “draw” – meaning no result after 5 full days of dogged play.

Which seemed to non-cricket fans a huge waste of time.

I remember as a child when the first four Ashes Tests in England were washed out by rain and thus ended in a draw.

Aussie radio star Jack Davey wrote in his newspaper column:

England should be made to play a Test against their weather instead of us.

Davey then imagined the match scorecard which began (from a child’s memory):

Len Hutton, drowned, 0

Tom Graveney, swam out, 0

Peter May, caught in deep gully, 0

Colin Cowdrey, struck by lightning, 0

You get the idea.

Drawn Test cricket matches had become such a controversy that by 1939 – on the England tour of South Africa in Durban – it was decided to play a so-called “timeless” Test match for the first time ever; instead of the traditional 5-day Test.

“To ensure a result.”

Well, by the end of the 10^th day, England was still batting in their second innings – almost 2,000 runs had been scored.

But the trouble was, the ship carrying the England players home was leaving at the end of that day – so this historic match became yet another draw.

So the “timeless” cricket Test came to mean 10 days.

What a contrast with this summer in Australia where everyone was up-in-arms because two of the five Test matches finished within just two days.

No one had ever seen the like before.

Some criticised the people who prepared the wickets in Perth and Melbourne; others blamed a new English cricket concept named Bazball; while still others accused the batsmen from both sides of throwing caution to the wind.

But I had a totally different theory.

Back in the 1980s when I was writing about Test cricket for The Australian, the biggest criticism of a batsman who got out trying to score too quickly was:

“He was batting like a bloody millionaire!”

Of course, the difference now is that all Ashes cricketers are millionaires.

Unlike in the 1950s when they were given 30 shillings a day … to help cover their expenses.