by Peter Baxter
I thought to myself, ‘Silly boy, if he thinks I’m going to read that out.’ But the thought was now in my mind and the chuckles rising in my throat. Trying to suppress the laughter and keep commentating, my glasses steamed up and I looked for help to my expert summariser, David Gower. He just smiled beatifically back at me and left me well alone.
In Sydney, when I first went there, there was only one radio commentary box and that was obviously the ABC’s. We had to go outside at a desk tied to a row of seats in the members’ stand. The engineer provided by the ABC was an American, who proclaimed himself to be converted to cricket by the end of the Test.
Subsequently the large Brewongle Stand was built on an arc of fine to square leg. Having heard that the South African Broadcasting Corporation commentary team had been put in that, I managed, just in time, to have a requirement for our commentary position to be as nearly as possible on a wicket-to-wicket line written into our contract. The boxes provided for TMS since then have been fairly disgraceful for such a famous old ground – the most recent being behind the official scorers, so that the view is not only from the back of the stand, but through two separate panes of glass. Somehow, though, Australians have a way of letting you know that you are the one that is being awkward, not them.
Melbourne is better, though there does sometimes remain the problem of putting in Radio 5’s substantial coverage. I can remember trying to sort that out on one very hot, sticky Christmas Eve.
Thursday 24 December 1998
I got a bit of a shock on arrival at the MCG, when I found Sky setting up in the box I had been promised for Radio 5. It took a while to locate the Victorian Cricket Association’s media man who had made that promise. His only response was an aggressive and officious, ‘That facility is not available’. He seemed unwilling to help any further.
His response to my explanation of our needs was to give me the number of a woman in the VCA office. Her suggestion was the top deck of the Members’ Stand, which turned out to be the position we had occupied in 1982.
The telecom man, when I found him, would do nothing for us on Christmas Eve, so I set about working out how to connect that position to our ISDN point in the commentary box. The cable I was carrying would make about two-thirds of the distance, so I went to find an electronics shop in the city.
Flying the cable across the void between the two stands was an interesting exercise. At one point I was using the hooked handle of a long ladle, borrowed from the caterers to lean over a balcony and haul the cable in, in order to secure the necessary join in it.
Amazingly on the day, it worked and Radio 5’s reporter, Pat Murphy, got on the air, though I don’t think he knew the effort that had gone into saving his bacon.
The requirement to be behind the wicket-to-wicket line took us very high under the roof of the new stand at the Gabba in Brisbane. The boxes there had been designed for match officials and police control at football matches. Hermetically sealed as they were, I had to run a microphone for some sort of outside effect through the door at the back and then sling it as far as I could over girders under the roof. Thus, when the storm hit to save England at the end of the 1998 Test, the sound was impressive. Henry Blofeld and Vic Marks had such a memorable session describing the rain and lightning that it made an item on Radio 4’s Pick of the Week. At one stage Vic suggested, ‘We’ve seen lots of lightning, but I haven’t heard any …’
At which point he was interrupted by an enormous crash of thunder, right overhead.
‘… thunder,’ he finished, weakly.
Another under-the-eaves commentary box where the weather is a factor is Wellington, New Zealand. In 2002, the authorities there conned me into paying for a commentary hut to be built for us. It was small, but otherwise ideal, until the southerly change came and the wind blew straight at us, seemingly direct from the Antarctic. After that we certainly knew why they call it ‘Windy Wellington’.
Radio Sport, New Zealand, have their own box in the middle of the same gantry, which I shared with them during the 1992 World Cup. On that day when New Zealand played England, Jeremy Coney, the former New Zealand captain, was also in the box. He is generally an excellent and amusing summariser, but on this occasion had been to a wedding the day before. He had not slept much and so he closed his eyes at the back of the box. I was all for rousing him when his turn came, but the Radio Sport commentary team was made of more irreverent stuff. They determined to see how much of the match they could get through without him waking up. The answer was – the whole thing. John Parker did sterling work throughout the day in his place, buoyed, no doubt, by a New Zealand victory.
The 1992 World Cup semi-final in Auckland marked the retirement from commentary of two New Zealand stalwarts, Alan Richards and Iain Gallaway. Richards’ commentary spells at home were always interspersed by the need to check on how his horses were running. I had known him from several tours of England. He had played first-class cricket for Auckland and a good level of soccer. He did once suggest to me at the end of a New Zealand tour of England that I ought to have a word with Brian Johnston about treating cricket with too much levity.
While by that 1992 World Cup Alan did perhaps seem ready for retirement, Iain Gallaway, I felt, was going too early. He still had so much to offer. Known as ‘Father’ to the rest of the team, particularly Bryan Waddle, he used to be assiduous in his homework on the opposition in the nets the day before a game. He showed me his notes to aid recognition and I saw against one player, ‘arse sticks out’.
Richards and his successor, Waddle, could get quite morose if New Zealand were not doing well and both had a tendency to join in the general New Zealand disdain for all things Australian.
