the times | Wednesday May 25 2022 2GM 3
News
Manchester United fans thought that
the indignities of this season were all
over. They are now.
After the Premier League side’s worst
season in 32 years, one final insult befell
supporters at 9.35am yesterday, when
the ticker on the BBC News Channel
ran amok. Alongside stories about
Downing Street lockdown breaches
and China, there came a sudden update
that read: “Manchester United are rub-
bish”. A few United fans railed against
When he left Lord’s after his final
commentary five years ago, Henry Blo-
feld was given a standing ovation by
fans who relished his fruity tales of
cakes and buses, trams and pigeons
every bit as much as they did the match.
Now the voice of the BBC’s Test Match
Special for decades plans to return to
the ground to slug it out with Maryle-
bone Cricket Club over plans to drop
the Eton v Harrow and Oxford v Cam-
bridge games.
It would be an unexpected comeback
for “Blowers”, 82. His MCC member-
ship dates from 1959 and he has count-
ed presidents and members of the com-
mittee as personal friends. However, he
is threatening to resign, accusing the
most famous of all sporting bodies of
behaving in an underhand fashion.
Blofeld is prepared to speak at a
proposed special general meeting to try
to overturn MCC’s decision to drop the
two oldest cricket fixtures in the game.
Eton v Harrow was first played in 1805,
and Oxford v Cambridge dates from
- He has appeared in both matches
and is aghast that neither will continue
after this season.
“I’ve always loved MCC,” he said.
“The committee should be the epitome
of everything cricket stands for. I do feel
for the first time that the club is not
coming clean and is going behind my
back. Dropping these two fixtures has
been done in an underhand way with-
out consulting the members.
“You can’t tell me the committee
can’t find room in the fixture list for two
student matches. To destroy a fixture
going back to 1805 is bonkers and to
give the reason as there not being
enough room in the summer
to play it is palpably untrue.
Eton, Harrow, Oxford and
Cambridge all played a
huge part in the founda-
tion of MCC and the club is
something to be revered.
The arrival through the
post of my member-
ship pass each spring
has been one of life’s
Blowers blows
his top over
MCC’s student
match googly
Ivo Tennant great thrills. But I’m not sure fair play
does start at Lord’s now.”
Blofeld, who resumed his one-man
show at Taunton last night, has added
his name to a petition started by Mike
Hall, a life member, to force the club to
hold a special general meeting. Hall will
submit more than 200 members’
names to MCC this week if a compro-
mise cannot be agreed when he meets
two committee members and the as-
sistant chief executive. “If an acceptable
compromise cannot be found I will con-
sider resigning,” Blofeld said.
Hall wants him to speak at the meet-
ing. Blofeld, whose family name ap-
pealed to Ian Fleming when he was de-
vising James Bond’s antagonist, was
thought to be an England cricketer in
the making when he had a serious cy-
cling accident at Eton at the age of 17.
He had already played at Lord’s and
went on to become a Cambridge blue
but turned to commentating and
writing when he realised he would not
progress beyond Minor Counties crick-
et. His mentor was John Woodcock, the
cricket correspondent of The Times,
who died last year. “Thank goodness
Johnny was not around when MCC
dropped the two fixtures,” he said.
“That would have finished him off.”
Other familiar names in the game to
complain to the club have been Mike
Griffith, a former MCC president and
captain of Sussex, and Robert Griffiths
QC, a long-serving committee member
who has questioned whether MCC’s
decision was legal without consultation
of the members, who own the club.
MCC’s standpoint is that only 60
days of cricket can be staged at Lord’s
each summer because the groundsman
needs sufficient time to prepare pitches
for international matches. These in-
clude two days given over to promi-
nent sponsors of Lord’s, without
which, the club said, membership
fees would have to be increased.
The club is determined to retain
two Test matches each sum-
mer. Its committee has rec-
ommended that the fix-
tures are replaced by the
finals of two new compe-
titions for schools and
universities, opening up
Lord’s to other students.
E
mma
Raducanu’s
smile as she
competes at the
highest level of
tennis is more than a
reflection of her
astonishing success: it is
also the reason for it
(Jack Malvern writes).
“When I’m genuinely
smiling and happy, that’s
when my best results
have come,” she told Elle
magazine.
Raducanu, 19, who won
her first-round match in
the French Open on
Monday, has delighted
spectators and sponsors
with smiles that often
elude players enduringthe stress of high-class
sport. Her ability to enjoy
herself may be evidence
to support theories that
athletes perform bestwhen they are in a “flow
state”, in which people
stop thinking and
respond instinctively.
Andy Murray has saidthat he plays at his best
when he is not thinking.
“You’re relying on
instinct. That’s why
practice and repetition is
extremely important.”
Raducanu came to
public attention last
summer when she
reached the round of 16
at Wimbledon by
defeating players far
higher in the world
rankings. The teenager
then became the first
unseeded player to win
the US Open. Her victory
made her a global star.
She is due to meet
Aliaksandra Sasnovich of
Belarus in the second
round of the French
Open today.
Raducanu, who was
born in Toronto but
moved to Britain at the
age of two with her
Chinese mother and
Romanian father, said
that she liked having
roots in various cultures.
“I grew up here, so I
feel British. But I’m
influenced by the cultures
of both my parents. My
mum instilled respect for
everyone as a big part of
my life.”
She is kept grounded by
her parents, who did not
travel to America to
witness her historic
victory at the US Open.
“There was nothing big or
amazing that my parents
did to celebrate — we just
came home and ate
dumplings, and that was
it. We are very normal.”
She said that she had
experienced two “pinch
me” moments: “When I
stepped off the court at
the US Open and when I
received a letter from the
Queen”.
I don’t read what people say
online, Sport, page 67Happiness
that gives
Raducanu
advantage
Emma Raducanu, pictured
in the July-August edition of
Elle, says that her best
results have come when
she is genuinely happySEBASTIAN KIM/ELLE UKHenry Blofeld at
Lord’s in 2017
Breaking news: Manchester United are rubbish, says BBC in gaffe
an instance of “BBC bias”. Others didn’t
dispute the accuracy of the story but
rather suggested that it hardly counted
at news.
Suspicion as to who was behind the
incident spread for some hours. Clive
Myrie, the BBC newsreader and a fan of
United’s rivals Manchester City, was
quick to distance himself. “I had noth-
ing to do with this,” he insisted, adding
“#mcfc” to make his allegiances clear.
The culprit, it later transpired, was a
trainee who was being shown how to
put stories on to the ticker, believingthat they were not going out for broad-
cast. They had also written the dis-
appointingly accurate: “Weather rain
everywhere.” The newsreader Annita
McVeigh apologised for the mistake
two hours later. “Some of you may have
noticed something pretty unusual on
the ticker... making a comment about
Manchester United,” she said.
“I hope that Manchester United fans
weren’t offended by it. Behind the
scenes someone was training to learn
how to... put text on the ticker, so they
were just writing random things, not inearnest, and that comment appeared.”
The general consensus was that it was a
lucky escape for the BBC. The former
presenter Simon McCoy said: “This
could have been so much worse.”
He knows from personal experience.
In 2018 McCoy was on air when a cap-
tion confused two stories, one
concerning David Davis’s resignation
from Theresa May’s cabinet and the
other the rescue of schoolboys trapped
in a flash flood. The caption read,
“Brexit secretary resigns: eight people
remain inside the cave”.Jack Blackburn
An unwitting trainee was practising
how to put text on screen at the time