WELLINGTON: Two New Zealand radio personalities have been suspended for at least a day for broadcasting a conversation with the mother of England cricketer Ben Stokes when she believed they were off air.

On Tuesday, Radio Hauraki’s Jeremy Wells and Matt Heath were discussing the final over in the World Twenty20 final in India where New Zealand-born Stokes was hit for four consecutive sixes by Carlos Brathwaite to give the West Indies an unlikely four-wicket victory.

When Deborah Stokes, Stokes’ mother, was made aware of their discussion, she called the radio station to complain, saying they ‘bagged’ her son. She asked to talk to someone off air.

Local media reported that Heath twice told Stokes she was off air, but continued the conversation despite realizing she was the mother of the English all-rounder.

The Stuff.co.nz website quoted from a radio station transcript that a woman they identified as Deborah Stokes said: “I just wanted to basically, I guess, put forward my thoughts with regards to the way they have bagged the English cricketer Ben Stokes this morning.

“I don’t know whether they realize he was born and bred in New Zealand and quite frankly has family all over the country. And for those who listen to your station, for them to sit and listen to their cousin, their grandson being bagged like that is absolutely unconscionable and I’m his mother and I’m totally brassed off.”

Deborah Stokes took issue with a reference to her son as being arrogant.

“It’s not about the cricket it’s about the personal attack on him,” she said. “They called him arrogant and then they called him some kind of name. They don’t know him. They wouldn’t have a blooming clue.”

Radio Hauraki and its owner, New Zealand Media and Entertainment, said Heath and Wells were “suitably reprimanded, and are off-air tomorrow.”

“Matt and Jeremy are famous for identifying where the line is and then ignoring it,” NZME group program director Mike McClung said in a statement. “However, putting Ben’s mum to air without her knowledge, albeit defending her son, was obviously well over that line.”

New Zealand Cricket, which contracts Heath and Wells on a season-by-season basis as part of radio’s Alternative Commentary Collective, said it was an issue for the pair’s employer.

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2016