The Times - UK (2021-12-22)

the times | Wednesday December 22 2021 67

The AshesSport

The late Keith Bradshaw was one of

the world’s most popular cricket

administrators. The former MCC chief

executive has been commemorated at

the Adelaide Oval by the installation of

a 64kg brass bell, à la Lord’s, whose

peals foreshadowed the action each day

during the second Test.

The choice of a memorial was poign-

ant, because Bradshaw’s legacy at the

South Australia Cricket Association

(SACA) may well derive chiefly from

his contribution to when that bell is

rung — in this past week five minutes

before a scheduled 2.30pm start of play.

GARETH COPLEY/ECB/GETTY IMAGES

Lloyd playing to

the crowd and,

below, with a

box broken by

Jeff Thomson

S

tart the car! One of the most

distinctive and popular voices

in cricket is hanging up his

microphone after 22 years as a

commentator with Sky Sports.

David “Bumble” Lloyd gave as his

reason that “the commentary box

feels a little emptier” after the recent

departure of three long-term

colleagues in David Gower, Sir Ian

Botham and Michael Holding, and

the death in 2019 of Bob Willis.

“I’ve decided

the time is now

right to pass on

the microphone,”

Lloyd, 74, said.

“It’s been an

immense privilege

to try and bring

the sport I love

into people’s

homes. To those

that follow, cherish

that mic. Inform

and entertain, so

the next

generation can fall

in love with this

wonderful game.”

Lloyd began

commentating for

Sky in 1999, after a

spell as England

head coach, and

won fans with his

on the screen, not what is out of the

window; that “if you’ve got nothing to

say, put the microphone down”; and

never speak when the bowler is

running in, so that if an event occurs

it is easier to edit it for the highlights.

Above all, he advised, don’t take

yourself too seriously.

Yet his criticisms of others could be

cutting. “If this bloke’s a Test-match

bowler, then my backside is a fire

engine,” he said of New Zealand’s

Nathan Astle. Paul Collingwood’s

style of batting was deemed so ugly

that Lloyd remarked: “If he was

playing outside your house, you’d

shut the curtains.” And he thought

little of the Bangladesh attack at

Chester-le-Street. “It’s like a benefit

match, is this,” he said. “There’ll be

someone going round with a raffle

before long.”

Nor was he one for sentimentality.

When Mark Taylor, the former

Australia captain, was spouting about

the importance of the “Baggy Green”

cap to his countrymen, Lloyd

grumbled: “You can stick it up your

arse for me. Pull yourself together, it’s

just a cap.” But he didn’t hold back

from criticising England. “We

consistently talk about consistency,”

he said in a lean patch, “and my

criticism of that is we consistently

get beaten.”

Some remarks could be a touch

crude. In one Test match on a hot day

the camera picked up a woman with a

large chest carrying a pint of lager in

each hand. “I wouldn’t mind two of

them,” Lloyd remarked, leaving the

audience in little doubt what he

meant. And in 2019 he had colleagues

and viewers in stitches with his

commentary on how to fit a grip to a

bat. “You’ve got to know how to put

one of these rubbers on,” he said.

“There we go. Right to the bottom.

Now you put it on, right on the end.

And roll it down, right to the bottom.

Now pull it right back up. Give it a

good rub.” And so on. It was Carry

On Commentating.

He was given the nickname Bumble

by a Lancashire team-mate who

thought he resembled a character on

Michael Bentine’s 1950s TV show The

Bumblies. A proud wearer of the red

rose, he never forgot his roots. He

once told Shane Warne he had just

got back from LA. The Australian was

impressed until Lloyd explained it

stood for “Lower Accrington”. He

added that he was soon off to USA.

“USA?” asked Warne. “Yeah,” Lloyd

said. “T’Uther Side of Accrington.”

His retirement comes a month after

he apologised to Azeem Rafiq for

comments he had made in messages

to a fellow commentator about the

Yorkshire spin bowler’s personal life

and British Asians not making an

effort to fit in at cricket clubs. Lloyd

pledged to work harder to “make

cricket a more inclusive sport”.

Garish, tepid, time-warped night cricket is such a yawn

Nobody did more than Bradshaw to

welcome day-night Test cricket and

establish Adelaide, which held the first

one in 2015, as its locus classicus: this

was the city’s sixth men’s Test under

lights, making it home to more than a

third of those staged.

