Bedside Cricket

by Christopher Martin Jenkins

  Usually it is the cricket broadcaster himself who suffers moments when he wishes he had been taken off the air. I doubt if the feeling ever came to Jim Swanton, another of the pioneers, who broadcast the first hat-trick during the first regularly broadcast overseas tour (M.C.C. in South Africa in 1938–39) or to the incomparable John Arlott, who must have won more listeners to cricket than anyone and who was never at a loss for an apt comment. When, for example, ‘Tufty’ Mann of South Africa bowled George Mann of England he at once referred to ‘Mann’s inhumanity to Mann.’

  COULD DO BETTER

  A strong candidate for poorest county batting performance must be that of G. Deyes (Yorkshire) in 1907. In his first 14 innings he scored 0, 0, 0*, 1, 1*, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1*, 0, 0, 0, 0. Towards the end of the season he improved, hitting 4, 1 and 12 in his last three visits to the wicket. This last flurry gave him a final average of:

  Inns 17 N.o. 3 Runs 20 Highest score 12 Average 1.42.

  The apt phrase and vivid description rolled from John’s measured voice like silk handkerchiefs from a conjuror’s pocket: ‘Lindwall turns in a smooth arc, his shirt fills with wind, and he moves in now on that easy, low-slung approach, gradually gathering pace. . .’ ‘Hendrick, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, slim about the hips, mops his brow briefly and prepares to bowl again to Richards . . .’ ‘Edrich played at that one, missed it, and looked up at Hall like a small boy caught stealing jam.’ Arlott never made the listener blush.

  Some commentators, however, are accident-prone, and in the case of Brian Johnston, one might guess almost deliberately so, because the more laughs a match provides him, the happier he is (and his devoted listeners too). I have only once heard him totally speechless and, perhaps fortunately, it was when Test Match Special, was only being broadcast on the World Service. It was during a very unlikely match between England and Canada at Old Trafford in the 1979 Prudential World Cup. One of the Canadians left the field and was replaced by one of their reserve players. Knowing Brian is not very good at pronouncing long or unusual names and that he had no idea who the substitute fielder was, I pointed on the scorecard to the name of a player called Showkat Bash. For the next few seconds Brian shuddered with uncontrollable giggles which were so contagious that no-one else in the commentary-box could speak either.

  It was a case of the biter bit, for Brian is always playing jokes of his own. On one occasion during a Trent Bridge Test he noticed the Australian commentator Alan McGilvray taking a large mouthful of cake at the back of the box and promptly asked him to come to the microphone to give the latest news from the dressing-room of one of the Australian players who had been injured. Alan is a perfectionist who rightly takes his job very seriously, and he was highly embarrassed when bits of cake flew in all directions from his mouth as he tried to reply, until Brian explained what had happened and all of us, Alan included, could laugh about it!

  Brian was himself the victim of another joke when he was broadcasting for B.B.C. Television one of the Sunday afternoon Rothman’s Cavaliers matches which were the forerunners of the John Player League. He had to interview various people including, on this occasion, the Indian captain Ajit Wadekar as he came back to the pavilion after being dismissed. ‘Bad luck, Wadders,’ said B.J. in his normal breezy manner to a man he knew quite well. ‘That looked a good delivery, did it move a bit?’ Wadekar looked blank and Brian repeated the question. Again no response. At the third attempt Wadekar (who had been put up to the leg-pull in advance by the Nawab of Pataudi) said: ‘Sorry, no speak English,’ and disappeared up the pavilion steps leaving an embarrassed Johnston in his wake!

  Over the years, indeed, Brian has had some trouble with Indian cricketers. In 1952 he interviewed the Indian team manager Mr P. Gupta and got on to the subject of the team for the next Test. ‘By the way,’ said Brian, ‘are you a selector?’ ‘No,’ replied the manager, ‘I’m a Christian.’

