On that occasion there was never a time that the prospects of play were hopeless so the chat carried on all day. Many a listener has written in since to say that the commentary is all well and good but it is when it is raining that it really becomes entertaining. True or not, Baxter had the sense to realise that to the millions who love the game almost any cricket talk is better than none.
I first met this affable, conscientious fellow, with a retentive memory for many things other than cricket, at Stamford Bridge, in the days when Bobby Tambling was on the wing and Peter Bonetti was leaping between the goalposts. I was reporting a Chelsea match; Peter was sent along to guide me, if I remember correctly, on the art of using a COOBE, shorthand for ‘commentator operated outside broadcasting equipment’. He retained a quick sense of humour in the years that followed despite the Corporation’s complex internal politics and his occasional volcanic eruptions when the line suddenly went dead in some hot and dusty commentary point thousands of miles from Broadcasting House.
On the air his was a voice of pleasing calm, often heard in the intervals or filling in with capable commentary off a television screen when he was in London in the early hours of the morning. He would love to have commentated more regularly but behind the scenes he was invaluable. He would arrive at his post earlier than anyone except the groundsman (or perhaps Dickie Bird) to make sure that the indispensable engineers had everything in order, and leave it at the end of the day, often in darkness, only when the last interviews had been dispatched.
I worked closely with Peter during my two stints as the BBC cricket correspondent. He was shrewd enough to spot the outstanding Jonathan Agnew as my successor, for which listeners have been heartily thankful ever since! ‘Aggers’ has been kind enough to say that he had admired my ‘gravitas’ in that role, to which I would reply that I greatly admire his own lightness of touch. In no way does that imply that he is a lightweight: far from it. He has gone out of his way to build the profile of TMS still further and has deliberately assumed the role of leader of the band by linking his own personality and experiences to the commentary, building shrewdly on the Johnston persona. He is highly influential in cricket, having bowled with great distinction for Leicestershire, played for England and then buckled down to a career as a journalist with real determination. His reputation leapt as a result of the ‘leg-over’ giggles with B.J. in 1991, his first season on TMS. Regularly played back on the air ever since, it never ceases to make people laugh. I shall probably take it on my desert island.
Affable and amusing, Jonathan nevertheless gets to the heart of important issues, interviewing people with just the right mixture of respect and, when necessary, hardness. Had he been politically inclined he would have been brilliant as a presenter of the Today programme. He manages to make all his subjects feel relaxed, in the true spirit of TMS, but he, like Peter Baxter’s conscientious successor, Adam Mountford, have sharpened the programme’s news sense, particularly when probing topical matters in the lunch and tea intervals. In this both Peter and Adam have been greatly helped by their ubiquitous assistant Shilpa Patel, who is much more than Test Match Special’s equivalent of Samantha, the imaginary helper to Humphrey Lyttelton and Jack Dee in I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
Tiny, attractive, beguiling and determined, Shilpa has been able to persuade almost anyone – be they prime ministers like Sir John Major, pop singers like Lily Allen, actors like Daniel Radcliffe, or unknown enthusiasts going off to play cricket for charity in the Himalayas – to come up to the box to talk during the course of a Test match. She is especially predatory during the Lord’s Tests, keeping an eagle eye (actually, usually my binoculars) on the President’s box and seizing upon any celebrities there.
The early BBC managers believed that cricket was far too slow for commentary. In fact, of course, its ebbs and flows allow all sorts of diversions, as long as the cricket, the raison d’être after all, comes first. Interviews such as these, whether they occur during commentary or in the intervals, add much to the scope and appeal of a programme that might otherwise be too recondite.
Peter Baxter made a regular feature of the Saturday lunchtime interviews with celebrities from fields other than cricket. A genuine interest in the game was supposed to be the common denominator. Over the years I have greatly enjoyed talking at leisured length to such different enthusiasts as the warm and greatly respected Lancastrian footballer Jimmy Armfield, the widely experienced politician Peter Brooke, alias Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, the playwright Nick Warburton, actors like the engaging Charles Collingwood, and the unruly Sir Robin Day, who was definitely a better interviewer than interviewee. He came to the box determined to say his prepared piece about Wally Hammond, whatever I asked him!