Early in 1997, in Auckland, New Zealand found themselves staring down the barrel of certain defeat. England had taken a first innings lead of 131 and just before lunch on the final day, New Zealand lost their eighth second innings wicket at 105. The lunch interval followed soon after, with an innings defeat still the most likely outcome. I was sitting in the London studio, waiting to take Test Match Special through the lunch interval, as Bryan Waddle finished his summing up with, ‘That’s it, the wheels are off. Not just one – the whole bloody lot. Back to the studio.’
In the event, the wheels were firmly secured again in a famous last wicket stand between Nathan Astle and Danny Morrison, which saved the match. Morrison went on to do his bit on Test Match Special and then television commentaries all over the world, particularly relishing the mayhem of the Indian Premier League.
It’s a close contest, but I have no doubt that the best of the overseas commentators I have shared the box with over the years has been Tony Cozier. The Barbadian worked with Test Match Special first in the 1960s and has been a ‘must have’ for any TMS involving the West Indies ever since. Generally round the world now he is regarded as a television commentator, even in an era in which his colleagues are almost entirely former Test players. But he is very much part of the Test Match Special family.
The new media centre at the Kensington Oval in Barbados bears his name, though, as his father and his son have both graced the journalistic business, we like to tease him that it may be named for one of the other Coziers.
When we first mounted our own commentaries throughout the Caribbean, in 1994, we were allocated a delightful hut on the roof of the Pickwick Pavilion at Kensington. When we arrived on the island four years later, however, it was to find a new stand just being finished off. The top deck would be the press box, we were told, with the broadcasting boxes behind the four rows of writers. Despite the height of this top floor, there was only a shallow rake to the seating, which had the effect that from the second row back, there was an increasingly limited view of the field of play. By the time you reached the proposed commentary boxes, you would not be able to see the middle of the ground, even in the unlikely event that the press all stayed seated and nobody used the ga
ngway in front of the boxes. I have dealt with architects of media facilities in many different places and have found them amazingly clueless about the needs of those covering the game, but this was on a different scale.
I pointed the problem out to the television producer, whose commentators would be in the same boat. Together we addressed the ground authorities, who eventually, reluctantly, acknowledged the problem. We sketched a possible solution, which was constructed in the week leading up to the Test. After some trial and error, it became a gantry over the heads of the press, housing three boxes.
Wednesday 11 March 1998
A small meeting formed on the outfield to discuss the allocation of commentary positions. I was asking the TV people, ‘Which is you and which is us?’ so that the telecom men could install the lines.
At that point Calvin, from the Barbados Cricket Association’s marketing department piped up, ‘No, it’s TWI television, Voice of Barbados and Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. No foreign broadcaster there.’
‘So where are we going?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘We have not made provision for you. You probably haven’t even got a contract.’ Even the television people rolled their eyes at that. Fortunately, experience has taught me to carry a copy of the contract with me in these parts.
A very smart man in a suit and tie joined in. ‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked.
I pointed back at our old familiar green hut on the roof of the Pickwick Pavilion.
‘That’s where you go, then,’ he said.
As he moved away, I asked Calvin if there was any danger of this, too, being countermanded.
‘No,’ he said sullenly, ‘He’s a government minister.’
It took most of the rest of the day to find the key for it, but we were eventually restored to our hut. During the Test match, Henry Blofeld, realising that being so far from the press we would not be fed, arranged for giant pizzas to be delivered daily in the lunch interval.
The only real drawback to that box was the series of five very heavy wooden shutters that had to be manhandled out of the front every morning and back in again in the evening, in the right order every time. It rained during the course of the match and the shutters warped in the wet, making their installation all the more difficult and requiring plenty of ‘impact technology’ – or bashing them hard, as it is otherwise known. It was interesting how many pressing engagements elsewhere the rest of the commentary team discovered during these operations.
By the time of our next tour of the Caribbean, when we had lost the commentary rights to Talk Sport, we had a far grander perch on the gantry I had helped to design over the heads of the press.
In 1994 I decided that our commentary team for the West Indies tour should include, as an expert summariser, someone from the island we were on in each case. Michael Holding joined us in Jamaica, Ian Bishop in Trinidad and Colin Croft in Guyana. By this time Vic Marks, who was performing as a ball-by-ball commentator on that tour, said to me, ‘We’re working with all these big fast bowlers who I spent most of my career being terrified of – but it turns out they’re all very nice!’
For the last two Tests, I broke the mould of using fast bowlers. In Barbados it was Sir Everton Weekes. Having him – the last and some would argue the greatest of the three ‘Ws’ – on the team was particularly exciting for me. I remembered my first bat at the age of eight being an Everton Weekes autograph. And who else could it be in Antigua, but the uncrowned king of the island, Viv Richards.
On the first day of the Test, he asked me if I had a pass for him. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I assumed you wouldn’t need one here. After all, the stand over there is named after you.’
‘They forget,’ said the great man, sadly.
