Thanks, Johnners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend. Jonathan Agnew
there has ever been on our television screens, and I asked him to give me a hand. Very kindly, he suggested a plan which we then employed for the rest of the World Cup: as soon as the count started in our earpieces I would ask him a question, and he would talk until the count reached eight seconds to go. I would then thank him, turn to the camera and tell the audience briefly about the next game to be televised. Miraculously, for the rest of the tournament I always heard ‘zero’ in my ear at the moment I said goodbye. Richie is seriously good, but the whole experience served to confirm my belief that my decision to stick with Test Match Special was the right one.
Brian had become the BBC’s first cricket correspondent in 1963, and while this inevitably reduced his appearances in the world of general entertainment, and therefore his public profile, it did establish him as the country’s leading voice on cricket. He commentated mostly on the television during home Test matches, and on radio during England’s winter tours and also on Saturday afternoons, when BBC Radio Sport spent considerably more time covering county cricket than it does now. It was, apart from anything else, how new commentators used to cut their teeth.
The demands placed upon the BBC cricket correspondent have changed enormously in recent years, particularly with the arrival of twenty-four-hour rolling news channels and Radio 5 Live. There were also fewer tours in those days. Although Brian did tour Pakistan briefly, where he appeared to spend more time commentating on rioting students than on cricket, the only time he ever went to India was for three weeks as a spectator in 1993, when he lived exclusively on eggs. This, and a shot of whisky every evening, was necessary, he claimed, to stave off what he called Delhi-belly. He was an old man by that time – in fact he was eighty, and he died less than a year later – but he and Pauline had a colourful holiday, of which a trip to the Taj Mahal was clearly the highlight.
‘Six hours in the car each way, Aggers,’ he told me, ‘and I still don’t know what side of the road they drive on over here.’
He popped into the commentary box in Bombay to say hello at the end of a particularly hot day’s play, just at the time that I was rattling off my reports, interviews and two-way conversations with the studio in London. Brian, whose commitments in his time would have been little more than one close-of-play report, sat quietly behind me until I had finished. ‘Goodness me, this job has changed,’ he said.
Because Brian was never told why he was removed from television commentary, different theories have emerged over the years. One was that the authorities, in other words the Test and County Cricket Board, wanted a more serious image of its product than that which was being presented by Brian’s jokey style and brand of humour, and the BBC, keen to protect its position as rights holders, complied. This was vehemently denied by Brian Cowgill, who had recently arrived as the new head of television sport, and was believed by some to be the man who was determined to get Brian off the nation’s screens.
A more likely reason was the desire to introduce more former cricketers, with their expert knowledge and insight, to the microphone. Jim Laker, the England off-spinner who still has the best-ever match analysis in Test history, was introduced to the team in 1970. However, that theory is complicated by the fact that Denis Compton, one of the all-time great batsmen and a regular television commentator at the time, was shown the door with Johnners, while Peter West, who had never played first-class cricket in his life, was promoted to present the programme. But if this really is the true version of events, Brian was the first casualty in what has since become a procession of retired Test cricketers into television commentary boxes the world over, to the point that Test experience is now seen as a necessary requirement for a commentator. It helps, of course, but television also needs colourful and interesting commentary, just as radio does.
A third theory, and perhaps the least plausible, was nevertheless the one favoured by Compton. Both Brian and Denis, who could be outspoken and who had much stronger right-wing views than Brian, were of the belief that sport and politics should not mix. In the late 1960s the question of apartheid South Africa continuing to compete in international sport was the biggest off-field issue Brian had to deal with in his time as BBC cricket correspondent. While mass protests forced the abandonment of the proposed tour of England by South Africa in 1970, Brian and Denis were not alone in supporting the view that a sporting boycott of South Africa was not the answer to the political problems there. Peter Dimmock, the general manager of BBC Outside Broadcasts at the time, denied that their stance on South Africa had anything to do with their being fired.
Whatever the reason, it was a huge blow to Johnners. At the time, his disappointment prevented him from appreciating quite what a godsend it would turn out to be, because he was immediately approached by Robert Hudson, the head of BBC Outside Broadcasts, to join Test Match Special full time. Two years later, aged sixty, he was forced by BBC regulations to retire from his position as cricket correspondent. Now a freelance, he took over as the presenter of Down Your Way, a weekly interview-based radio programme that he fronted for the next fifteen years.
Just as In Town Tonight had encouraged Johnners to show his extrovert side, so Down Your Way tapped perfectly into his ability as a communicator. He would visit a different town, village or community every week, and talk to some of the more interesting locals he encountered along the way. Since he always had a very kindly and welcoming manner with people, this helped make members of the public who had never appeared on the radio before feel at ease when faced by a microphone – brandished by an im -posingly tall man – for the first time. It was his warm, fun and friendly presence on those classic radio programmes that firmly established Brian Johnston as a national institution, and those were the qualities he brought to freshen up Test Match Special. Now, with cricket in the summers and Down Your Way to occupy him in the winters, Brian really was in his heaven.
This was the time many Test Match Special stalwarts consider to have been the programme’s golden age. After John Arlott retired in 1980, Johnners was indisputably the leading character, but I rather lost contact with the programme when I left Uppingham School and joined Leicestershire County Cricket Club as a young fast bowler. From the age of sixteen I had been playing second-XI cricket at Surrey CCC, and my dream of becoming a professional cricketer was finally realised when Leicestershire offered me a contract while I was still at school. For an eighteen-year-old bowler I was unusually fast, and enjoyed terrorising our opponents, be they schoolboys (8 wickets for 2 runs and 7 for 11 stick in the memory) or, better still, the teachers in the annual staff match. This, I gather, used to be a friendly affair until I turned up, and I relished the chance to settle a few scores on behalf of my friends – for whom I was the equivalent of a hired assassin – as well as for myself.
Within only a few weeks of leaving school, a sudden injury crisis at Leicestershire propelled me into the first team for a county championship match against Lancashire at Grace Road – something for which I was not very well prepared. For a start, I had been a dedicated Lancashire fanatic ever since Dad had taken me to Lord’s for that Gillette Cup final when I was eleven, and suddenly I found myself playing against my heroes. Merely watching them walk out to practise in the nets before play began felt quite bewildering. I remember Ray Illingworth, who I had met only once, briefly, when I was signed by the club, and who was now my captain, laughing as I produced my plastic-soled bowling boots from my bag in the dressing room. Illy had played with, and led, some of the best fast bowlers England has ever produced, and clearly he did not rate the equipment which up to now had served me perfectly well at school. He was right, of course. We had to field for 130 overs in that match, and I could barely walk at the end.
Another problem was the serious lack of protective equipment I possessed, and this was brought sharply into focus when I saw Lancashire’s giant West Indian fast bowler Colin Croft mark out his run-up and proceed to bowl at a speed and hostility I had never imagined to be humanly possible. I noticed that even my experienced colleagues were rather subdued by the prospect of facing him, but they produced thigh guards and carefully moulded foam padding which they meticulously strapped all over their bodies. I had none of these, and very few batsmen wore helmets in 1978. While my pads had provided sufficient protection against schoolboy bowling at Uppingham, they were hopelessly inadequate for the missiles Croft was now hurling down, increasingly angrily, it seemed, at our batsmen. Thankfully, in that year the rule in county cricket was that all first innings had to close