These days ‘Aggers’ likes to do all these celebrity interviews and I don’t blame him because they are great fun, but he met his severest challenge when the distinguished actor Edward Fox for some reason answered virtually all his questions with extremely brief answers. He was thoroughly chastened by that experience, but, being a child of the Twitter age, he was like the cat with the cream when Shilpa acquired interviews with Lily Allen and Daniel Radcliffe.
Assiduous homework on the subject can be important on these occasions even if, for someone so busy as Agnew, research has to be done by others. The salutory story is told of Sir Thomas Beecham, the great conductor, arriving very tired at Sydney airport one day and being pushed by a brash young radio reporter to appear on his evening magazine show a few hours later. ‘We’ll only need you to talk for twenty minutes, Sir Thomas’, the reporter assured him. ‘Delighted’, said Beecham, taking an instant dislike to the cocky familiarity displayed by the persistent young Aussie. ‘Just send a car to my hotel half an hour before the programme and ask me if I’ve had an interesting life. I’ll talk for as long as you want.’
Thus encouraged the youngster enjoyed a longer lunch than usual. Come the programme he introduced Sir Thomas as ‘the great British composer’, turned to him and said: ‘Sir Thomas, you must have had a long and interesting career?’ ‘Long, yes’, replied the maestro, ‘but interesting, no, not particularly.’ And that was all that he had to say, leaving his over-confident inquisitor to flounder.
It is largely due to Baxter that TMS is now as much a winter programme as a summer one. He loved travelling, although his devotion to the job cost him the second of his three marriages. He had responsibility for all aspects of broadcasting cricket on radio, including the design of commentary positions as grounds began to develop their facilities. With a lot of encouragement from me he managed to persuade the architect of the avant-garde media centre at Lord’s, and MCC’s charming ‘chairman of Estates’, Maurice de Rohan, to have a window in the commentary box that opened.
Down below, the writers have had to make do with a huge glass window that seals out the natural air and, with it, the ‘feel’ for whichever cricket match is being played far below them. To my mind that close affinity with events in the middle is essential to a full understanding of what is happening. These days at Lord’s, and in too many other modern press boxes, one might just as well be watching the game on television.
As for TMS, touch wood it will continue to please. Adam and Jonathan have been good at embracing old-fashioned technologies such as emails and brand new ones like Facebook and Twitter (will it all get more instant and more trivial?) while this old fogey tries to keep up. It is, I must admit, remarkable that people can react instantly to something that has been said. Contributions are often either pertinent or funny. We have to keep moving with the times, as long as we do not forget that the whole purpose is to describe the cricket match itself.
It took one of the newer commentators, Simon Hughes, a talented writer with an inquiring mind and a thick enough skin to ask anyone anything, some time to realise that commentary is not a matter of debating cricketing issues, however interesting they may be, with the game as a background: it is exactly the opposite. He established a reputation on televisio
n but, with that lesson now learned, he could also become a popular radio performer. Simon Mann deserves to be that already. As a professional broadcaster he, like Mark Pougatch and Arlo White, two more recent commentators who did not always hit the right notes, Simon is a professional broadcaster who understands the necessary disciplines. When I am listening he tells me what I want to know, not always the case with others.
That essential job is quite simple, really. Listener first, commentator second. The commentator’s essential responsibility is to tell the listener what he or she wants to know: the score, the context of the match, who is bowling to whom, what an unfamiliar player looks like, where the ball has pitched (both its length and its line), what shot the batsman has played or attempted and what is happening in the instant of his playing the ball. After every ball the field is free for wider observations: for humour, colour, history, statistics and anything else that may interest or engage the listener; but only until the bowler runs in again.
