Yorkshire cricket has been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons recently. Now, as Test Match Special is going on tour, presenter Jonathan Agnew, talks to Ismail Mulla.
If you look at the way that club cricket and league cricket is the engine room of producing cricketers in that part of the world, Yorkshire is synonymous with cricket as much as it is with tea.
The dulcet tones of Test Match Special usually herald the arrival of summer and with it the ageold sport of cricket. However, there’s something unique about this 65-year-old radio programme that goes beyond the sounds of leather on willow. Lead commentator Jonathan Agnew believes it’s about “companionship”. Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, he said: “It’s a programme that’s based on cricket of course and that’s the thread that goes through it. Then you have this group of people who are all from different backgrounds, different ages, different everything, who just gel. People enjoy that interaction.”
Agnew is preparing to take some of the magic of the commentary box on the road. For the first time in the BBC Radio 5 Live programmes history it is embarking on a 20-date live tour.
The former England fast bowler, who has “done quite a lot of theatre” in the past, is looking forward to interacting with a live audience.
“When you’re working on a radio programme like Test Match Special, you can say what you think is the funniest line in the world or the best bit of commentary or you make a mistake but you get no response at all of course because you can’t see the audience.
“When you’re in a theatre it’s completely different. The feeling of having this living, breathing thing out there in front of you is fantastic. “
Agnew, or Aggers as he is affectionately known, will be joined by former England spin bowler Phil Tufnell, or Tuffers to avid listeners of TMS.
The aim of the tour is to bring “people into the commentary box”, says Agnew.
“They’re going to get a sense of what actually goes on not just in England but when we go on tour as well, where broadcasting can be a bit tricky.
How you get on air, how the whole thing works.
“This is going to be hopefully a really memorable experience for the people who love that programme, who will hopefully leave the theatre with a greater understanding of how it works and why it has been so special for so long.”
The show will be coming to Halifax, Sheffield this month and York in May. Agnew realises that cricket is “massive” in Yorkshire.
You only need to look at the shockwaves created by the allegations of racism at Yorkshire Cricket Club in the past couple of years.
Agnew says that there needs to be “much more unification” at the cricket club.
He added: “That will be the best thing possible for the club. It’ll have more good players there. If you look at the history of the club, it is incredible.
He added: “If you look at the way that club cricket and league cricket is the engine room of producing cricketers in that part of the world, Yorkshire is synonymous with cricket as much as it is with tea.”
The club is undergoing reform under the stewardship of new chairman Lord Kamlesh Patel and reform will hopefully mean it is allowed to host international cricket again.
“They had to reinstate internationals there because otherwise the club will die and no one wants that to happen,” says Agnew. “Lord Patel, I’ve come across a few times. He’s a very engaging character and it certainly appears to be on the right path to reconciliation and to doing things right.”
A lot has been written about ‘bubble fatigue’ in relation to sports stars with tight restrictions leading to mental health concerns.
It has also affected preparation for the England men’s cricket team, which suffered a 4-0 drubbing down under in the recent Ashes series.
Agnew sympathises with the additional challenges the Covid pandemic has created for cricketers and says he tried to “be really fair” to them in Australia.
“Some of those players had no preparation, they had no practice and they went straight into a test match. Normally they would have had 12 days of first class cricket against Australian opposition, they had zero and there were no games between the tests either.”
It also created challenges for broadcasters, who had to deal with their own restrictions.
Speaking of the recent Ashes tour, he said: “The
worst bit for me was the last ten days when we were in Hobart. We’d been away for nearly three months and we all knew that if we caught Covid, we wouldn’t be able to go home.”
Commentating through the pandemic has certainly been different as last year’s test series against Sri Lanka showed.
“I have been broadcasting from my attic here at home at 4am in the morning commentating on matches in Sri Lanka.
“It’s tough for the players in their bubbles. Sport, certainly cricket, has tried to do its best over the last couple of years.
“England, I think I am right, haven’t missed a single game, which is remarkable. Even when the lockdown was at its most severe, England still played and we still commentated on it, which was important because it gave people a sense of some sort of normal life going on in very unusual circumstances.”
Another thing that English cricket fans won’t want to go through again is the “poor” 2021 that the men’s team suffered.
“It was poor planning. The resting and rotation of players, I don’t agree with that. I think you should always pick the best team because then you can’t question it.
“If you’re a player, you might think I should be in that team but you know the integrity of selection is right and you go away and work a bit harder and you get into it.”
He added: “On a much wider scale, if minds aren’t focused now, on changes that have to be made on the English structure then they never will be.”
The former England fast bowler believes that the balance is “ridiculously overloaded” in favour of short form cricket, which he says “damages the technique of players”.
The concern for long form cricket won’t come as a surprise to many listeners of TMS. The Hundred, an even shorter form of the game, was added to the domestic calendar last year.
“People care,” he says. “Whereas in the last year, there has been this sort of subliminal message largely around the marketing of The Hundred, the subliminal message being that test cricket is boring and you get this amazing atmosphere at The Hundred. Actually, you get this amazing atmosphere at the test match.”
In an era of instant gratification, test cricket and this BBC institution is still worth preserving.
■ Tickets for the tour are on sale now and are available from www.fane.co.uk.