When Sundays were special
I wonder if the BBC have kept the tapes of all the Sunday afternoon John Player League games they used to televise live. These days there is usually some cricket to be found on some TV station somewhere and then there are DVDs and whatever but back in the 1970s, for those of us not within easy reach of a county ground, Sundays used to bring a privileged glimpse of live cricket which was as rare as it was magical.
Remember the jaunty theme tune as all the county badges flashed up on screen in succession? I think it started at 1.55pm on BBC2 and you'd wait for the tune to finish and that crucial first moment when you would peer over the presenter's shoulder to see whether the dreaded covers were on. Peter Walker would introduce and it would be over to John Arlott for the first 20 overs and Jim Laker for the next 20 as characters like Barry Richards, John Shepherd, Paul Phillipson, Jim Foat, David Bairstow, Bishen Bedi, Alan Jones, Alan Lewis Jones and Eifion Jones would royally entertain.
Happy days. The curly-charactered scorecards. The 3pm-ish moment when they would gives other scores from around the country (revolutionary in those days). The players' white shirts and trousers stained only by the red of ball-shining, uncluttered by names, numbers and advertising logos. The big egg in the crowd somewhere where a batsman won a prize if he hit it with a six (was it Hove?).
County cricket was such a largely untelevised mystery then it was so evocative to see some live on telly. I'd love to watch some recording of the games again. It would be fascinating to see how much has changed. The cricket (fielding and running in particular), the tempo, commentary, the spectators' dress-sense.
Magical memories. And those lovely old scoreboards.
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Brian Halford - Brian Halford’s look at Edgbaston.
and listening to John Arlott talking his way around the ground and the town wherever play was coming from if it had been interrupted by rain telling cricket tales and giving statistics as the camera panned long distance into drizzle and he dipped into history. That was often better than a dull game.
BBC 2 I recall was the first channel to go to colour (Ted Lowe "for those viewing in black and white the pink's behind the blue" etc). Our TV could only get BBC1 and ITV so imagine my disappointment when dad came home with a new tv (or probably the man from radio rentals arrived), switched over to BBC 2 and ...still black and white. It eventually dawned on me!
And the crowd sitting and kneeling on the grass right up to the boundary rope. And flocking over the grass in the background while Peter Walker interviewed somebody during the tea interval.
Nice memories, lady and gents. I wonder if those tapes do still exist at the BBC. I suppose if they kept everything they would need an unfeasible amount of storage space. But it would be fascinating to see some of those old games.