Thanks, Johnners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend. Jonathan Agnew

father’s full and varied time at the crease in The Life of Brian. I am especially grateful to Barry, and all the Johnston family, for their help and support in the writing of this book.

      Thanks, Johnners is a tribute written from the perspective of a man who was fortunate enough to work alongside such a talented and genuinely warm-hearted individual at a key time in his life. Brian Johnston liberated me as a broadcaster, and gave me the confidence to commentate without apprehension or nerves. He showed me how easy and welcoming communication ought to be. Now, in a world governed by brief soundbites, Test Match Special can sometimes seem to stand virtually alone in the broadcast media in allowing conversation, good company and colourful description to flourish in a way that still makes radio intimate in a way that television can never be.

      For some who read this book, ‘the Leg Over’ may be their only memory of Brian Johnston. If that is so, well, it is a start at least. But if today’s Test Match Special brings the wonderful game of cricket alive for you, makes you feel involved and, through gentle humour and leg-pulling, puts a smile on your face, then we have succeeded in preserving Johnners’ legacy.

       Jonathan Agnew

       June 2010

      Chapter One

      The Guest Speaker

      I can remember the first time I heard Test Match Special. I was aged eight or nine, and enjoying another idyllic summer of outdoor life on our farm in Lincolnshire when I became aware of my father carrying a radio around with him. It was not much of a radio, certainly not by the standards of today’s sleek, modern digital models, but was what we would have called a transistor. It was brown in colour and, typical of a farmer’s radio, was somewhat beaten up and splattered with paint. The aerial was always fully extended. Dad would often laugh out loud as he carried it about, the programme echoing loudly around the barns and grain silo as he stored the freshly harvested wheat and barley. It is the perfect summer combination, the smell of the grain and the sound of the cricket, and whenever I think of it the sun always seems to be shining, although that is probably stretching things a bit. When he had finished work for the day, we would play cricket together in the garden, Dad teaching me with tireless patience the basic bowling action. He so wanted me to become an off-spinner like him.

      Soon the unmistakable voices became very familiar: Arlott, Johnston, Mosey and the others who with their own different and individual styles helped the summers pass all too quickly with their powerful descriptions and friendly company. The programme sparked an interest in me, in the same way it has in so many tens of thousands of children down the years, igniting a passion that lasts a lifetime. Whether it be playing the game, scoring, watching, umpiring or simply handing down our love of cricket to the next generation, listening to Test Match Special is how most of us got started.

      Thanks to that programme, and Brian Johnston’s commentary in particular, I have always associated cricket with fun, banter and friendship. As a boy, if there was cricket being played, I would be following it either on the television or on the radio. Brian was always incredibly cheerful, and it was impossible not to listen with a smile – even if England’s score was really terrible and Geoffrey Boycott had just run somebody out again. Dad’s enjoyment of the humour within the cricket commentary was infectious, and made me appreciate everything that sets Test Match Special apart from other radio sports programmes.

      I became rather obsessed with the game, even to the point of blacking out the windows of our sitting room and watching entire Test matches on the television. Until I was ten Brian commentated more on the TV than on the radio, but in 1970, when he was dumped by BBC television with no proper explanation, he moved to radio’s Test Match Special full time. So I joined the legions of cricket nuts who watch the television with the sound turned down and listen to the radio commentary instead. I actually lived the hours of play, with Mum appearing a little wearily with a plate of sandwiches at lunchtime, and some cake at tea. I would not miss a single ball on that black-and-white television, and while my parents recognised how much of a passion I was developing for cricket, I think they felt I needed to get out more. I remember a cousin of mine, Edward, being invited to stay during a Test match. I was furious, and felt this was clearly a plot to get me out of the house and into the fresh air. But Edward sat quietly beside me in the dark for the next five days. By the end, I think he was even starting to like it a little.

      At the end of the day’s play it was out into the garden, where I would bowl at a wall for hours on end, trying to repeat what I had seen, and imitating the players, whose styles and mannerisms were etched in my mind. I developed quite a reasonable impersonation of the England captain Ray Illingworth, even down to the tongue sticking out when he bowled one of his off-spinners, and I loved John Snow’s brooding aggression and moodiness. How did Snow bowl so fast from such an ambling run-up? Little could I have imagined that Illingworth would become my first county captain, and that when I moved to journalism Snow would be my travel agent. Then there was the captivating flight and guile of Bishen Bedi, wearing his brightly coloured turbans, and the trundling, almost apologetic run-up of India’s opening bowler, Abid Ali. And Pakistan’s fast bowler Asif Masood, who seemed to start his approach to the wicket by running backwards, and who Brian Johnston famously – and, knowing his penchant for word games and his eye for mischief, almost certainly deliberately – once announced as ‘Massive Arsehood’.

      I loved the metronomic accuracy of Derek Underwood, who was utterly lethal bowling on the uncovered pitches of that time, and still have a vivid memory of the moment he bowled out Australia in 1968 – helped, I am sure, by the fact that Johnners was the commentator when the final wicket fell. It was an extraordinary last day of the final Test at The Oval, where a big crowd had gathered in the hope of seeing England secure the win they needed to square the series. A downpour in the early afternoon seemed to put paid to the game, but when it stopped the England captain, Colin Cowdrey, appeared on the field and encouraged the spectators to arm themselves with whatever they could find – towels, mops, blankets and even handkerchiefs – and get to work mopping up the vast puddles of water. On they all came, to the absolute dismay, I imagine, of the Australians, and in contravention of just about every modern-day ‘health and safety’ regulation in existence. Before long, with sawdust scattered everywhere, ‘Deadly Derek’ was in his element. With only three minutes of the Test left, and with all ten England fielders crouching around the bat, he snared the final wicket: the opener John Inverarity, who had been resisting stubbornly from the start of Australia’s innings. Inverarity was facing what was almost certainly the penultimate over, with the number 11, John Gleeson, at the non-striker’s end.

      ‘He’s out!’ shouted Johnners at the top of his voice. ‘He’s out LBW, and England have won!’

      This was my first memory of the great drama and tension that cricket can conjure up, and it came as a result of watching heroes and epic contests on television. This is the reason for my dis appointment that most of today’s children do not have the same opportunity. How can you fall passionately in love with a sport you cannot see?

      At Taverham Hall, the prep school just outside Norwich that I attended as a boarder from the age of eight, there was a small television in the room in which you sat while waiting to see matron in the adjoining sick bay. She was a big one for dispensing, twice per day for upset tummies, kaolin and morphine, which tasted utterly disgusting, and then, as a general pick-me-up, some black, sticky, treacly stuff which was equally foul. Despite that, my best pal, Christopher Dockerty, and I would rotate various bogus ailments on a daily basis in order to get a brief look at the cricket on her telly – even just a glimpse of the score was enough. Matron never twigged that Christopher and I were only ever under the weather during a Test match. Incidentally, Chris was a brilliant mimic who could bowl with a perfect imitation of Max Walker’s action while commentating in a more than passable John Arlott. He was also the most desperately homesick little boy in the school. His later life would take an unexpected and ultimately tragic turn. As Major Christopher Dockerty he became one of the most senior and respected counter-terrorism experts in the British Army. Posted to Northern Ireland, he was a passenger on the RAF Chinook helicopter that crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994, killing all twenty-nine people on board.

      My first