When Motty and Blowers leave the mic, we have only armchair experts

Something in the airwaves, perhaps, at the BBC: John Motson has announced his retirement from commentary at the end of this football season, while today’s Test at Lord’s will be Henry Blofeld’s last in the Test Match Special box.

Blofeld – or Blowers – opened his TMS innings in 1972, the same year that Motson, aka Motty, first came to prominence with his delighted, delightful coverage of the FA Cup Third Round replay, the giant-killing of Newcastle United by Hereford United. Each man has been cherished, and sometimes lampooned, by fans of his sport ever since.

Both are singular fellows: it is hard to see any immediate commonality between the sheepskin-coated football trivia nerd from Salford, with his gasps of “very much so”, and the flamboyant Old Etonian for whom everyone is “my dear old thing” and a batsman’s average is of less radio import than a rather jolly pigeon lurking suspiciously over there at silly mid-off. But there is something special about these two.

Were one to design the ideal commentator by computer or committee – and who is to say that the boffins and eggheads are not currently working on just such a project in a well-funded department of New Broadcasting House? – which qualities might one set as prerequisites?

The individual would have an eye for detail, a nose for the story, an ear for their topic’s particular language. And hopefully some other body parts as well. They would have depth: of passion, of expertise, of history so they could place events in context.

They would know when to talk. And they would know when to shut up.

All of these would add up to a perfectly respectable commentator, but, as with many walks of life, the truly exceptional, iconic figures break the rules as much as they follow them.

Blowers, for instance, has become celebrated for getting the identities and names of the players hopelessly wrong: this would not be advisable for the beginner.

His gift has been for conveying mood rather than fact, something that comes in and out of style, but which has certainly been having a bit of a moment in public life over the past couple of years.

In an age where people have had enough of experts, it is Motty, with his “quite remarkable” diligence and research into what the Moldovan second-choice goalie has on his toast in the morning, who seems the man out of time.

Whether there are commentators starting out today whose retirements will be warmly toasted in 45 years’ time is doubtful.

With a faceless online army of watchpersons ever-vigilant for slip-ups, let alone any transgressions against the politically correct orthodoxy, it seems unlikely that anyone could do it for so long without a career-souring blunder or scandal.

Now that opinion has become as good as fact, and certainly cheaper to produce, and everyone seems to be broadcasting their own lives over social media all the time anyway, the era of the big beasts of the broadcast booth may also be over for good.

Far too many people these days have been encouraged to think that they could do a better job than suchand-such a person who has made it their life’s work. Motty probably has the exact figure on the tip of his tongue. May his sheepskin never fade.