Peter Baxter - Test Match Special: 50 Not Out

A live programme is only as good as the people who take part in it the TMS team on the day of Aggers debut, Headingley, 1991: (left to right) Bill Frindall, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Don Mosey, Fred Trueman, Tony Cozier, Brian Johnston, Trevor Bailey, Jonathan Agnew, Vic Marks, Peter Baxter and Mike Selvey.

THE BIRTH OF CRICKET COMMENTARY

There is no evidence to suggest that the Reverend Frank Gillingham was aware of his place in broadcasting history when in May 1927 he became the first cricket commentator. Although in fact commentator is not really the word, because it was believed that ball-by-ball description of cricket was simply not possible.

Five years earlier in Australia, cricket commentary had been done for a state game and tried for Test cricket a couple of years after that. But the BBC in London had largely ignored those early steps in the far-off colonies. However, Radio Times made much of the groundbreaking significance of the Corporations coverage of Essexs match against the New Zealand touring team at Leyton in May, because they published a full-page article under the heading, Cricket on the Hearth, in which, after stating that description of every ball was clearly not possible, they explained, What will be done is this. A microphone will be installed in the pavilion at Leyton and the BBCs narrator will watch the whole of Saturdays play from there. At fixed times [between dance band music] he will broadcast an account of the state of the game.

So, in between waltzes and foxtrots, Gillingham, a former Essex player himself and a stirring preacher, delivered his eyewitness accounts of the game. These were not the 30-second reports which we are used to today, but five minutes or so on each occasion, so it is probable that he did get close to describing some live action as it happened.

Live sports commentary on the radio had started earlier that year, when Captain Teddy Wakelam had covered the England v Wales rugby international at Twickenham. Soon there was soccer from Highbury and the Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race, which was a tremendous technical undertaking. Several county matches, covered in the same style, followed that summer. Pelham Warner made the first broadcast from Lords in June and later, it is recorded, Gillingham seriously blotted his copybook by filling a rain break at the Oval by reading out the advertising hoardings. The great C.B. Fry also added radio reporting to his already remarkable CV that year.

But live sports broadcasts were not to everyones taste. Teddy Wakelam, who was regarded as the principal commentator on any sport, reported, after a difficult day at the Oval, that ball-by-ball commentary on cricket was not possible. And there was a further setback when Lance Sievking, the Head of Outside Broadcasts, who had conceived the idea of live sports coverage, was moved to Drama. It seemed that the right man to blow the spark into a flame was yet to arrive at the BBC.

In the second week of May 1927 Radio Times announced the BBCs groundbreaking coverage of the New Zealand tourists match against Essex at Leyton.

Happily in the early 1930s a great partnership was to launch real cricket commentary. Seymour de Lotbinire, first as producer and then as an imaginative Head of Outside Broadcasts in the footsteps of Sievking, perceived that with the right broadcaster ball-by-ball commentary of cricket could indeed be done. The rhythm of the game, he recognised, far from being impossible for radio, made it ideal. There was the build-up to a moment of violent action as the ball was bowled and then the time for reflection before the next release of action and that predictable pattern set a perfect template. De Lotbinire (Lobby to all who worked with him) had the genius to recognise the man and the sport as the perfect combination for radio description. Paint a picture and keep it the right way up, was the instruction.

The means to convey the game to a radio audience came to de Lotbinire in the person of Howard Marshall. Gillingham, Warner and Wakelam may have gone before, but Marshall was the true father of ball-by-ball cricket commentary in a manner that would not be out of place today. He had joined the BBC in his late twenties, with a rugby blue from Oxford and training in journalism behind him.