Fiery Fred goes quietly
Suddenly, I feel very old. Not only can I remember Fred Trueman and Trevor Bailey in their commentating pomp, I can also recall their predecessor, the dour, kindly former England captain Norman Yardley, axed by the BBC in the mid-1970s to make way for young – well, youngish – blood. Now Trueman (68) and Bailey (75) have themselves been taken off, sent down to third man with a friendly wave.
“We have to think about the future shape and style of Test Match Special,” said the BBC, employing bland Birt-speak to announce the decision not to renew the radio contracts of Trueman and Bailey. Trueman, belying his sobriquet “fiery”, was statesmanlike in his response: “Time moves on and whoever takes my place, I wish them well.”
He said he had no idea why his contract was not being renewed – not for the first time, he didn’t know what was going on out there – but he doesn’t need to look far. Old Father Time, gazing across Lord’s, catches everyone out eventually. He and Bailey, both of whom retired from the first-class game more than 30 years ago, were the wrong generation; great though their careers were, the echoes grow faint.
“The commentary box won’t be the same without Fred and Trevor,” Test Match Special producer Peter Baxter told me yesterday. “They have both been part of the programme for more than a quarter of a century and are very disappointed. It was a painful nettle to grasp, but we have to keep revitalising the programme.”
Reaction to the passing of the old guard has so far been muted: once the Telegraph would have launched a “save-our-Freddie” campaign or complained that his trenchant views, and Bailey’s clipped, military-sounding tones, were being silenced by pinkos at the Beeb intent on dumbing down and selling out. But, though Baxter assured me that the letters and the cakes were still rolling in, TMS isn’t quite the institution it was. In any case, the Telegraph is preoccupied with saving hunting.
TMS’s golden age was the mid-1970s. Brian Johnston had just arrived after his own acrimonious parting from BBC TV and brought a new audience with him; Arlott was in full, glorious, matchless flow; EW Swanton gave magisterial summings-up at the close of play; Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Henry Blofeld were bright young things; Trueman and Bailey fitted in perfectly.
They were a group of friends sitting together talking about cricket who also happened to have eight hours of uninterrupted radio time to fill. When there was play it was great, but when it rained it was better – their rambling conversations were so intimate and unforced that listeners used to hope for a break in the play. It was buffish, bufferish, but also brilliant: unscripted, free-form, informed, passionate.
Arlott’s retirement in 1980 left Johnston as the keeper of the flame, and with his death in 1994 the link with the past was broken. Bailey and Trueman began to seem outmoded and the number of matches they were asked to cover was reduced. The BBC also wobbled in its attitude to the programme, switching it from Radio 3 to Radio 4 and ending ball-by-ball coverage, not realising that seamlessness was everything.
Cardus said there could be no summer in England without cricket. At times, in its heyday, you felt like that about Test Match Special – always there when you needed it, the steady rhythm heard on a dozen car radios in every seaside car park, a waveband holding together a nation of obsessives. England were invariably 180 for 3 and Boycott was batting. Now England are usually 180 for 8 and Boycott is embattled.
TMS has at least settled down on Radio 4, interrupted only by the shipping forecast, which we lunatics accept. Last winter, as I listened to coverage from Australia, I used to look forward to the forecast at 1am – I wanted to know what the weather was like in Finisterre, I cared about Channel Light Vessel Automatic. Pretend it is war – only cricket and the fate of small boats matter.
It is the end of an era, a reflection of cricket’s nagging recognition that it needs to renew itself, but it is hardly a surprise. In our utilitarian, scripted, focus-grouped world, TMS and cricket itself wonder where they fit. If I was Henry Blofeld (Eton, Cambridge and the 185 bus on the Harleyford Road) I’d be worried. Come to think of it, if I was the man who reads the shipping forecast I’d be worried too. What’s listenership like in Lundy?
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