PERSONAL COLUMN

In the box at Old Trafford

DAVID BENEDICTUS

"What's on at Old Trafford then?"

"The Test Match."

" It starts today, does it?"

"No. It started last Thursday."

To taxi-drivers, indeed to most of Manchester, the cricket didn't exist. But to the commentators, huddled like plump eaglets in a poky eyrie, Manchester didn't exist. I could tell how intent they were from the creases in the backs of their necks.

All around them, jumble. Jellybabies, listeners' letters, bags of Indian tea (who had been trying to get around whom?), brief-cases, dead matches, ash and rubble. I could see a poignant note in Bill Frindall's italic hand: "Your smoke is wafting into my face." I could see beyond the four of them — producer, commentator, scorer and expert — through the cinerama-shaped window the peaceful green and white of the best open air game in the world. I wasn't able instantly to place the atmosphere of that choked, stuffy commentary-box, but then I got it; public school study, genus Greyfriars.

Brian Johnson was commentating when I arrived, and what was most remarkable about him, and later I discovered about his colleagues, was the way he had learned to watch the game with his mouth. I swear that these men have their optic nerves wired up to their vocal chords, so swift are their reactions to the most trivial and unexpected events. (I was to mention that I frequently watched the television coverage to the Radio commentaries. "Oh yes," they said, "lots of people do. It keeps us up to the mark.") The next thing that struck me was the way they were performing for each other. There are plenty of variables; the state of the game, the combination of commentator with expert, and the atmosphere of that fuggy room changes from merry to desultory (during John Price's endless walk-backs) to carping to stern to intense, but it always remains, in essence, Greyfriars.

Bill Frindall, seated between the two major protagonists, acts usually as catalyst but with Neil Durden-Smith commentating, he allowed himself moments of petulance: Durden-Smith: "Can you tell me the lead, Bill?" Frindall: "No. I'm doing something else." Johnson: (waiting to take over — sotto voce) "His expenses." With John Arlott such mutinous behaviour would not be appropriate, would never be attempted.

Because, of course, if Jim Swanton is the jealous God of the Israelites, John Arlott is at least a major prophet. In aspect he is like one of those craggy US Presidents whom Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint stumble over during the closing seconds of North by Northwest. He commentates from large stone tablets of cricketing lore; and like Trevor Bailey knows everything. He also likes to build his fantasies. There came a moment in the middle of the frigid afternoon when Jaylaltil — the name alone enough to drive most commentators back to the fat stock prices — brought out a tray of orange squashes, which were not welcomed by the shivering players. There was some badinage between Trevor Bailey and Bill Frindall about whether the drinks could be hot orange or maybe orange served with hot chocolate sauce — good knockabout stuff — but to John Arlott a small tragedy had just been enacted.

The least popular drinks session I've ever seen in my life. Jaylaltil walks off rather hurt . . . head down . . . slighted." I sense with John Arlott, as one did with Gilbert Harding and with Tony Hancock, a great artist hanging limp on the rack, waiting for something to come along and rack them; a new art form, something more than commenting, the odd poem, the odd broadcast.

If scoring is an art, Bill Frindall is an epic exponent, a Canaletto of the game. (Bill Frindall, of course, is Tom Redwing, Greyfriars' scholarship boy). In front of him lie three loose-leaf scorebooks, three stopwatches, a mini electronic computer, cribcards on all the performers, a pipe with Puck matches and St Bruno tobacco — a pipe which is always about to be lit — a dozen pens in assorted colours, and the aforementioned jellybabies. He's a rotten swot, but he certainly earns his scholarships.

Neil Durden-Smith (Tom Merry) is newest at the game. A stripling. Until I met him, his voice, urbane, reasonable, like Max Robertson's before the tennis begins, conjured up no face. Radio has that quirk. Voices float on the aether, quite disembodied; the • faces don't belong. Freddie Grlsewood, Roy Plumley, Alvar Lidell, the faces mean nothing when at last they materialise.

It was Purden-Smith perhaps who brought us back to Greyfriars with a bump. An unhappy Indian had to go off the field for an adjustment to his thighpad. (In passing they do tend to patronise the Indians and the Pakistanis, these commentators, with their "little Vishy " and their "tiny Gavaskar "). With Trevor Bailey (Harry Wharton) on duty this was good for several minutes on thigh-pads and their uses with plenty of Learned Precedents and a few Awful Warnings. When Bailey had at last completed his survey of the history, geography and politics of thigh-pads, it was back to Durden-Smith.

"Some people don't wear thigh-pads at all," he said, " they wear little towels foldsd up . . ." while all of us in the Upi5er Fifth stuffed our handkerchiefs into out mouths and were beastly to Tom Merry who had suddenly acquired all the blushful innocence of the Owl of the Remove. " Yaroo! Leggo! I say, you fellows!"

Brian Johnson (Vernon-Smith, the Bounder of Greyfriars) has a disarming joy in bad puns. During the course of the day it became increasingly mystifying that Bedi had not been brought on to bowl. "Well," said Johnson more than once, "it's not Bedi-time yet." " Groan!" " Shut up, Bunter!" Groan!" It was an afternoon full of laughter. And when Jim Swanton (Bunter as well as Jehovah) left after his 6.30 summary he said: 'Good-bye, Beaky!" to Johnson and Johnson said: "Goodbye, Swanny!" to him with the greatest possible affection.

What I wondered must Lt-Col Adhikari (Hurree Jamset Ram Singh) the Indian team manager and required visiting expert, have made of all this youthful exuberance? But "the Colonel" is the only member of the team — excepting John Arlott — whose views, indecipherable as they sometimes are, are listened to with proper respect. Once he said: "And to his pleasing thing he must have found that it was Bedi who broke the partnership."

I'm sure that the long hours freed from the stresses of feminine interference — Rachel Heyhoe looked in last Saturday but she surely qualifies as a chap — in part create this barely suppressed conviviality and jokiness. "Why is it," I asked DurdenSmith, "that football commentators are always so partisan, while you . . ." "We're nicer people in cricket," he said, and meant it, and I dare say he's right.

But it must be asked: Is laughter sufficient? or expert knowledge enough? Or niceness in a world in which cricket has become a symbol (through the idiocies of the governing bodies who rule as if ruling Greyfriars) for stunning insensitivity and political naivete? Seven hours a day for thirty days this summer should allow time for discussion of a few of the wider implications of the game. Even in small ways the commentaries begin to sound rust-encrusted. Would it not have been fairer, for instance, when John Snow was so berated for knocking over " little " Gavaskar to have offered him the chance the governing bodies who rule as if ruling Would it not be instructive at least to hear Alec Bedser defend the selectors' geriatric bias? To institute some debate, however inconclusive, on the vital political role sport is being forced to play. When the demonstrations come, as come they certainly will, to the English cricket grounds, commentators will have to provide some indication of what is taking place around them. It may not be cricket, but it cannot just be ignored. (John Arlott makes his views known in other media).

The world moves on, and cricket, by accepting industrial sponsorship, moves with it. The BBC's impartiality need not be a strait-jacket — it has not generally proved so in news coverage — and the ball-by-ball commentators—without whom the English summer would not sound quite so sweet — just occasionally must step outside the ivy-clad precincts of Greyfriars. They will find another world where leather on willow sounds just as harmonious, where cricket loses none of its elusive and immemorial magic, a world full of grown-ups. Grrrr! Leggo!