Brian Viner: From gravity to levity with Test Match Special at 50
The 'Aggers, do stop it' exchange would be one of my Desert Island discs
Saturday, 5 May 2007
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For sports nuts of a certain vintage, the names of broadcasting institutions such as Match of the Day, Grandstand, World of Sport, Sportsnight and the videprinter, are no less evocative than those of Pele, Jairzinho, JPR Williams, Garfield Sobers and Evonne Goolagong. That is why there is such a collective sigh of regret when a great broadcasting institution, just like a great sportsman such as Alan Ball, breathes its last. Of those listed above, only Match of the Day is still with us, and long may it survive even the emasculation of the BBC's sports portfolio.
But there is another, even more venerable BBC institution, which this month reaches its 50th birthday. In May 1957 the first day of the first Test match between England and the West Indies at Edgbaston was broadcast in its entirety to radio listeners clever enough to switch back and forth between the Third Network's Special Service 464m (647kc/s) and the Light Programme 1500m (200kc/s). The inaugural ball-by-ball commentary was delivered by Rex Alston, John Arlott, EW Swanton and Ken Ablack, with summaries by Gerry Gomez, Bill Bowes and Jack Price.
Alston retired in the year I was born, 1961, so I have only ever heard fleeting clips of his mellifluous baritone. He had been, like Bill McLaren and many of the best commentators, a very decent sportsman himself; he played on the wing for Rosslyn Park, captained Bedfordshire at cricket, and when Oxford ran against Cambridge in 1923, only Harold Abrahams, who was to win Olympic gold the following year, beat him in the sprint.
Alston was only a year younger than the 20th Century, so he was an old man when he attended a jolly reunion of the Beeb's Outside Broadcasts department, held at Lord's in 1985. On the night of the party he was admitted to hospital, feeling unwell, and the following day, much to the horror of those who'd been with him at Lord's, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Happily, it was premature by almost 10 years. It had been updated but had somehow found its way into the wrong in-tray, and Alston read it over breakfast in his hospital bed, whereupon he was able to phone the author and make some minor corrections. He remained alive and very much kicking until 1994, indeed he completed a double even rarer than that of 3,000 Test runs and 300 Test wickets, when his second marriage was announced in The Times a year after the notice of his death.
That story, and many other good ones, appears in an excellent new book which landed with a welcome thump on my doormat the other day. Edited by the long-term producer of TMS, Peter Baxter, it is called Test Match Special: 50 Not Out - The Official History of a National Sporting Treasure, published by BBC Books, priced £18.99. Normally I am a little dubious when the BBC, or anyone else, presents one of their own as a "National Treasure". But that is what Test Match Special indubitably is, even if for some of us it has lost its greatest assets in Brian Johnston and, above all, John Arlott.
Last weekend I had lunch with Arlott's authorised biographer, David Rayvern Allen, who not only wrote a wonderful book about the great man, but also does a mighty fine impersonation.
I said that I had never quite understood the affinity between Arlott and Ian Botham, whose boorish qualities surely never appealed to the sage, whatever his remarkable talents as a cricketer. The bond between Arlott and the cerebral Mike Brearley makes more sense, I ventured.
David listened to me patiently, then explained with characteristic eloquence why Arlott took Botham under his wing, giving me a fresh insight into the latter's character. On several occasions when David visited Arlott in hospital, shortly before the celestial umpire drew stumps, Botham was leaving as he was arriving, having travelled without fanfare all the way down to Southampton from his home in north Yorkshire. It was good to hear.
To stay with Botham, the TMS book inevitably contains a transcript of the unforgettable "Aggers, do stop it" exchange between Johnston and Jonathan Agnew, which unfolded in 1991 during the fifth Test between England and the West Indies at the Oval, after Botham "just didn't quite get his leg over". Even in print it is enough to make me laugh, and the clip itself would unquestionably be one of my Desert Island discs, it being utterly impossible to listen to it without feeling better than you did a moment earlier.
I wonder whether Arlott, who died only a few months later, heard their outburst of mirth, and if so, whether he hooted with the rest of us, or frowned? I must remember to ask David whether he knows. In 1994, Russell Davies wrote in his obituary of Johnners - this time an obit that was not published prematurely, alas - that "in Arlott's day the radio team had a centre of gravity; in the age of Johnston a centre of levity." It was a marvellous line and bang on the mark. But for those of us listening, both were life-enhancing.
Who I Like This Week...
Two-year-old Leah Robbins, by some distance the youngest occupant of this space. Little Leah last month received her Amateur Swimming Association certificate for swimming 50 metres - four lengths of the pool - at the Kingfisher Holiday Park near Great Yarmouth. She had already got the five, 10 and 25-metre certificates, but on those occasions was able to doggy-paddle. This time she had to swim backstroke, and is thought to be easily the youngest child to get the ASA certificates for all four distances. She now wants her 100m certificates, and then plans to attempt a mile. Needless to say, her teacher is already talking about her as a future Olympic champion, although 2012 could be a trifle soon. She'll only be seven.
And Who I Don't
Joey Barton, who seems to be trying to succeed Lee Bowyer and Craig Bellamy as the Premiership's official "loose cannon". His training-ground assault on Ousmane Dabo, which happened in front of a bunch of schoolkids and put the Frenchman in hospital, should result not just in a ban for the rest of this season, which Manchester City have already imposed, but in a ban from all Premiership football next season. On the other hand, I confess to a hypocritical hope that Everton, the team I support and where Barton was once a season ticket-holder, might snap him up. David Moyes is surely a strong enough character to keep him in line.
