Talking A Good Game

Michael Henderson

How sweetly do memories of certain voices return, to remind us of what we have lost.

Forty years ago, when Liverpool ruled English football, they played a League Cup tie at Southend United. At half time, with the game goal-less, Peter Jones told listeners that Trevor Bailey, ‘the great Essex and England cricketer’, was with them. Bailey, a fine amateur footballer, lived in Westcliff, down the road from the Roots Hall ground.

‘What’, asked the famous commentator, ‘do you think Dave Smith, the Southend manager, will be telling his players?’.

‘Well done’, said Bailey. ‘Keep it up’.

Clearly confounded, Jones missed a beat before he resumed. Used to the waffling of his football colleagues, he had forgotten that Bailey was a man of few words. In this case, five, all of one syllable.

Which modern-day presenter, commentator or pundit could be so pithy? Everywhere on radio and the telly there are mediocre would-be personalities, desperate to puff themselves up. We all have our favourite duffers, and most come from the world of football.

How about Mark ‘Chappers’ Chapman? Here is a presenter who indicates his proximity to the stars by laughing in an exaggerated manner whenever one of them answers his half-volley-on-leg-stump questions. Nothing can be that funny. Then there is Micah Richards, Match of the Day’s ‘expert’, who seems to think he’s playing second house on Blackpool’s north pier.

Football has always attracted the worst offenders, because so many people within the game are dimmer than Toc H lamps. There are exceptions, led in the past by John Giles and today by Graeme Souness, but they are outnumbered five to one by pupils from the remedial class.

As sport has surrendered to television, and as more radio outlets have emerged, the coverage was bound to change. Some changes have improved the understanding, and occasionally enhanced the enjoyment of viewers. Occasionally, not always. Clever visual tricks, accompanied by percussive pop music, quickly become tiresome.

The language of sport has always been slightly at odds with normal speech. Arthur Hopcraft wrote amusingly about it in The Football Man, published in 1968. Readers of newspapers, he said, lapped up the well-worn phrases of journalists which people did not use in real life. Does anybody stride into a pub, and declare ‘I am poised to buy a round?’ You’d get some funny looks if you did. Yet every day of the week football managers are ‘poised’ to enter ‘the transfer market’ to buy ‘a want-away striker’. And that’s before we get to all the ‘vowing’, ‘roaring’ and ‘snubbing’ that goes on.

Football’s modern vocabulary has been infected by the jargon of the dressing-room. So we get endless guff about ‘breaking lines’ and something called ‘the deep press’ (‘closing down’, in old money). It’s intended to emphasise the speaker’s expertise, and most of it is balls.

Intensifiers have spread like topsy. Commentators are forever telling us some unremarkable deed or performance is ‘incredible’, ‘amazing’, or ‘unbelievable’. Not an hour passes without one pundit or other alluding to an ‘iconic’ or ‘legendary’ performer.

In this aural free-for-all the distinction between commentary and analysis has evaporated. During the Six Nations rugby internationals it is possible to hear five or six voices competing for the viewer’s attention, from the first kick. The poor old commentator must feel very lonely, though at least the rugby folk tend to be distinguished once-upon-a-timers. The second voice for big football matches on the BBC is Jermaine Jenas, who sounds as if he is reading from a crib-sheet prepared by a friendly producer.

So how has cricket fared?

In the old days, when the BBC carried live coverage of every Test match, there was Richie Benaud, who was held to rank only slightly lower than the angels. He was very good, for three decades. A superb all-rounder and captain in his day, he knew all there was to know about cricket. As a broadcaster he knew the most important thing was the value of silence. If he became self-parodic in his final decade, that’s what happens when you’ve been around for yonks.

Benaud’s comrades in those distant days, when cameras were situated at only one end of the ground, included Jim Laker, Raymond Illingworth and Tom Graveney. They were much-loved cricketers, though their analysis could be spare. Every time a batsman was given out lbw, Graveney would mumble ‘mmm, pretty adjacent’. He was usually correct. But viewers were not wrong to want a bit more.

