Radio Days

Test Match Special is one of those British institutions which is always destined to be not quite what it was.

You get the impression that for many people over the age of fifty (a demographic I haven't quite joined yet), the programme's 'Golden Age' belongs back in the era when John Arlott was still going strong. Johnston, and Gibson, and a younger Frindall and Martin-Jenkins would have been there too. Now all of those are gone - for me it would be a wonderful thing to hear CMJ again but it seems I never will - but, for those of us who care about such things, the programme is still a central part of winter mornings and summer days. With the right sort of technology you can even hear it without interruptions from the shipping forecast or Yesterday in Parliament.

TMS endures.

As Michael Henderson and a few others will tell you, aspects of it may not be what they were, but, as this fluctuating, unpredicted, enjoyable series has unfolded, TMS has sounded as essential as ever. Like Cook or Pujara on one of their many good days it has displayed an innate sense of control and authority.

For me, the most enjoyable and refreshing element of recent weeks has been the experience of listening to Rahul Dravid. This is a man who has been one of the best and most famous cricketers in the world, yet has retained an alluring air of humility and gentle humour, and his reminiscences and judgements are lent weight by their grounding in recent experience. He could perhaps do to play a few more shots, but he'll learn.

A penny for Simon Mann's thoughts when Dravid thanks him (implicitly for giving him the privilege of sharing the airwaves).

I'd retire there and then.

Never the Same

The ICC's belated but completely correct decision to finally award the 2006 Oval Test to England is one that Bill Frindall would have approved of.

The death of the 'Bearded Wonder' came as quite a shock. I'd last heard him on Test Match Special from Mohali before Christmas, and he was just one of those people who you expected to go on and on and on. Although he'd missed a few overseas tours in recent years and had given up scoring ODIs, I think I'm right in saying that nobody else has scored an England Test in this country on BBC radio since 1965, while one of the tributes I read stated that he'd scored 377 Test matches, which, when you think about it, is a hell of a lot of cricket.

Like any English cricket follower of my generation I grew up listening to TMS, and the laconic, perfectionist, occasionally waspish but hugely knowledgeable Frindall was simply part of the furniture. I never met him but have clear memories of seeing him coming in and out of many a ground - Lord's and the MCG to name but two - weighed down by what always looked like several suitcases of reference books, many of which he'd compiled himself.

It's the cliche of cliches, but it's true to say that TMS, which resumes from Kingston this week, will never quite be the same again