The Adelaide Oval is now served,

brilliantly, by a footbridge that makes

getting to the Test easy from the city; it

could make the city so much more

accessible from the Test. But dispersal

at stumps is now more the norm, and

understandably so: as the old football

coach once warned his players, not

much good happens after 11pm. The

Test’s relationship to Adelaide has

thereby been undermined.

The success of night cricket is hard to

judge. It generally is about television’s

priorities and these, one must suppose,

are being met, inasmuch as Hobart’s

inaugural Ashes Test is to be held to the

same schedule, for the pleasure of even-

ing viewers (and advertisers). At the

risk of denunciation as what Paul Keat-

ing, the former prime minister, would

call a pre-Copernican obscurantist, I

remain unsure that day-night Test

cricket works, at least in cultural,

aesthetic and social senses.

One’s morning is generally squan-

dered. The drama of the first ball is dif-

fused, because the after-lunch start is

vaguely stupefying: there was some-

thing about Rory Burns being bowled

at 10am at Brisbane that Rory Burns

being bowled at 2.30pm will never have.

The 40-minute mid-afternoon stop

for “dinner” and 20-minute evening

pause for “tea” follow no known diurnal

course. It occurred to me in Adelaide

that a day-night Test is the best substi-

tute for the long-haul flight that on

present trends we will never experience

again — uncertain time zones, indeter-

minate meal breaks, a general sense of

bloating and lethargy.

Is it a great “sight”? No better than

one-day cricket played under lights,

which also has a stronger sense of order

and cohesion, one team batting in day-

light, one team not.

The pink ball seems to have im-

proved, but still looks garish and feels

plastic, gets soft and behaves dully. Aus-

tralian players are convinced that,

where a red ball penetrating the ring

these days is almost bound to reach the

boundary, the pink ball doesn’t make

contact as pleasingly with the bat and

tends to catch in the turf — note the

profusion of threes in Adelaide.

It’s interesting that despite the claims

of night play being Test cricket’s mani-

fest destiny, it has not really caught on

elsewhere. Between 2016 and 2018,

Pakistan, West Indies, South Africa,

England and New Zealand all staged

their first pink-ball Tests, and have not

repeated the experiment. The dew and

the cold have been discouragements.

India raised a great hue and cry about

their inaugural day-night Test in

Calcutta, where they routed Bangla-

desh, rather less about their second in

Ahmedabad, where they vanquished

England in a sparsely populated sta-

dium five overs into the evening session

on the second day.

Perhaps the world has been slow to

catch on; perhaps others have seen

value in things the way they are, with a

red ball and daylight. The SACA has

created a bit of a predicament for itself.

Andrew Sinclair, the SACA presi-

dent, muttered last week that Adelaide

did not “want to be pigeon-holed as the

day-night Test venue for the world”. But

the broadcasters want more cricket

under lights, rather locking the city into

its self-created niche. Bradshaw was a

lovely chap, and the bell honouring him

is a charming addition to cricket’s

customs in Adelaide. So I look forward

to the Test when it is rung earlier.

Gideon Haighiiigh

End of era for

‘Bumble’, Sky’s

Ringo Starr of

commentary

good humour and plain speaking,

having been influenced in his style by

Fred Trueman — “the first northern

voice on commentary” — and the

Australian Bill Lawry, whom he

praised for his “fantastic enthusiasm”.

He became the voice of Twenty20

cricket after it was created in 2003,

his excitable style suited to what he

called “entertainment using cricket

equipment” rather than the real thing.

Matches would be peppered with

phrases such as “Start the car!” (or,

when Andrew Flintoff was England

captain, “Start the pedalo!”) if a match

was all but over, or “They’ve got to

swing like a Seventies disco to get

anywhere near from here,” when

Essex were struggling in a semi-final.

There was something of the Ringo

Starr about him in the commentary

box, the easygoing personality in the

band who disarmed the egos. Lloyd

always seemed to be enjoying himself

come rain or, well,

heavier rain. He did,

in fact, often play the

role of Sky’s

weatherman, despite

a shaky grasp of

geography. “The rain

will come in from the

west,” he once said,

gesturing to the east.

“No, hang on. It’s a

big area is west.

Especially in this

wind. The west

moves about.”

Lloyd, who played

nine Test matches

in the 1970s before

briefly becoming an

umpire, said his

golden rules of

television

commentary were

to describe what is

Allying easy charm and

an ability to disarm big

egos, David Lloyd

will be hard act

to follow, says

Patrick Kidd

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Columnist for

The Australian