  There have been only a few occasions when I have come near to changing my conviction that to be a cricket broadcaster is the ideal occupation. The most recent was in March 1981 when I heard a smooth, slow Radio Three voice say: ‘Now it is time for Test Match Special, introduced by Christopher Martin-Jenkins.’ The snag was that I was listening not in a studio, ready for action, but in the middle of a creeping mass of cars and lorries inching their way up Knightsbridge. Quite why my reaction should have been Germanic I don’t know but all I could do was to grip the steering wheel still more tightly and roar at the top of my voice and from the depths of my being: ‘GOTT IN HIMMEL!’ A cyclist overtaking me to my right nearly fell off in his surprise, even though my windows were shut against the traffic rumble; and a lady in a Morris 1100 on my left looked at first shocked and then embarrassed, as though she would rather not be seen in the same traffic jam as an obvious lunatic.

  What made it worse was that I had failed even to let my producer, Peter Baxter, know that I was not going to make it on time. Telephone booths had been occupied all the way through Putney and Fulham and when, to my relief, I finally found two together the first, after a woman had taken an age to gather up her belongings into her bag having made her call, refused to give any dialling tone. The one next door also refused for a time, then mercifully did so. With about five minutes to go to transmission I at last heard the phone ringing the B.B.C. number. I had three ten pence pieces, but all the machine did was to swallow them gratefully and come back each time with a merry pip-pip-pip. I was powerless.

  Back in the car I waited for that announcement in artificial calm. They like to have long pauses on Radio Three and it seemed more like minutes than seconds before a slightly breathless Peter Baxter said: ‘Well, not Christopher Martin-Jenkins actually. I think he may be stuck in a traffic jam somewhere in London . . .’

  My mind went back to one of the first broadcasts I had made, which was a football ‘round-up’ contribution to the Sports Report programme made famous by Angus Mackay and Eamonn Andrews.

  Most of the studios in Broadcasting House are in the basement. The Sports Room is on the third floor. The football results start to come in at about ten to five over the teleprinters and details of the second halves of the sixty-odd matches come pouring in like water at about the same time. On this occasion I had managed, despite a sort of cold creeping panic, to wade through at least some of the sea of news tape, and in a shaking hand to write out at least a part of the main news, onto numerous sheets of rustly white paper.

  All the time other more experienced members of the Sports staff were trying to help me with such comments as: ‘Are you all right, Chris? You’re sure you’re O.K.? Don’t worry, you’ve got at least another minute before you’re on the air. Did you see that Bremner was sent off? Gosh, did you see this? Hately got a hat-trick. You must give this, Chris! Don Revie had an argument with the ref. at Elland Road. Quick, Chris, you’d better get down to the studio, it’s 5.15.’

  So, my mind in whirl, desperately trying to remember if it was Hately who had been sent off and Bremner who had got a hat-trick, or vice-versa, I rushed, heart beating like a hammer, to the lifts.

  I pushed the right button several times. But though the lifts kept on coming up, not one of them seemed to want to go down. Eventually there came a polite inquiry from the Sports Report producer. It went something like this: ‘I wonder where that new fellow is, he seems to be a little late.’ It might conceivably have been worded a bit more strongly.

  At any rate I was advised to forget the lift and to sprint back so that I could do the broadcast from the makeshift studio in the Sports Room above. This I attempted to do into a lip mike – the first time I had used one. The snag with a lip-mike is that, to a novice, both ends of it look much the same. Unfortunately I chose the wrong one.

  My opening words were therefore lost to the world, until a sweaty hand from behind pulled the mike out of my hand, another one clasped me firmly across the mouth, and a third turned the microphone round the correct way, and thrust it back into my own shaking paw. Then, with a desperate gasp for b
reath, I was finally off on my stumbling way.

