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such a good impression.
To be fair, at least it is normally another famous face from the world of cricket that I get. Although with my specs on I also encountered one of the more bizarre shouts. An Australian bloke walked up to me in a pub in Manchester and did a double take. ‘Hey, I know you, you look like one of the Proclaimers,’ he said, his forehead crumpling in thought. ‘What do you mean, one of the Proclaimers?’ I protested. ‘I either look like both of them or none of them. They’re bloody identical twins! Or they were the last time I looked.’
It is not as though this identity crisis has hit me solely since I hooked up in the Sky commentary box, either. Now I come to think of it, it has followed me around since my playing days. When I signed for Cumberland in early 1985, I was asked to do a local radio interview over the telephone. We went through the usual rigmarole of how the move had come about, what offers had surfaced elsewhere, how I saw the side’s chances that summer and what role I would fulfil within it.
It was a pleasant enough chat, and the interviewer wound down with a final question: ‘Do you think you will adapt to the Cumbrian north-west weather again quickly after spending so much time in the Caribbean?’ The silly sod had got me mixed up with my brother Clive. I put him right, of course, and following a lengthy pause I heard his muffled voice relay the information to his producer: ‘Hey, they’ve only gone and signed the wrong one!’ I had some great times with Clive at Old Trafford, he has been a great pal, and he still lives down the road, but fancy getting a pasty bloke like him mixed up with a bronze Adonis like myself!
Nowhere are people more cricket daft than India, and appropriately it is there that I have experienced some of the daftest shouts. One chap in Rajkot was overjoyed when I agreed to pose with him for a picture at the airport. ‘You are my most good commentator Sky Sport,’ he told me, through clenched teeth, as we grimaced for the first snap. After seven more shots, I made my excuses and left. ‘Thank you, Mr Paul Arlott,’ he said. ‘For being my friend.’
Now they don’t get a great deal of international cricket in Rajkot, I grant you, so the locals tend to get excitable when a game comes to town. After England were trounced there in the winter of 2008–9, I was asked for more photos at the ground. I was only too happy to oblige until the chap pointing the camera said: ‘Excuse me, Mr Duncan Fletcher, look this way please.’ There must have been a particularly virulent strain of this eye infection going around, as later that evening came a knock at my hotel door. Three chaps were standing outside and greeted me with: ‘You are our favourite umpire, Mr Hair.’ And you can imagine the levels of my paranoia when even the hotel staff weighed in. Upon checking out next morning, the receptionist said to me: ‘Thank you for staying with us in Rajkot, Mr Bruce Yardley.’ I was glad to get out.
This was enough to put a chap permanently on edge. In Bangalore, one autograph hunter instructed me: ‘Please sign this, Tony Greig.’ So I did exactly that to get my own back. OK, Greigy was a former England captain, but he is six foot four and speaks with an unmistakable South African accent. I undoubtedly preferred the next error, as I left the ground in Chennai during a pre-Christmas Test match. ‘You are most famous English Mike Brearley,’ I was unequivocally told. I gave myself the once over, confirmed in my own mind I was not, but appreciated being thought of on the same intellectual level. If you are involved in mistaken identity it’s always better if it paints you in a decent light.
And you can also have some fun. Whenever we are in Leeds for a Test match, I make a dash for the Princess of Wales pub and sink a pint or three. A group of us were in there one year when a rather big Yorkshire lass, bedecked with tattoos from head to toe, sauntered up and barked: ‘You’re the commentator, aren’t you?’ She was quite an intimidating sight – supping a pint like a rugby front-rower between sentences – so I meekly replied, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘I just wanted to say I love you on Test Match Special, Jonathan,’ she continued. Jolly nice of her to say so, I thought, as I subtly brought up Agnew’s number on my phone, passed it on to her and suggested she give me a call any time she needed tickets.
Chapter 2
THE SKY LARKS
Ten Minutes to Decide – the Ultimate Job Ultimatum
Sky Sports is a truly great company to work for, one that I am genuinely proud to be a part of, and one that I look forward to putting in a shift for each and every day. There is a real energy about the entire production department, and that rubs off on our commentary team, without a doubt. The production crew are incredibly youthful – particularly given the extreme responsibility that goes with the jobs that they do – but they are exceptional in their fields and help to keep me feeling young at heart. They are well marshalled by Paul King and Bryan Henderson, executive and senior producer respectively, and Mark Lynch, as good a senior director as there is in the field, and there is a real buzz from the top all the way down to the office staff and runners.
These people are as keen as hell and they dance around television, knowing every single technical step along the way. It’s a very tight unit and wherever we are in the world there is a real sense of being a team. A team that works hard and plays hard. They do their time and are great fun to be with after hours. Good relationships between commentators and the production team are essential, and I speak on behalf of us all, I am sure, when I say that we are very comfortable with them directing us. We know exactly what they are about, and we all benefit from their expertise, commitment and enthusiasm. It is a thoroughly modern organisation, and Sky’s cricket has involved some of their best people.
Sky’s cricket coverage is still relatively young, well, certainly in comparison with that great institution Test Match Special. I felt equally privileged to have worked on that programme for a number of years and I thoroughly enjoyed my radio work. What a great position to be in, describing the game to thousands of people, who are doing thousands of different things as they listen. Radio has always been a great medium for cricket, and TMS embodies the most essential requirement of sporting commentary. The trick has always been to get the person you are addressing to feel as though they are sitting next to you, whether they are in their living-room, in a pub or driving in their car. That is something the TMS team have successfully achieved throughout the decades and will continue to do in their own individualistic style. They do so now through Jonathan Agnew, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Henry Blofeld and Victor Marks, and that will be carried on by the next regime and the one after that.
I have never subscribed to the rose-tinted view that there will never be another John Arlott or another Brian Johnston. Sure, they were one-off characters, national treasures, wonderful broadcasters, and yes, they are missed. But we have also come to love those that have taken their place. New guys will emerge, just as Aggers has, for example. His part in Johnners’s irresistible ‘leg-over’ moment, when Ian Botham was dismissed hit wicket in the 1991 Oval Test against West Indies, showed perfectly how one generation could merge into the next. We can all get nostalgic, but the show goes on and the bottom line is that it is still brilliant. The formula that Johnners so revered – he made TMS sound like a group of mates getting together for a chat at the match – has not been lost.
I was part of that group for ten years or so, from the late 1980s, working alongside the irrepressible Fred Trueman and Trevor Bailey. They were priceless times. There was never a dull moment. Nor is there now, and I have a real respect for their commentary team. Yes, there is always a joust between the BBC and Sky because of our different agendas, but I would like to think it is a good-natured one and comes with a mutual respect and understanding from each side that, competitive rivalry notwithstanding, you are talking about two bloody good productions. We spend our lives in the same venues, the same hotels, travelling the same motorways, or sitting in the same aeroplanes, and I would say that between us we give the British public what they seek in terms of cricket coverage.
When I initially moved into broadcasting I was still on the umpiring circuit, and had half an eye on making the international panel of officials which was rumoured to be on its way into the sport. In fact, it was Sky’s decision to begin screening cricket that first took my life in a different direction, away from involvement on the field of play, and when I was subsequently approached by then TMS producer Peter Baxter it gave me licence to do