On Test Match Special the dominant voices belonged to Brian Johnston and Christopher Martin-Jenkins, natural broadcasters. The summarisers were ‘keep it up’ Bailey and Fred Trueman, who spoke at the end of an over, and Don Mosey held his own as a ball-by-ball man whose close of play summaries were well-crafted. Jonathan Agnew is an excellent successor to this tradition.

Can you imagine Alison Mitchell and Isa Guha performing Mosey’s role? Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Guha regards everything as a joke. Mitchell, to use a musical term, is overparted. As a commentator her primary job is to describe the action, yet every time a wicket falls you can almost see the poor girl pleading for help. ‘I’m a babe in this wood, and night is closing in’.

Every cover drive transports Guha to the clouds so high. ‘Divine’, she says. Mitchell opts for ‘sublime’, a subject best left to the likes of Immanuel Kant. If only the hero of Konigsberg had witnessed Joe Root at high tide the history of western philosophy might be very different.

The ladies agree on ‘aerial!’ whenever a batsman lifts the ball over the infield. And a straight drive is their joker, with double points. ‘He’s gone downtown!’ is the stock response, nudging those of a certain age back to 1964, when Pet Clark stormed the charts.

It’s flim-flam. And the BBC loves it.

But it’s not all bad. In Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain Sky have the best commentators on cricket, and perhaps the most reliable witnesses on any sport.

Born within five days of one another in March 1968, the two men have been associates since adolescence. They were opponents in age group cricket, team-mates in a strong Combined Universities XI, and joined the England team at 21. Both eventually captained England, Hussain with greater success than Atherton, and now they sit together as champions of the box.

Hussain was an intense young man, driven towards the summit by a father who wanted him to conquer the world; a rite of passage he described in an excellent autobiography that at times made hard reading. He matured as England captain, when he picked up a team that was bumping along the seabed in 1999, and handed it over four summers later to Michael Vaughan, who added the polish which enabled England to regain the Ashes in 2005.

He flourished as a captain, enabling his men to win eventful series in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, against all odds. He was also very good in his dealings with the press, being frank and fair, qualities he brings to his assessment of players in his current role.

Atherton was not very good with the press. He allowed petty squabbles to cloud his judgment of how an England captain should behave, but that habit (no great blunder, in the scheme of things) has not prevented him from becoming a superb writer. He was a fine batsman, too, who made light of the chronic back pain which plagued the later stages of his career.

Although they enjoyed illustrious careers perhaps they feel they could have achieved even more. They would love to have led a team that beat Australia, as Vaughan and Andrew Strauss did, but they are not bitter, and now they can say (were they the bragging kind) they do certain things as well as anybody.

There is no flummery with either man, nor point-scoring, nor listen-to-me hectoring, nor tiresome auditions for the music hall. As players they belonged to the ranks of the very good, rather than the great, and they have an acquaintance with disappointment which links them to the people they are paid to talk about.

At his best Geoffrey Boycott was a fine judge, who spoilt it by bringing everything back to the subject he enjoyed most. Michael Holding, never easily impressed, was outstanding, and Ian Chappell may have been the finest pundit of all. That flinty voice, and judgments of flint, too!

Mark Butcher, whose talents were not properly recognized for years, is emerging as a top-class performer, and we ought to hear more from Mark Ramprakash, who has plenty of interesting things to say. The fact that he says them gently makes his commentary all the more appealing.

Things are rarely ‘the best’ or ‘the worst’, and viewers are served most faithfully when the people chosen to explain the action to us amateurs start from that premise. Two men at Sky do it as well as it can be done, and that’s worth a cheer. Mind you, should either describe Root’s cover drive as ‘sublime’, or say James Anderson’s wobble-seam is ‘as good as it gets’, then it’s off to the doghouse. A good reputation only stretches so far.