  Not too long after this, I was entrusted with the introduction of my first Saturday half-hour programme, the one which used to go out at half-past six, entitled Sports Session. Everything went very happily until the final five minutes of the programme. All that my script instructed me to do in this period was to introduce the rugby results, then read the racing results, then close the programme. Unfortunately, the man reading the rugby results was another green performer who, in his youth, had suffered from a stammer. His effort on this occasion was little short of disastrous. Not only did his stutter return with a vengeance, but the pages of his script got stuck together and he lost his place. Eventually, after about a minute of increasingly incoherent jabberings, he dried up altogether. There was a horrible pause of fifteen seconds or so – again, they seemed like minutes – as he struggled desperately with the mass of muddled paper in front of him, and then he brought a merciful end to his torment with the memorable words: ‘Oh Christ.’

  At this juncture I came calmly in as if that was the normal end to our rugby coverage, by saying: ‘So much for today’s rugby – now for today’s racing results from three meetings.’

  This was fine except that there were four meetings. So when three had been read, with more than a minute and a half of the programme still left, I started out on a long speech to close the programme, wondering how on earth I was going to make it last the allotted time, when I noticed the producer apparently having a fit next to me. Poor chap, I thought, it’s all been too much for him. But as I talked on, I noticed that there seemed to be some rhyme and reason to his antics. For instance, he was softly muttering the words ‘horses’ and ‘racing’ and at the same time whipping himself in a very reasonable imitation of Lester Piggott riding out a close finish on Nijinsky.

  At last it clicked. I stopped in my tracks and announced, to those members of the public who were still listening, that there was of course still one more race meeting to come. It was duly read out at double speed and we managed to end the programme just on time. After this, such problems as tapes being put on at the wrong speed, and reporters failing to come up on the line when they are supposed to, seem relatively small.

  Studios can be very frenetic places – indeed some producers seem to think it is necessary to whip up some crisis or panic even when there is no real cause, and it can be a trifle unnerving for the young and inexperienced. Nigel Starmer-Smith, now a popular and accomplished rugby commentator on B.B.C. Television, actually made his first broadcast on cricket. He was doing a round-up of the highlights of the day’s county cricket, again a somewhat ‘hairy’ assignment, especially for someone not exactly au fait with all things cricketing. Poor Nigel was very nervous, as I noticed sitting opposite him. I read the scores and cued to him for the details, and in his excitement he began reading from the second page instead of the first. So his opening line was: ‘Another good piece of bowling by Shackleton who took three for...’ He stopped, then actually said (the only time I have heard it in earnest): ‘I’m sorry, I’ll read that again.’

  Newsreaders are often rather stumped by sports items handed to them at the last minute and one famous gaffe was induced by a score from a Roses match in the 1930s: ‘Now the close-of-play score in the Roses match at Headingley: Yorkshire 329 for four, Leyland 126, Hutton ill. Oh I’m sorry, Hutton 111.’

  The real fun of broadcasting comes with the outside broadcast, especially the radio O.B. when the commentator has the thrill, the challenge and the responsibility of acting as the eyes of the listener. My very first live cricket broadcast was for the B.B.C. World Service (who put out a friendly, relaxed and informative programme every Saturday under the convivial chairmanship of Paddy Feeney). The game was between Surrey and Yorkshire and Chris Old had just started playing for the latter. I remember being reasonably satisfied with my effort until the moment I handed back to Paddy when I said: ‘The outstanding feature of the morning has been the bowling of young Old.’ Paddy’s quick response was: ‘Oh, yes, I remember his father, old Young.’

  Such things are so easily said and once out of the mouth cannot be retrieved. Brian Johnston once remarked on a very cold day at Northampton that the ground was very deserted, in fact, there seemed to be more cars there than people. It only occurred to him afterwards to wonder how the cars had got there! It was Brian too who once inadvertently spoke of a fielder at legslip with his legs wide apart, no doubt ‘waiting for a tickle.’

  The Benson and Hedges Cup Final of 1977 was a match between Gloucestershire and Kent and turned out to be one of the few finals of the 1970s which Kent, having reached Lord’s, did not go on to win. Gloucestershire had made a good score and it was fairly apparent that Kent were not going to make it because the overs were fast running out, and wickets were falling. At one point Asif Iqbal, of Kent and Pakistan, was out and he was succeeded at the wicket by John Shepherd, of Kent and Barbados. ‘The situation for Kent,’ I told my listeners, ‘is looking blacker and blacker.’