The sheer volume of international cricket guarantees that there will be plenty of opportunity for new voices. The chosen few will be inheriting a great tradition.
I have been portrayed as the sober presence in the box who keeps both eyes on the cricket but I like to think that those who listen properly and regularly to the programme appreciate that there is some wit and wider wisdom occasionally imparted along with (as often as possible) the score. Only once, however, have I departed on a flight of fancy that might have got out of control. That was the result not of alcohol but a sudden burst of Christmas spirit. The occasion was a phone-in during a Test in Australia when I was the ABC’s guest commentator. Rain had stopped play for a while. Someone rang the programme to ask if anyone knew the origin of the name ‘Dodemaide’, Tony Dodemaide having just made the national side as an all-rounder. Norman O’Neill fielded the question but said he had no idea of the answer.
For some reason I decided to have some fun and said that I did. The name was derived, I said, from an old custom in the Caribbean at Christmas-time in the days when wealthy landowners had lots of servants. I set the scene of a husband and wife discussing in their drawing-room who would give Christmas parcels to which servants. ‘I’ll tell you what’ said the wife at last. ‘You do de butler and I’ll do de maid’. It was the sort of pun that Frank Muir and Denis Norden used to produce in the old radio programme My Word and, to my relief, it was deemed to be hilarious, not least by Norman, who mentioned it every time I saw him in later years.
He was a convivial companion as a summariser on the tours when the BBC would simply transmit ABC commentaries, and there have been many others.
10
FROM BROWN TO BOYCOTT
‘He’s a good bowler. Good bowlers take wickets, good batsmen score runs. It’s quite simple.’
‘I am very, very sorry but will someone please tell me what’s going off out there? I have never seen anything like it in my en-tire life.’
‘My Granny could have caught that.’
Bailey, Trueman and Boycott. You recognised them, no doubt. More and more of the occupants of both press and commentary boxes these days are ex-Test players but for a long time the TMS summarisers were, first and foremost, radio specialists.
In my early BBC days I worked briefly with Norman Yardley, who was charming, Freddie Brown, a bon viveur who could not have been more friendly, and Jack Fingleton, who could be mischievous, although not so much as Lindsay Hassett, the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s main ‘expert voice’ for many years. Lindsay, his pixy eyes twinkling as once his feet had done when he batted against the spinners, encouraged me to drink plenty of the excellent white wine that was on offer at lunchtime one day at the MCG and during the commentary later he frequently remarked that I seemed to be unusually prone to giggling. Alas, I was, although I doubt whether any of the listeners worried about it.
There were two or three other occasions over the years when I probably drank a glass or two more than I should have done before commentating although I would never have let it affect me to the extent that it did the accomplished Alan Gibson, who was banned from ball-by-ball for ever by Cliff Morgan after a day at Headingley when his state of inebriation was all too obvious. In recent years I have generally followed Agnew’s example and kept off all alcohol until the day’s work has been done.
There have occasionally been modest exceptions at Lord’s when Judy and I have been guests in the President’s box, where the company is always stimulating and the effect of the slope on that Grandstand side of the ground allows both a commanding and an intimate view of the cricket. I have also broken the rule to allow myself a glass of wine at lunchtime at Leeds, where Carol Rymer, Yorkshire’s first female committee member, has for many years included me in one of her picnics, held on the edge of the rugby football ground. I have never tasted better sandwiches than hers.
Adam Mountford has added a number of new voices in recent times, most of them lively enthusiasts in touch with the modern game, although one or two of them have been inclined to talk so much that they allow no time for the natural rhythm of a commentary and that vital moment of suspense, just before each ball is bowled, that ought always to be the preserve of the designated commentator.
Phil Tufnell and Michael Vaughan are two of the lively new recruits to TMS. One brings a mischievous sense of fun and wide experience of life, the other up-to-date knowledge of the England camp. ‘Tuffers’ is an extraordinary chap with a real flair for entertaining people. His past is chequered, especially off the field, but, having now found the right wife and the right agent, he is making a small fortune from his various media outlets, to the extent that we are lucky to have him with us as often as we do. He has a lively mind, a good memory and, if not as on the ball as Michael when it comes to knowledge of the players, he is much cleverer than he likes to disclose. I find him good company on and off the air.
