Cricket’s gift to comedy and other stories

First published in SPIN magazine March 2010

While England not being completely hopeless raised the entertainment levels on the park in South Africa, it proved to be death for  post-match punditry.

Here is what Bob Willis had to say about England’s second Test win: “Fantastic, Charles. One of their best performances in recent times. A terrific all-round performance.” Here is the Willis verdict on the third: “A marvellous advertisement for the pinnacle of the game. It really was stunning.”

Whither the Willis of yore? The Prince of Wails had been reduced to a grinning yes-man with nothing to complain about. His only one-liner in the whole series – referring to Paul Harris and England’s No 11 as ‘Tripe and Onions’ – a pale echo of the halcyon days when he could spend a full hour raging for Steve Harmison to be flogged mercilessly in some northern village square.

Even Nasser Hussain seemed to have stopped pretending to be chippy.

The broadcast highlight of the tour, then, was Michael Vaughan’s debut in the Test Match Special box. Vaughan sounds so relaxed and unforced, it’s almost as if he doesn’t know he’s on the radio. Mind you, you can be too relaxed. His first several observations on air in the first Test were prefixed, Partridge-style, with yelps of “Jesus!” and “Christ!”

Words were obviously had off-mike.

Then, during the third Test, Vaughan gave an extended, unselfconscious  plug to his own coaching camps business.

More words off-mike after that, surely.

But Virgil has been excellent, swanning in as if he owns the place. His regular bigging-up of the Barmy Army has made poor old CMJ sound like a pensioner taken hostage in his own bungalow by an ASBO youth.

Exactly what happened between the era of Vaughan the England cricketer, so media-trained that he described the birth of his own child as “pleasing” and Vaughan the knockabout gantry bon vivant is not clear. Maybe something similar to what turned Nasser Hussain from the ball of rage gesticulating at the press box to the ball of rage gesticulating from the press box.