  Two years later the Prudential World Cup opened on a bitterly cold day with a match between England and Australia at Lord’s. It really was bleak and we were glad to be inside a warm commentary-box. I had made all the obvious points about how many sweaters the England fielders were wearing and then I suddenly had a flash of inspiration as to how I could convey just how bitter it was. ‘You can see how cold it is out there now,’ I observed, ‘because the England fielders are putting their hands in their pockets between balls.’

  Talking of flashes of inspiration, I apparently said at the end of one of those seemingly interminable floodlit one-day international matches in Australia: ‘They are very aware of the enormous cost of the huge floodlights here at Sydney. There is also a local law that the lights must go out by half-past ten and, sure enough, the moment the match ended a short while ago, the lights went out like a flash.’

  We get an amazing number of letters in the commentary-box, generally speaking friendly and appreciative ones. Some are also very interesting and some amusing, like the one from the housewife in August 1976 who wrote in professed disgust to say that she had been listening with her young and impressionable daughter to the commentary and ‘I distinctly heard you saying “the bowler’s Holding the batsman’s Willey”.’ That was a leg-pull, I believe, but the best of these unintentional double-entendres was inevitably perpetrated by the life and soul of the commentary-box, Brian Johnston. He had to describe in one Test match that most delicate of cricketing matters, when a batsman gets hit where it hurts most. The batsman was Glenn Turner of New Zealand and the bowler Alan Ward of England. There was quite a delay whilst the England fielders all gathered round Turner, who was a bit shaken and needed a drink hastily summoned from the dressing-room. But he was eventually straightened out, so to speak, and Brian, who had described the injury with the utmost decorum, bearing his mixed audience in mind, took up the commentary again like this: ‘So, he looks all right again. Alan Ward then to bowl to Turner; one ball left.’

  On tour, other problems rear their heads. If things are going well for the team, it is pleasant enough to tape interviews with the players. When things aren’t going so well this can become an acute embarrassment. The producer says: ‘Albert Brown in the Daily Dredge has written that there is bitter dissension within the team, Chris. Just do an interview with the captain about that will you? Oh, and ask him about the rumour that he’s going to retire at the end of the tour because his form has been so disastrous . . . Don’t be so soft on him this time, Chris.’

  There were often desperately frustrating difficulties of a technical nature when it came to broadcasting from India. I spent three hours one Saturday in Jullunder trying to charm, persuade or cajole the studio engineer into getting me my line to London. I knew the concern which could be building up in the crowded sports studio in London – concern not for my plight but for the gap in the programme which would be created if my reports and interviews did not get through. At last I made some sort of co
ntact on an echoing line: ‘O.K.,’ I said. ‘I’ll explain why I couldn’t get through later. Let’s not waste time. Here’s my first report . . .’

  ‘Hold it please Mr. Jenkins.’ It was my friend the engineer, rushing into the studio looking very alarmed. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘evacuate studio at once. Chief Minister of Punjab here to make ministerial broadcast.’

  By the time he had done so, Sports Report had long gone off the air.

  It was at Poona, I think, that I had the greatest difficulty in getting through, even though the secretary of the club there had kindly allowed one of his office boys to try to get the line through each lunchtime so that I could make a report to the early morning sports desk on Radio Four without having to miss the morning’s play (the office, which had the only telephones, being well out of sight of the playing arena). Alas, the plan had been a more or less total failure and on the last day of the match, convinced it was due in part to the negligence or incompetence of the office boy, I was intending to tell him what I thought of him and Indian technology generally. As I brushed furiously past the main office desk I was handed a letter and fortunately I read it before I opened my tirade because it was from the offending youth himself and it began:

  ‘Dear Mr. Christopher, I am wishing to thank you, uncle, for your great kindness, superb hospitality and warm and sweet friendship to me . . .’