Radio
Don't drop it
Michael Vestey
Ater one of her Sunday lunches had gone into extra time, a close friend asked me how she could retune her car radio from Radio Four long wave to FM. She wished to avoid listening to Test Match Spe- cial on long wave so that she could hear the network's normal output on FM, a com- mon yearning of listeners who dislike crick- et. She did not have the booklet of instructions to hand and couldn't work out how to do it. I obliged, despite the wine, and a week later she came to lunch.
`Darling,' she said with a radiant smile, `you have changed my life. Thank you.' No more TMS for her and she looked as if I had just handed her £50,000. An unfamiliar car radio can be nuisance. The more sophisticated they become the more baf- fling they can seem. It can be quite diffi- cult, not to mention dangerous, trying to switch networks while driving, particularly if you need glasses for reading.
It might not be long, though, before my friend won't need to escape TMS on long wave as, thanks to the people who run the BBC, it appears to be doomed. I have loved it for years and not just because I like Test cricket. I value its wit, humour and expertise in commentary and punditry.
It maintains its high quality, as I've noticed during the current England Test series against New Zealand. It is full of intelligent insights and lacks the dim-wit- tedness and hyperbole of so much sporting commentary on radio and television. So it is typical of the current mismanagement of the Corporation that the BBC is likely to lose TMS in the coming years.
Kelvin MacKenzie's Talk Radio has already bought the radio rights to Eng- land's overseas tours and at the end of next summer the home Tests will become avail- able. There is, though, a widespread feeling that the BBC doesn't really want to keep TMS and would be happy to see it snapped up by Talk Radio. I know there are some executives in the Corporation who would like this and others who wouldn't. So, over all, the impression is given of half-hearted- ness, a lack of enthusiasm for retaining TMS.
To lose it would be enormous folly, even by recent BBC standards. It is successful, popular with certain audiences, though obviously not with others. It has a distinc- tiveness, a character of its own, and a mar- vellous range of voices. When the public-school man Henry Blofeld — 'Eng- land's bowling this morning is perfectly ghastly!"Oh, look at that! He leapt up like a well-bred salmon . . . ' — is partnered with the former fast bowling genius from a Yorkshire mining area, Freddie Trueman — 'England's bowlin' is like watchin' paint dry' — all thoughts of class disappear as both are united in a love of cricket, as well as appearing to be friends outside the com- mentary box. For every 'Blowers' in the box there's a 'Foxy' Fowler, the former Lan- cashire and England batsman Graeme Fowler with his down-to-earth analysis, not to mention his fund of dressing-room anec- dotes. There is nothing stuffy about TMS.
Although Trueman has a habit of dis- cussing cricketers from his era, the 1950s and earlier, this is no bad thing. Younger listeners might not have heard of them but the young don't appear to have heard of anyone earlier than Ian Botham. Rather than pander to the imagined tastes of the young and the absurd focus groups, one of the great dumbing down mistakes of the Birtist BBC, broadcasters should stretch their minds and not be afraid to talk about the cricketing giants of old. In any case, it's unavoidable with cricket because statistics and past performances are very much rele- vant to the modern game.
Trueman, by the way, is a very funny man even when he's not trying to be. In a discussion with Jeremy Coney, the former New Zealand Test cricketer and a guest commentator, he said of Phil Tufnell, the spinner, 'I've been trying to get 'im back in the England side for 18 months and bangin' my 'ead against a brick wall.' Coney, 'Well, he's back in now!' Trueman was complain- ing about his hotel room in Kenilworth where he'd been on a speaking engagement the night before. 'The room! I switched the light off and was in bed before it went out.'
No doubt Talk Radio's ball-by-ball com- mentary will succeed as the station will be using some good talkers, Geoffrey Boycott, I'm entitled to one phone call to my lawyer.' Chris Cowdrey among them, but it will take years to reach the fluency of TMS. If the BBC really wants to keep the radio rights to domestic Tests it will have to pay more to the England and Wales Cricket Board and show some aggression.
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