Hard Rain

One of the great things about the British institution that is Test Match Special is that it can often be at its most entertaining when there's nothing happening on the field.

So it was today. England were being taken to the cleaners by South Africa when it rained. Really, really rained. And listeners in the UK were treated to the sound of Jonathan Agnew failing to suppress what sounded suspiciously like a scream of terror as a very loud clap of thunder reverberated around the ground. In the meantime Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Vic Marks compared recollections of great ground-flooding storms of the past, like The Oval '68 or The Gabba '98, while Michael Vaughan complained about the draught as the wind began to whistle through the commentary box.

The Twitter feeds of Agnew and David Lloyd reveal the life of the professional cricket commentator in all its glory - a staple diet of expenses paid cricket-watching, sunshine, travel and fine dining, interspersed with regular 'holidays' and fat-fee (if not fat-free) after-dinner speaking - so it may not have been a bad thing for them to suffer a rare bit of hardship.

High Veldt storms can be fierce and unsettling. As someone said, the thunder was so loud that 'even Daryl Harper would have heard it'.