Beloved commentator Henry Blofeld's journey through cricket

Sep 12, 2024 19:15

Henry Blofeld retired from BBC's Test Match Special seven years ago (Image: Getty)

Certain sounds are instantly evocative of our national identity, like the chimes of Big Ben or the throb of a Spitfire’s engine. But it is doubtful if anything in recent times has captured the essence of the English summer more faithfully than the mellifluous voice of cricket legend Henry Blofeld.

Rich in its warmth and humour, his distinctive baritone conjures up images of the village green and afternoon tea, of leg glances and cover drives.

His catchphrase “my dear old thing” entered the lexicon of the game just as he invented a new style of commentary, with his enticing, vivid descriptions of the peripheries of play during a match, particularly the movements of birds and buses.

Sadly, having retired from the BBC Test match Special team seven years ago, Blofeld is no longer a permanent fixture on our airwaves. But he maintains his remarkable energy and continuing passion for cricket.

Even though he will be 85 in a fortnight, he still makes podcasts, writes books and articles and recently completed three hour-long films of reminiscences.

“I never look over my shoulder – I always get on with the next thing,” he tells me from the Norfolk home where he lives with his wife Valeria. His advancing years have brought him problems with his eyes but, typically, he refuses to show a shred of self-pity. “You’ve got to live with what you’ve got and get on with it.”

In that spirit, he has just published his latest book, Sharing My Love of Cricket, which is a charming mixture of memories about his own past and thoughts about the game’s future. It is a compelling, often nostalgic read, packed with hilarious stories, such as the occasion he participated in a tour to South America in 1979, and played in a match against Brazil in Rio.

window.topArticlesScript="https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/js/dist/article-top-articles20240911.min.js"

At the end of the first day, a member of Henry’s side – who went on to play Test cricket for England – embarked on a “voyage of discovery” near the Copacabana beach and soon “sighted the girl of his dreams in one of the many bars. They quickly struck up a relationship and found a hotel in which to continue their liaison”.

But the young lothario, who was due to be batting again at the start of the second day, woke up the next morning to find not only was he alone but that all his clothes had been taken. Trying to cover himself with a towel, he made his way to the hotel’s reception to explain his predicament.

To his relief, he was taken to a back office where all his garments were laid out. Less welcome was the news that he would have to pay $500 for their return. The player had no cash himself, but he managed to track down an old friend in Rio, who turned up at the hotel with the requisite sum, enabling the batsman to resume his innings on time, fully clothed.

As his presence on that tour indicates, Henry Blofeld was a fine cricketer who played the game at first-class level, mainly for Cambridge University.

But he could have attained even greater heights had it not been for a disastrous stroke of misfortune. He had fallen in love with cricket at prep school where his devotion was nurtured by one of his teachers, Miss Paterson, “who bowled a lively underarm and stood no nonsense”, he writes. With his precocious talent for both batting and wicket-keeping, he harboured dreams of reaching the top, but they were dashed by a tragic incident at Eton in June 1957.

“I was bicycling after lunch to the cricket nets,” he recalls. “While talking to someone over my shoulder, I crossed a small lane and went straight into the side of a bus which was going quite fast. I end up like a split jam roll.

“And out of the bus jumped 20 French ladies who had come to look at Eton – I gather that some of them were quite toothsome – but sadly I was unable to appreciate them as I was carted off to hospital.

Henry gravitated towards the press box in the 1960s (Image: Getty)

Henry Blofeld chats to Geoff Boycott (Image: Getty)

“I was lucky to be alive but I was also lucky not to be a cabbage. My skull was broken all the way round except for two inches at the back. I had 14 operations to get pieces of broken bone out of my brain.”

Looking back, he feels he should have taken more time to recover, but he went straight up to Cambridge. The following year he was in the university side, but he knew he was not the same player that he had been before the accident.

“I got back about 60 per cent of my batting but I never got my wicket-keeping back properly. I was no longer a natural player. I did not have the flair I had before,” he tells me.

But top flight cricket’s loss was journalism’s gain. After a brief but unsatisfying spell in a merchant bank, he decided to make his living from the game he adored.

With his command of language and gifts of description, he gravitated towards the press box, writing his first article for The Times in 1962. He fell under the influence of the paper’s massively respected chief correspondent John Woodcock, who became a close friend.

