What was
cricket’s finest television commentary team?
In the
UK, Channel Four’s was pretty good, particularly when Richie Benaud, Ian Smith
and Mike Atherton were together. Sky UK play at a decent level, with Atherton,
Nassar Hussain, David Lloyd, Mikey Holding and the rest providing pleasing
contrasts of attitude and accent. The BBC, often retrospectively maligned as
stuffy and old-fashioned, were strong when Benaud, Tony Lewis, Jack Bannister
and Ray Illingworth were together in the late eighties and early nineties.
Even
Channel Nine has to be mentioned. Not the incumbent cheerleaders obviously, but
in the days when Benaud and Ian Chappell led the team, and they were more
willing to use overseas commentators, particularly Tony Cozier. I still rate
Chappell with Ian Smith as the best contemporary commentators.
Our own Sky
New Zealand panel takes a lot of beating, particularly when Grant Nisbitt takes
a break from the rugby to join Ian Smith, Simon Doull, Mark Richardson et al.
If Jeremy Coney were to re-enlist, they would be non-pareil.
But all
these teams had weaknesses, commentators who were not necessarily bad—though
sometimes they were—but who averaged in the mid-thirties rather than the high
forties or above. Benaud or Atherton on one side of the scales, a tracer-bullet
spotting Tony Greig or blustering Ian Botham on the other.
I know of
only one team that was without imperfection, and it worked together on only two
or three occasions on Sunday afternoons in the sixties, the first of which that
I can trace was 3 September 1967, when the International Cavaliers (captained
by Ted Dexter) played a Rest of the World XI (led by Garry Sobers). Other
players included Kanhai, Barlow, Hunte, Gibbs and both Pollocks. A treat for
those present, but more so for those who stayed at home to watch in grainy
black-and-white.
For the
commentators on BBC 2 that afternoon were Richie Benaud, John Arlott and Learie
Constantine, three of cricket’s greatest men.
Constantine
began life in a poor working family on a plantation in Trinidad and ended it as
a member of the House of Lords (that was still to come, but in 1967 he was
already a knight). He had been a pioneering professional in the Lancashire
League for Nelson, him and his wife the only black people in the small northern
mill town (until CLR James turned up to become a somewhat tiresome lodger, judging
from his own account in Beyond a Boundary).
Constantine
was an electrifying cricketer. He bowled with pace and aggression, delivering
what was to become known as “bodyline” against the MCC tourists in 1930, which
may have planted the germ of an idea. As a batsman an accurate modern parallel
might be Shahid Afridi, and he was the best fielder that Bradman ever saw.
Michael Parkinson tells how Constantine had the trick of having the ball thrown
hard at him from behind as he walked back to his mark, only to catch it without
looking at the last moment. Of course, he never captained the West Indies, as that
privilege was reserved for white men. He spent the rest of his life fighting
against discrimination of that kind.
I was too
young to offer a critique of Constantine’s commentary, but remember a degree of
wry humour. How could it have been anything other than wise?
No
commentator has distilled cricket’s truth more purely than Arlott, nor had its
perspective in better focus. However sumptuous the shots or brilliant the
bowling, Arlott’s words would have been their equal.
And then
there was Benaud. Cricket has never been as unified in mourning as it has been for
him. When Dr Grace died in 1915, there were plenty left to step forward with tales
of chicanery on the field of play and the lining of pockets with “expenses” off
it. Fingleton and O’Reilly reached eternity before Bradman, but left enough negative
stories behind them to ensure an element of rebuttal to the woe.
You would
have to be pushing 70 to remember cricket without Benaud. He made us think that
cricket had what he did: dignity, wisdom, wit, humanity. That it was civilised.
He shared his experience with us, yet never said that the old days were better
than the present (this he had in common with Arlott and Constantine). I never
saw him play, but nobody did more to help me understand cricket; millions would
say the same.
You will
be wondering where a match with such a parade of talent was played. Lord’s
probably, or the Oval, you will be thinking. A test match ground certainly. Not
so. It was played at Ascott Park at Wing in Buckinghamshire (a minor county!). Aside
from this match and the same fixture the year before, the ground’s claim to
fame has consisted of staging the annual contest between the old boys of Eton
and Harrow along with the odd minor counties match. Many of the Cavaliers games
were played on small country grounds, for reasons that are no longer clear.
Bigger grounds usually filled for Cavaliers games (Canterbury certainly did)
but TV was the priority. The Cavaliers presaged World Series Cricket in that
respect.
And you
may also be surprised that there was such a thing as a Rest of the World XI in 1967.
It was the summer of love, and those of us who were too young to get to San
Francisco to wear flowers in our hair surely deserved some decent cricket as
compensation. A Rest of the World XI appeared in the last couple of weeks of
The English season for several years in the second half of the sixties. I saw
them play a three-day game against Kent at St Lawrence in ’68. They played
tournaments against England and the tourists of the year that there is a fair
case for regarding as the first one-day internationals, but that is a
discussion for another day.