Working with Michael is like sitting next to an electric fence. Neither his mind nor any of his senses seem to be still for a second. His iPad and Twitter messages are never far away. He has quickly built a large following although he has had to learn (like many before him) that the commentator needs time to set the scene, to give the score and to recap on events earlier in the day. There is nothing worse than listening for ages until he does. But, like all ex-Test captains, England’s general in the marvellous 2005 campaign against Australia has much to offer in interpreting the tactics and thought processes of the players
Two of his England predecessors were amongst the best ‘summarisers’ I have worked with, both, alas, all too briefly. Ray Illingworth should have been snapped up by radio and given a long-term contract when he stopped playing in the mid-1970s but BBC hands were no doubt tied both by his budget and by the commitment to the established double act of Fred Trueman and Trevor Bailey. Loyalty is important on these occasions: listeners feel that familiar voices are their friends. All the same, Illy read a game so well on his infrequent radio appearances that he would have been worth filtering into the mix. The same would have applied to Mike Atherton, with whom I briefly worked in the Caribbean. He had everything: humour, quick powers of observation and the all-important sense of rhythm and timing that most other former professional players acquire only with difficulty.
Illingworth and Atherton were both quickly signed instead by television. So was David Lloyd, alias ‘Bumble’, whose sense of humour was ideal for TMS. Our loss has been Sky’s gain, radio budgets being more limited, unfortunately, especially for cricket. But summarisers do not have to have been outstanding Test players to be worth hearing. I am glad that I have never had to take decisions about which of all the many possible ex-international cricketers should be employed.
Trevor and Fred were a nicely complementary pair. Fred was full of bombast, suspicious of the establishment, not always without foundation because he had played in an era when snobbery was all around him and there was a class structure, like it or not. In particular, he never trusted Gubby Allen, the éminence gris
e at Lord’s when he was in his prime. He was inclined to be repetitive and over critical of the contemporary scene, especially when he was discussing fast bowlers, but his views were invariably just and always to be respected. Like his fellow Yorkshireman Geoffrey Boycott, he could labour a point, but when it started raining he was a peerless raconteur with an amazing memory for matches he had played and characters with whom he had locked horns or shared a dressing-room. Trevor, by contrast, was quite vague and imprecise when it came to the past but as an assessor of current events he was sharp, pithy and an excellent judge of any player. He could always see the wood for the trees.
Like the redoubtable ‘F.S.’, T.E. Bailey was rightly and widely adulated. He had been in his prime as an England all-rounder in the middle 1950s, when England were for four or five years the best team in the world, blessed with a variety of bowling resources that has not been equalled before or since. At home in 1953 and 1956, and in Australia in 1954/5 he was at the core of the teams that won series against Australia.
His famous rearguard with Willie Watson at Lord’s in 1953 was one of the great events of the momentous Coronation year. It happened just as television was burgeoning, so this and the subsequent regaining of the Ashes were on a par in national consciousness with such achievements as the first ascent of Everest.
In short he was a national hero, much as Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff were to become in other stirring series for the Ashes since. Only Botham, and arguably also Tony Greig, have exceeded him as an England all-rounder since the war. As the figures illustrate, he was wonderfully consistent, the sort of cricketer who seldom let a match go, either for Essex or for his country, without contributing something valuable to the team cause.
His greatest strength as a cricketer, unshakeable belief in himself, applied also to his magisterial comments from commentary boxes. He was both a likeable companion away from the microphone and a most sympathetic working colleague who fully understood that the relationship with a commentator needed to be a partnership. His timing was perfect, except just occasionally when it was raining. Then, Trueman’s capacity to ramble reminiscently was more useful than Trevor’s penchant for the succinct comment.
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