Special effect
Michael Vestey
Mention of the late Brian Johnston in last week’s column about his Down Your Way programmes reminded me of the loss his death was to Test Match Special on Radio Four long wave, or at least what I then feared would be a great loss. Although it was indeed a blow, TMS recovered beautifully, and after a while, although we mourned the incomparable Johnston, the programme retained its brilliance as a live broadcasting phenomenon, thanks to the skills and mischief of its main presenter Jonathan Agnew and the infectious and irrepressible good humour of Henry Blofeld. All this was in evidence during the first Test against Sri Lanka and the match I’m listening to as I write, though dim light has intervened.
One of the extraordinary things about TMS is that when rain or bad light inter rupt play the programme is just as enthralling. Since cricketing people know how to talk, even the most dour-seeming professional can sound interesting. I always remember a few years ago a relaxed Graham Gooch, who never appeared to be the most sparkling personality, gripping me on TMS with his anecdotes from the past, some of which were marvellously funny. He’d stopped playing by then but it was a side of Gooch I had never seen and to think that his inapt team nickname was ‘Bungalow’, suggesting not much on top, a revelation personally vouchsafed to me by his former team-mate, the fast bowler Chris Old, during the so-called ‘dirty dozen’ illegal cricket tour of South Africa, for which Gooch was banned for a couple of years. No, it became a pleasure to listen to Gooch on the radio, and I can only assume it must be something about the camaraderie and banter of the TMS team that brings out the best in people.
Agnew loves pranks against members of the team, particularly Blofeld. His speciality used to be sending fake emails, though the others appear to have seen through that one. And Agnew can take the jokes against him, particularly when Geoffrey Boycott reminds him of his own record as a fast bowler for Leicestershire and briefly for England, though he had a perfectly respectable county career. Apart from his fluency as a cricket commentator, Blofeld’s skill is to set the scene, to paint a word picture of what’s happening off the field as well as on it. Many ex-cricketers, used as pundits, don’t really understand this; why should they? They’re there for their expertise, but it’s textbook commentating. Make the listeners feel they’re there.
It’s even more important now that this wretched government has thanked Rupert Murdoch for his support by allowing cricket to be snapped up by Sky and those of us without satellite TV can’t see it any more except for the highlights on Channel Five; excellently done, by the way. That, and the infamous decision by a greedy and stupid England and Wales Cricket Board to sell ball-by-ball Test cricket — including the next Ashes series — to Sky, means that many of us can’t watch it. In fact, without Freeview, you can’t even watch the Channel Five highlights if you live anywhere near the South Coast.
So, TMS continues to enchant. Here’s Blofeld describing an attempted catch by Andrew Strauss in the slips: ‘Strauss leapt like a well-bred trout ... but he couldn’t get to it.’ As Kevin Pietersen has a word with one of the England bowlers when Sri Lanka’s tail stubbornly resists being bowled out, Blofeld says, ‘It’s always great fun trying to think what players are saying to one another, isn’t it?’ Sitting next to him, the former England fast bowler Angus Fraser suggests that Pietersen’s saying, ‘Get your finger out, let’s get home.’ ‘There you are,’ chuckles Blofeld. ‘It takes one to know one.’ Fraser offers another suggestion, ‘There’s a sofa in the dressingroom that I’d like to have my backside on. Get weaving!’ If there are large birds flying across his view — pigeons and crows will do, though a heron really excites him — Blofeld is on the case. At Edgbaston it was a crane not the feathered variety but one that lifts things. It seems there are two within his gaze from the commentary box, ‘Oh, it’s straightened up, it was at its most butlerian angle this morning ... ’ If the crane isn’t resembling a butler it might look like something similar: ‘A crane has moved, the red crane just to the left of the church spire was absolutely vertical. Now it’s at the sort of wine-waiter angle.’ The former Somerset and England bowler Vic Marks, sitting beside him, baffled, asks, ‘What’s the winewaiter angle?’ ‘Well, it bends over and says, “Here’s the wine list,” with a napkin under its arm.’ ‘Only you could see a wine waiter in that crane, Henry.’ ‘Don’t start being personal. Here comes Maharoof ... ’ Much of the credit for TMS should go to its longtime producer Peter Baxter, no mean commentator himself. Long may it survive.
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