I didn’t waste the opportunity to watch at least part of Sunday’s clash between England and Pakistan. T20 doesn’t normally motivate me to tune in but it was the first cricket match to be broadcast live on the BBC since 1999 I couldn’t resist.
Of course, Twenty20 was not around in 1999. Neither were Twitter or Facebook and I certainly had yet to plunge into the world of home computers or mobile phones. Tony Blair was a fresh-faced Prime Minister, and Corona was the name of an Italian dance band, not a killer virus.
Domestically, Surrey won the new, two-tier County Championship at a canter. Australia and India dominated international cricket, the run totals led by the holy trinity of Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly, while Glenn McGrath reigned supreme with the ball, followed by the likes of Kumble, Warne and Pollock. England and Pakistan were not exactly scaring the opposition. But at least the games had spectators., fans able to cheer, grumble, celebrate, commiserate without fear of self-isolation, a lengthy spell in hospital or death. 2020 is a different world.
21 years ago, I think the Beeb had already lost a chunk of cricket contracts to Channel 4 and the Sky money machine but we – and I use that term honestly because I still worked for the Corporation – did at least have the rights to the home World Cup. When I reminisce about BBC cricket coverage, my mind’s time machine can’t help landing somewhere in the ‘70s, when the Windies generated huge excitement wherever they played and you had in the commentary box unexciting men like Peter West, Tony Lewis, Jim Laker and Richie Benaud. However by the 1999 World Cup, it was John Inverdale anchoring, David Gower the lead commentator (I think) and an injured Mike Atherton cutting his teeth at the mic.
There were no adverts, of course, and thankfully there still aren’t on the Beeb, making the viewing experience last weekend so much more enjoyable. OK, so there were no crowd shots in Old Trafford, apart from a couple of Pakistan musicians of sorts cavorting within camera range on the railway station platform. Why?!
There was also no large roster of commentators leaping about on the boundary, as seems to happen on Sky. I was perfectly happy with the Test Match Special radio team transferring their informed banter to TV. Isa Guha, Michael Vaughan, Jimmy Anderson and Phil Tufnell were fine, along with occasional amusing interjections from Andy Zaltzmann in the ‘Stats Pen’. The screen itself wasn’t constantly filled with needlessly detailed stats, although I do think they missed a trick by excluding batting strike rates from the player captions.
As for the game itself, I noted that the first ball bowled on the Beeb in 21 years was delivered by Mahmood to Babar Azam, who pulled it imperiously for four. The first wicket was Fakhar Zaman’s, as he miscued Adil Rashid to Tom Banton. It proved quite a competitive contest but with Eoin Morgan narrowly surviving an LBW decision on 0 to launch one of his onslaughts you knew it was England who would win. Unlike in ’99, the team rarely collapse.
Apparently
this consolation prize to the Beeb isn’t a one-off. They may have missed out on
The Hundred this summer (oh, dear, what a shame!) but there’ll be further live
and highlights action to follow. I do hope so, and it will also be great for
cricket. Tinkering with new formats is all well and good but for audience generation,
even in 2020 a terrestrial channel should still trump Sky Cricket by a mile.
With a bit of promotion and marketing, that will hopefully delay the death of
the sport for a while yet – and surely that’s what we cricket fans desperately
want.