So I dug out the only spare pass I had, which had previously been used by Trevor Bailey and still bore his photograph. For the rest of the Test that was what he used, despite the very obvious discrepancy.
I particularly relished the sessions when Viv and Victor, the two old Somerset colleagues were on together. After a couple of days, Vic said to me, ‘I thought you were mad signing Viv, but he’s really rather good.’ He was also the most punctual member of the team, contrary to the usual view of Caribbean attitudes.
Four years later, when I was laying on an end of tour Test Match Special dinner in Antigua, I naturally invited him. ‘He won’t come,’ was the general view. ‘He’s far too well known here.’ But he came – and of course the whole restaurant stopped when he strolled genially in.
Heat is another thing that you often have to contend with on tour. I have known some very sticky days at Test matches in Trinidad and I can think of days in Adelaide when opening the door of the air-conditioned media centre was like opening an oven door. But I have no hesitation in declaring the 1993 Test match in Colombo as the hottest I have ever been at. A sparse crowd was confined to the pools of shade afforded by the trees on the grassy banks and my stop watch, carelessly left in the sun, became far too hot to handle.
To make matters worse, after a tour of India, our resources were somewhat depleted. Christopher Martin-Jenkins and I were the two ball-by-ball men, joined by the former Sussex and England fast bowler, John Snow, who was also our travel agent, and Gamini Goonesena, whose first-class cricket career pre-dated Sri Lanka’s Test status.
We had a fair-sized, open-sided area for our commentary point, so I could site the desk in a central position to avoid the ferocious sun shining on it at any time of day. In the circumstances, I rotated CMJ’s and my stints in half-hours, rather than the usual twenty minutes. Christopher does have a little reputation for forgetting the time and overrunning. In this heat he was consistently handing over early. When John Snow was asked by the England management for some bowling advice in the nets, Gamini found himself doing an uncomfortably long time at the sweat-drenched microphone.
The Military Attaché at the British High Commission, obviously knowing about TMS traditions, kindly brought us a cake. Unfortunately, he must have been expecting an air-conditioned box and the chocolate confection quickly became little more than a brown puddle.
I had also conducted a reconnaissance of the small ground to be used for the second one-day international at Moratuwa that followed this Test. This was one of those occasions when the time spent was totally wasted.
Saturday 20 March 1993
All the decisions which had been made at my recce eleven days ago had gone by the board. Nothing had happened. The canopy on the roof I had been promised for a commentary position had not been erected and we had to commentate from a tiny and inadequate press box, made worse by a number of non-working locals, armed with press passes they had obtained from somewhere and the telephone and fax operators, who were crammed in just behind our seats.
In all the circumstances, it was only appropriate that England also had one of their worst days on the field.
By the time of the 2005 tour of Pakistan I was beginning to feel the winds of change in the radio sports department blowing quite fiercely. It was also apparent that it was the intention of the BBC hierarchy that I should. There had been an aggressive edge to a meeting I had been to at the end of the English season, which was ostensibly to review the season’s Test Match Special. I had felt quite good about the way we had covered the series in which England had recovered the Ashes, but the meeting had been packed with the upper echelons of Radio 5 Live, who were clearly bent on changing the status quo.
Monday 7 November 2005
I managed to get into my e-mails and found one from the head of sport delivering rather terse orders about how Test Match Special would be done on the tour and what I should and shouldn’t have in the intervals. It contained the chilling line that, since 5 Live Sports Extra was now to be the driving network (which was news to me), we had to ‘change the style and tone’ of the programme.
There
could be no doubting it – I was being ordered to take TMS down market. I felt quite sick.
It took some time after that before I realised that it was only because we had been quite successful that they wanted TMS to be a leader in pushing the uptake of digital radio. Putting it like that might have made me feel good about it, but then man management has never been a great BBC skill.
Arlo White had been sent out to join the commentary team at the insistence of the management and this was obviously a move in the direction towards ‘the Radio 5 sound’. I commented to him that I had noticed that he introduced himself to people in Pakistan as, ‘Arlo White, 5 Live’, while I would always have said, ‘BBC Radio’, or just ‘BBC’. It was something I had noticed about the culture of the new station – it seemed to view itself as not quite part of the BBC.
I had worked with Arlo in South Africa during the 2003 World Cup, where he had been a reporter, rather than a ball-by-ball commentator. Indeed, he had brilliantly saved my skin with a lengthy contribution from Soweto to help me fill a lunch interval, when every other item had failed to materialise.
In his radio commentary he adopts the 5 Live trait of running something more akin to an interview with their summariser, rather than a description of the action. He is good company and a very fine operator from a studio, preferring to write himself a script than to deliver an ad lib account of what he is seeing in front of him. An incident during the Faisalabad Test match on the 2005 tour highlighted that, when a gas canister exploded in the crowd. In the heightened state of alert at the time, first reactions were that it must be a bomb. I was surprised at his reluctance to switch to the role of live eye-witness reporter, describing what was going on.
