When Test Match Special announced that Alastair Cook would be lending his services to its non-ball-by-ball-coverage for two of the upcoming Caribbean Tests, the Spin thought immediately of another tall, reserved man whose gentle touch and warm voice anchored TMS for four decades.
It seems unbelievable that it was just over six years ago (1 January 2013), that Christopher Martin-Jenkins slipped quietly away to his celestial Lord’s, at the age of 67, after suffering from cancer. His presence was always such a reassuring one that it wouldn’t be a surprise, even now, to switch on TMS and hear his sensible tones expressing some surprise at an outrageous choice of shot or an outre hairstyle. Something of the world at least would be back in its rightful place.
An unfashionably old-style Englishman, slightly out of place in the late 20th century, let alone the 21st, he nevertheless treated everyone, from hotel receptionist to taxi driver, with a hundred small courtesies (always, in The Spin’s book, a pretty good signal of someone’s humanity).
Way back in the 1990s I was asked by my friend the late journalist Charlie de Lisle, who had co-written a book – An Australian Summer – with CMJ, to interview him for publicity purposes. I set off on one of those sweet summer days where a breath of the morning air is enough to have you cartwheeling barefoot down the garden path, to his beautiful house in deepest Sussex where I was given coffee by his wife Judy before being invited into CMJ’s book-lined study. Probably tongue-tied and definitely overawed, I jotted down everything I could see on the shelves whenever I thought CMJ wasn’t looking.
The piece never saw the light of day, I can’t now remember what was on the shelves and the dictaphone tape was lost long ago, but I hold tightly to the memory of a kind, impeccably polite man who gave thoughtful answers to what would have been rambling questions as his friendly black labrador pottered to and fro.
He was the same person on TMS and a good starting-point for Cook, who has raised a few eyebrows with his pre-microphone pronouncements.
“I am not going to criticise James Anderson if he has a bad day,” he said in the Sunday Times. “Broady too. There is no way around it. We have been through so much together, especially Jimmy. I have too much respect for him and I am too friendly with him.”
Perhaps Cook has been scarred by the experiences of his own former captain Andrew Strauss. Strauss had thought about giving commentary a go, before he accidentally called Kevin Pietersen “a complete cunt” when he thought he was off-air during a stint at Lord’s for Sky. He soon gave up any thoughts of a media career and went on to join the England and Wales Cricket Board.
CMJ shared Cook’s reluctance to engage in personal criticism but managed to find a way round it with measured tones and sometimes a little exasperation. It didn’t destroy his relationship with players, who respected his innate fairness and deep love of the game.
Though not even CMJ could avoid all controversy – his biggest brush with it came in Barbados, where England’s tour proper starts on Wednesday with the first Test at Bridgetown. It was 1990 and England were, incredibly, leading the series 1-0 going into the fourth Test and West Indies were in the unfamiliar position of rubbing their heels on the ropes.
CMJ was in the commentary box when late in the afternoon Rob Bailey was given out caught down the legside by the umpire Lloyd Barker after Viv Richards had embarked on an extravagant celebration. CMJ pondered on air that a very good umpire had cracked under pressure.
“It wasn’t his mistake that was so sad,” he said. “It was the fact that [he] was pressurised into changing his original decision. If that is gamesmanship or professionalism, I am not quite sure what cheating is.”
The local reaction was firecracker hot – with accusations of whinging, colonialism and racism. CMJ was banned from the Voice of Barbados, who held a day-long phone in on the matter, the local newspaper reported on “biased Brits” and Barker issued a writ for defamation. When play restarted after the rest day, crowds protested outside the ground, with placards suggesting that prison might be a suitable punishment.
CMJ was horrified and apologised to Barker but the whole scene left an unpleasant taste on what was a tumultuous tour (which West Indies went on to win 2-1). The writ was settled two years later and bygones slowly became bygones.
Barbados was also the scene of another, more amusing CMJ moment. Vic Marks remembers him being lent a rather upmarket set of golf clubs. “As he was driving through Bridgetown in a mini moke he had the bag lodged in the back. CMJ could be an erratic driver which may have contributed to the sad fact that one by one the clubs bounced out of the bag on to the road without him noticing. He was crestfallen when discovering their disappearance, and when broadcasting on the local station the following day at the Test match he made a plaintive appeal that any stray golf clubs that had been found on the streets of Bridgetown might be returned to him at the Kensington Oval. But none were forthcoming.”
And it was in West Indies, though Jamaica not Barbados, that the best CMJ story of all took place. CMJ was on the golf course when he tried to phone the office with an urgent message – using the TV remote control from his room. That, at least, is a step Cook is unlikely to replicate.
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