“He did not teach me about writing style but he taught me how to watch cricket. He was a more acute watcher of cricket than anyone I have ever known.” Blofeld is also fascinating on some of the other characters in the cricket press, such as Crawford White of the Daily Express, who had an air of debonair sophistication but was astonishingly insecure about his position on the best-selling paper.

“He found writing difficult and he would hum tunelessly in the hope of finding inspiration,” writes Blofeld. “These anxieties could make him awkward company. We’d be staying in a hotel for a county match and he would disappear three times at dinner to ring up the Express office and check on his copy. It was awful. He was terrified that he was going to be written out of the sports pages – and he often was.”

window.mostCommentedStoriesScript="https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/js/dist/most-commented-stories20240911.min.js";window.mostCommentedStoriesJTD="0" SUBSCRIBE Invalid email

We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our Privacy Policy

The dominant figure in the press pack was Jim Swanton of the Daily Telegraph. “His workmanlike prose did not sit easily with his rather pompous, bombastic manner. I did not get on well with him. He was a horror, a bully,” says Henry today.

Swanton also served as a broadcaster and Blofeld took up the same role in 1972. Over the next four decades, he helped to turn Test Match Special into a cherished institution. His early steps were guided by John Arlott, the warm-hearted, former Hampshire police officer, famous for his love of claret, poetry, and the Liberal party.

“I liked him enormously and he really looked after me,” says Blofeld, who is also full of praise for former Test Match Special producer Peter Baxter, the real architect, he believes, of the show’s success. But he feels far less affection for the programme’s late scorer Bill Frindall, nick-named “the Bearded Wonder” by the much-loved commentator Brian Johnston.

“Bill Frindall was a real s***. None of us liked him. Brian Johnston turned him into a monster when he called him the Bearded Wonder and gave him a platform.

“It went to his head. He made mistakes and covered them up. If you pointed them out, he would not speak to you for a week. He and I had long silences.”

But, in this tale, laughter is never far away. One priceless moment he relates occurred when the Irish cricket-loving band called The Duckworth-Lewis Method – named after the statistical formula devised to arbitrate in rain-affected limited-over matches – were guests on Test Match Special.

Incongruously, Blofeld had done some rapping for them on their record, It’s Just Not Cricket, and was keen to explain this to listeners – only to find that his words were greeted by hysterical guffaws from the rest of the commentary team.

Don't miss...
BBC viewers rage as Mastermind is pulled off air in major schedule shake-up [LATEST]
Brian May spotted watching England play cricket days after sharing stroke horror [LATEST]
Freddie Flintoff secures new job as England great continues recovery from crash [LATEST]

He could not understand the reason until a producer handed him a set of headphones to listen back to his recording. To his consternation, when referring to “The Duckworth-Lewis Method and Blofeld”, he had absentmindedly replaced his own name with the two-syllable term for oral sex.

Today, Blofeld is reluctant to criticise the radio commentary team he once graced. “There is nothing worse than an old codger saying, ‘Things aren’t what they used to be.’”

But he has real concerns about the future of cricket, in particular the longer form of the game, which he believes ought to be the gold standard. So much money and media focus now goes to the 20-over format, which can degenerate into a slogging contest.

“The balance between bat and ball, which has always been central to the game, has been lost and must be recalibrated,” he says. “Four sixes an over? Who wants to watch that forever?”

But greater aggression does mean that Test cricket is far more exciting now than it was in the 1950s. That was graphically illustrated in 1954, when the great American comic Groucho Marx went to Lords for the first day of a Test. At the end of the morning session he was asked if he was enjoying the match.

“When does it start?” he replied.

In a neat twist, the book imagines the ghost of Groucho returning to watch a modern Test and is so captivated that he decides to see another.

That is pure Henry Blofeld, ever the endearing optimist.

Sharing My Love of Cricket by Henry Blofeld (Hodder, £25) is out now. For free UK P&P, visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832

Ads Links by Easy Branches
Play online games for free at games.easybranches.com
Guest Post Services www.easybranches.com/contribute

Dan Walker shares one thing his wife has 'banned' while working with Helen Skelton

Yorkshire Great And Small 'awkward' moment as Helen Skelton gives Dan Walker nickname

ITV The Chase viewers issue same complaint as fans claim they've 'heard this before'

Former Coronation Street stars now - tragic deaths to shameful axing

Our ⚡AMP sites

Beloved commentator Henry Blofeld's journey through cricket