Monday 18 April 2016

"Eyes like chips of ice"


Great sports commentaries of our time and the rising stars of ‘new punditry’

My mate Declan is obsessed with commentary.  It’s rare that he and I discuss a sporting event (and we discuss many) without talking about the words broadcast alongside it.  Not surprising, really.  In the same way that a piece of music or an evocative aroma can transport us back to a specific time in our lives, so sports commentary has the ability to paint vivid pictures, augmenting the moment as it happens and allowing us to relive it for years after.  Think Harry Carpenter’s “Oh my God, he’s won the title back at thirty-two!” – which accompanied Muhammad Ali’s incredible win over George Foreman in The Rumble In The Jungle in 1974 – or Martin Tyler’s rather more primal “Aguerooo!!!” as Manchester City snatched a last-gasp title victory in 2012.

Dec’s all-time favourite, by the way, is David Coleman’s legendary call of the Coe-Ovett 800m Olympic final in 1980, in which Coleman described Ovett as follows: “those blue eyes like chips of ice.”  Beautiful.

Here are a few that have stuck with me.

“The Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club.”

If one of your mates said this down the pub, you’d tell the offender to sod off for being a smart-arse.  But this was John Motson in his pomp! 

A naked, child-like love of the game coupled with an actuarial commitment to research have made Motty the perfect companion to countless games for over forty years.  He’s one of us.  The nerdy train-spotter of the group, yes, but one of us nevertheless.

The occasion for this particular commentating gem, you’ll remember, was Wimbledon’s victory over Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup final.  I’m prepared to accept that it wasn’t exactly an off-the-cuff remark.  Indeed, if I were feeling impish, I’d entertain the theory that Uncle John had written the epithet the other way round and swiftly repurposed it.  But who cares?  It’s a piece of poetry that I’ve remembered long after the event itself had faded like this morning’s half-sleep dreams.

And isn’t that what sport’s about?  Creating memories.

“He batted all day for two hundred and ninety-one.  All lordly command.”

John Arlott, author of the above, is entitled to a list all of his own.  With his razor wit, lyrical Hampshire burr and unparalleled linguistic flair, Arlott was to cricket reporting what Don Bradman was to batting.  Anyone who can write the following – “England carried Underwood, like an umbrella, in case of rain” – is a genius in my eyes.  Yes, that was a shameless way of including an additional Arlott quote.

The “lordly command” one, though, is unusual.  Not so much a contemporary description of the event itself as a retrospective fifteen years on.  I confess: I’ve cheated.  These words were spoken by Arlott not from the commentary box but his wine cellar, an introduction to a VHS (it was the early ‘90s) of some of his best-loved cricketing heroics.

But it’s glorious, isn’t it?  He’s talking about Viv Richards’ landmark innings at the Oval in 1976.  I cannot think of The Master Blaster now without remembering Arlott’s sensational words.

Those memories again…

"I was watching Carol Vorderman on Countdown and I got aroused…”

Peter Alliss is a man who divides opinion.  For some, the undisputed voice of golf, for others an unreconstructed throwback (fair to say Dec’s not a big fan).

Perhaps this quote of his encapsulates the man neatly.  Bordering on the tasteless but deliciously mischievous and cleverly constructed.  I’ll never know why the conversation that day had turned to Countdown and, frankly, I don’t care.  And, oh, that pause:

“I was watching Carol Vorderman on Countdown and I got aroused,” mused Alliss, drawing sharp intakes of breath from his colleagues.  Then, after letting them sweat for several long seconds, “Seven letters wasn't a bad score, I thought."

“Wide (do birds suddenly appear?)”

I’ve mentioned Test Match Sofa before but I make no apology for doing so again.  They represent a new breed of broadcasters with an admirable punk-ish, do-it-yourself approach.  Set up in someone’s Tooting living room, TM Sofa was just a bunch of cricket nuts who fancied making their own programme.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a lover of Test Match Special as a quintessentially British institution.  But there must be room in our diverse media landscape for runty little cousins like Sofa.  And, boy, did they deliver some colourful words to accompany England’s games.

One of the great features on TM Sofa was their catalogue of jingles.  When Steven Finn came on to bowl, for example, they’d play a version of Manfred Mann’s Mighty Quinn with Finn’s name crudely inserted over the song title of the chorus.  Graeme Smith had an altogether less complimentary musical introduction, Maroon 5’s Moves Like Jagger becoming Moobs Like Jabba.

My favourite, though, was the music reserved for wide balls.  Commentary would run something like this: “And there’s a filthy delivery down the leg side for one of these…”  You’d then hear the opening bars of The Carpenters’ Close To You and a millisecond of the famous first line: “Why d…”

So I was saddened to see, following TM Sofa’s acquisition by The Cricketer magazine, that the ECB had pressurised them to shut their doors – something to do with unique broadcasting rights.  But, be still my beating heart, the format apparently lives on at guerillacricket.com.  And that has to be a good thing.  A chap called Craig Burley (not the ex-footballer, judging by his Twitter headshot) tweeted the other day, ‘Thank you @guerillacricket and your Test Match Sofa predecessors for what you've done to democratize and diversify cricket commentary.’  Couldn’t agree more, Craig.  Apart from spelling democratise with a ‘z’, that is.

“He couldn’t train ivy up the wall at the minute.”

If you haven’t listened to the Final Furlong podcast, you really must.  Horseracing is constantly looking for ways to appeal to a wider, more mainstream audience.  And, although this show is incredibly detailed in its analysis and opinion, the style of presentation is a million miles from the stuffy, old-fashioned image sometimes associated with the sport.

The regulars are presenter Emmet Kennedy and At The Races pundits Kevin Blake and Vanessa Ryle.  There’s a lovely relationship between the three of them and they clearly revel in each other’s company.  The two Irish lads gently rib Ryle for being “drunk as a lord” in various racing-related situations, and generally for being a bit posh.  She, in response, is not averse to telling them to “go f*** yourselves”, prompting much sniggering and a bit of eye-rolling from the producer (Deirdre) who has to comb through the podcast bleeping out all the F-bombs.  It’s basically like hanging out with the funny people in the boozer.  Crucially, they also know their stuff.  Like inside-out.

Blake is often the one to introduce a nice turn of phrase.  He describes horses using wonderful oxymorons like “shocking impressive” or even “woeful impressive” and it was he who pointed out, earlier this season, that “Jonjo O’Neill couldn’t train ivy up the wall at the minute.”

Great punditry can blend with the sporting action it describes and influence the way you experience particular events.  For example, the Final Furlongers are always banging on about “gravy”.  When they talk about a horse they fancy, they might encourage you to “load up the gravy train.”  If a panellist is being cagey, Kennedy will likely say, “If you’ve found gravy, you’ve a duty to share it with the group.”  So when Cause Of Causes (a tip from Blake) won the Kim Muir at the Cheltenham Festival recently, I naturally roared him home with that single word: “Gravy!”  Not something I’ll be forgetting in a hurry.  Nor indeed will those who were standing within 30 metres of me in the Guinness Village at the course.

So thanks, Final Furlong.  Here’s to more gravy-laden memories.