Centimetre Perfect: The perfect documentary about legendary sports presenter Dennis Cometti

Australian cricket legend Justin Langer isn’t sure the Dennis Cometti documentary Centimetre Perfect has the right name.

While “centimetre perfect” was one of the iconic lines the legendary sports presenter would regularly pull out when calling Australian Football, Langer says Cometti was in fact “millimetre” perfect.

Centimetre Perfect premieres exclusively on Seven and 7plus tonight (Wednesday) at 8.30pm AEST.

And after watching a sneak peek of the documentary, Langer says he suspected nothing about Cometti’s genius was accidental.

“This week I sat in a pitch-black theatre and listened to a voice I have known my whole life. The late, great Dennis Cometti,” Langer said.

“I walked in expecting a highlights reel. I walked out thinking about friendship, partnership, craft, and the long shadow a good man casts over those who come after him.”

Some of Commetti’s most famous lines are “like a cork in the ocean” and, “he came up behind him like a librarian, he never heard him,” ... the latter a reference to an iconic moment in the replayed grand final of 2010 when Collingwood’s Heath Shaw stopped a certain Nick Riewoldt goal with a desperate dive in the goalsquare.

“Those lines landed in less than a second of live television. They sounded spontaneous. That was the trick,” Langer said.

“In the documentary, Chris Judd tells of having a cup of tea with Dennis and slowly realising he was quietly workshopping one-liners across the table. Testing them. Filing them away.

“I saw the same thing over many coffees with him. I always left entertained, suspecting not one word was accidental.”

Langer said Cometti shared the same traits as many elite sports people, such as Australian cricket legends Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist.

“It’s the same with every genuinely excellent person I’ve worked with. Gilly’s hands looked effortless because of the thousands of balls nobody watched him take at training,” he said.

“Warney’s theatre looked improvised because he’d been thinking about the batsman for a week. The work is invisible by design. That’s what makes it look like magic.

“Then there was the partnership with Bruce McAvaney. Two men at the top of a brutally competitive profession, who spent decades making each other better and never once appeared to keep score.