It's just not cricket, no wait it is...

I started listening to radio seriously in about 1978. Lots of things were to blame for moving me on from basic Radio 1. "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" introduced Radio 4, and a bout of Chickenpox, particularly nasty as a teenager, left me twiddling the dial in May. So I discovered cricket, or more exactly cricket commentary.

I don't do sport really, I have no interest in Football or Rugby, but the lyrical description of this game that seems to seep into whoever is on air at Test Match Special is as enticing as any music. Now I'm not the first to mention this, but it has coloured my radio and podcast listening. Over time I have got a bit more interested in the game, learnt the fielding positions and so on. Quick aside; I was finally put off any real interest in sport by a rainy school games lesson when we were all sat on the floor and shown fielding positions rather than playing. You weren't allowed to wear glasses for games so I couldn't see a thing. I asked to go back for them, was told no put up with it, and decided on the spot to give up on anything "taught" like that.

I do a lot of miles in the course of business and Audiobooks help the motorway slide by easier. I listen to music books, as you may have noticed in previous pieces, but I seem to have a fair few cricket books as well. No surprise that cricket commentators are good Audiobook narrators but it seems that the game is just ideally suited to spoken word. All this was prompted by Henry Blofeld's memoirs appearing on Audible recently. It turns out to be a good listen, and Henry to have a clear sense of his role on air. Jonathan Agnew is far and away the best at the Cricket Audiobook. His anthology of cricket writing is a good place to start, but not all at one sitting at 19 hours long. He has also done an excellent tribute to Brian Johnson which mixes anecdote with history, although I could care less if I never heard their "Leg Over" incident again.

In common with most high paid "professional" sportsmen cricketers have a greatly inflated sense of their own importance. As I write this in December 2017, the England team have all had to be grounded because they can't have a drink without headbutting each other. Consequently I have avoided autobiographies of players, partly because they have a tendancy to be written too close to their careers to have any perspective, be a least a little self serving and frankly pretty dull. I would recommend however Jonny Bairstow's memoir "A Clear Blue Sky", the positive tone of a book that could have turned into a rant about his early tragedies makes for an incisive story.

Cricket podcasts? The BBC's "Stumped" is the best, the rest tend to be attempts to replicate the natural tone of Test Match Special and come across as forced. Someone more interested in the game than the narration may tell you different...

Then there is "The Duckworth Lewis Method". As well as the cricket version of the offside rule, it is a project from Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of the excellent Pugwash. The history is here and I would say that even if you don't like cricket at all, the mix of gentle whimsical lyrics and E.L.O.pastiches is irresistable. Get the albums, both of them, you won't regret it. They have also been taken to heart by the Cricket world, even appearing on TMS..

I didn't know Pugwash before the DLM albums, but don't wait, their new album "Silverlake" is as good as anything they have done. Also get their compilation A Rose In A Garden Of Weeds as a way into their beguiling catchy songs. Try "What Are You Like" from the new album