Those suns of June

Today I bought a copy of John Arlott's book Jack Hobbs: Profile of the Master for 10p in a charity shop. It begins with a poem Arlott wrote in 1952, To John Berry Hobbs on his Seventieth Birthday. The first and last two verses are:

There falls across this one December day

The light, remembered from those suns of June

That you reflected, in the summer play

Of perfect strokes across the afternoon.

The Master: Records prove the title good:

Yet figures fail you, for they cannot say

How many men whose names you never knew

Are proud to tell their sons they saw you play.

They share the sunlight of your summer day

Of thirty years: and they, with you, recall

How, through those well-wrought centuries, your hand

Reshaped the history of bat and ball.

The next time a newspaper reflexively appoints another retiring cricketer to the post of correspondent, or Sky pats itself on the back about the strength of the line-up in the 'comm box' today, feel free to point them this way.

Nasser Hussain 96, Ian Harvey 0

Sky Sports began the New Year by doing one of its favourite things: obsessing over the Ashes of 2005. It's now officially an Ashes year, you see, and so it's out with the tapes (and the super slo-mo, for added gravitas) and into the studio with Gower, Hussain, Willis and Botham to talk us through it again, with all of the stern wisdom that hindsight can bring.

In need of an Australian view, they whistled up Ian Harvey, the only man present not to have played in an Ashes Test, or indeed in any Tests at all, despite being good enough for Wisden to make him one of the five Cricketers of the Year in 2004.

Harvey's presence made a subtle point all of its own. By accident of birth, he qualifies as one of Australia's lost generation of cricketers, men who enabled everyone from selectors to pundits to point at successive teams and say, 'look at the players who can't even get in'. Stuart Law played one Test (and was never dismissed), Tom Moody eight, Martin Love five (both got hundreds), Jimmy Maher none and so on. Darren Lehmann could have have played many more than 27 times had he played for England; Adam Gilchrist would have been in any other team in the world years before he was in Australia's; Stuart MacGill might have four hundred wickets. All leant psychic weight to the notion of Australian dominance.

Next to Harvey sat Nasser Hussain, who played 96 Tests, arguably 96 more than he would have done had he been Australian. 

Accidents of birth, accidents of time. The past is another country, as the programme showed in more ways than one. 

NB: Harvey does have one little piece of history that will be his forever: in 2003, he scored the first ever Twenty20 century. Nice. 

Jeremy Coney: Axiomatic

Further to the post below, Sky scheduled an entire one hour build-up to the big New Zealand versus West Indies clash in Dunedin. The mad bastards. It turned out to be an inspired call: a  rollicking 60 minutes ensued, during which one former Test captain proved once again he's well worth the screentime.

But then Jeremy Coney is much more than just an ex-cricketer. The Playing Mantis is a musician, Shakespearean scholar and all-round raconteur, too. Last night, he described Jesse Ryder as "a rolling maul of anarchy", and used the word 'axiomatic'. Twice.

In partnership with Colin Croft, whose eyes were aglint with mischief throughout, JC ran through the failings of Test cricket's two worst big-time teams in high style. Great hilarity ensued when, having spent half an hour on New Zealand's godawful batting and the West Indies ineffectual bowling, they cut from studio to the toss, where Vettori won and chose to bat, and Chris Gayle admitted he wanted to bowl anyway.

Coney and Crofty's appetites where whetted at the thought of a team whose batsmen have the averages of good bowlers facing off against another whose bowlers have the averages of good batsmen. They were having such a good time they almost missed the first ball of the match. 

We only crashed back to earth when the trailer package for England versus India came on. Above it came the Nasser Hussain monotone: 'Yuvraj Singh... he just loves hitting sixes...' That, Nasser old chum, is axiomatic. 

Shire horses for courses

For most of us most of the time, professional cricket is a mediated experience, ie, we're not playing or watching it live, but getting it via the radio or the box (and these days via subscription to the box, another level of mediation - if you can't afford it, sod orf...). 

While the Batsman idled away his idyllic childhood, the experience was mediated by men like John Arlott, Richie Benaud, Don Mosey, Fred Trueman, Brian Johnson, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Jim Laker and so on. Some were former cricketers and some were not. In general, the non-cricketers described and the cricketers added expert comment. That was the point of their partnership. 

The great Arlott, a man with a poet's soul who learned his cricket at the Batsman's beloved May's Bounty, offered not just description, but a way of living. When he went to South Africa, back in the mad, bad old days, he was required to enter his race on a customs form. He wrote 'human'. He befriended everyone from Dylan Thomas to Ian Botham. He took a leather satchel to the commentary box with him and inside it were two bottles of good claret and a glass. He pressed his face into the microphone until you could hear every plosive and sibilant of a genuine Hampshire accent and said things like, 'here comes Botham, running in like a shire horse cresting the breeze'. Perfect and beautiful visions of resonance and truth.

Sky Sports would not have employed John Arlott (and Arlott, let's be honest, wouldn't have worked for them). They wouldn't have employed him because he hasn't recently captained England, and thus, apparently, can't offer the level of insight provided by, say, Nasser Hussain. 

That's not to knock Nasser, or Sky, particularly. This movement towards ex-pros only is not confined to Sky or to cricket. But it's sad that no-one is growing up hearing rich and full voices like Arlott's alongside theirs, in genuine partnership. The reason we love cricket is for the way it fits into life, not stands apart from it. It has dimensions that former England captains cannot reach. 

NB: the best (English) former pro presenter/expert/analyst are quite palpably Mark Nicholas, Sir Geoffrey and Simon Hughes, none of whom are employed by Sky. Why is that, exactly?