Channel 4 learn from Lynam (24 July 1999)

24 July 1999

Channel 4 learn from Lynam

Giles Smith

When Channel 4 does a Test match, boy does Channel 4 do a Test match: eight hours of cricket, or cricket-related programming, interrupted only by the occasional advertisement for a car or a beer. And no slinking away at lunchtime for a news bulletin from Moira Stewart. In a manner normally reserved, on terrestrial television, for funerals of state or moon landings, the day-time schedules have been waved aside for play from Lord's.

So, on your bike, Countdown. Back in your basket, Pet Rescue. See you later, Rikki Lake. Farewell, indeed, to the entire regular viewing of Britain's student population. It's a good job Channel 4 waited until the universities had dispersed for summer before pulling this one off; it would have been 1968 all over again.

All those worst fears for the future of televised cricket, post-BBC (an absence of restraint; a presence of comedians; an undue emphasis on streaking), were needless. We can throw them away now. At tea-time on the first day Richie Benaud interviewed Tony Lewis. Ring any bells? And as for wanton gimmickry, the channel's best innovation is an anti-innovation: the Real Time Replay. Brilliant: what happened, and at the speed it happened, rather than in misleading slo-mo. How come no one else thought of that?

Our anchorman, Mark Nicholas, is School of Des Lynam, and, if you look at the league tables, that's the smart school to be going to right now. "See you in a minute or so," Nicholas will say, going into a commercial break, with the nice and very Lynam-esque inference that live television might be a furious and panicky business of split-second timings but he and us don't need to be bothered with all that. Something else Des-like about Nicholas: the camera loves him and its love does not, shall we say, go unrequited.

There's been just one moment when he lost the tone. In the lunch interval on the first day, sent out to pluck a celebrity from the crowd, Sybil Ruscoe had come up with Brough Scott, a very nice man but, at the same time, an employee of Channel 4, which accounted for a slight sense of national disappointment at this moment. Ruscoe concluded their conversation with the suggestion that they should adjourn for lunch together. Back in the studio, Nicholas said: "Brough's pulled. Good effort." Ah, well. Once a cricketer, always a cricketer, I guess.

The opening day dawned grim and grey, except in Channel 4's glass-backed pitch-side booth, which, confusingly in the circumstances, was lit to resemble high summer. Half an hour was set aside for the usual coin-tossing and pitch-prodding.

At home, one was inevitably impressed less by the square than by the canary yellow Cornhill Insurance signs on the grass. Never mind bowling or batting, this was obviously a great pitch to be advertising on.

As play began, we passed to Benaud in the commentary box. From his first "Morning, everyone", he was a steadying hand for anyone still worried about where all this might be heading. Frankly, you could assemble a documentary series entitled Penetrative Sex Around the World, and just so long as each programme opened with Benaud saying "Morning, everyone", no one would be the least bit upset.

Consider Benaud's reaction to a close-up shot of Craig McMillan's sunglasses, which, in the way of contemporary sports shades, looked like part of a Norman Foster design for an airport. Had some of the worst nightmares about Channel 4 cricket been realised (cricket coverage as a sort of Janet Street-Porter-style info-mart for 14-year-olds), a strip would have been running across the foot of the screen at this point, telling us how much the glasses cost and where we could buy a pair. Instead, we got Benaud saying, in a tone so deliberately non-judgemental that it ends up oozing contempt: "Well, they're very mod. Unusual. There you go."

It is part of Benaud's lordliness that he can operate as a vital cog in the system and also as a commentator upon it. Thus his appraisal of the much-touted Snickometer: "this electronic gadgetry . . . brilliant it is . . . very very good innovation." From anyone else, this would have seemed like craven puffery. From Benaud, it was an endorsement you were happy to ride along with.

On the pitch, the cameras are in tight. Perhaps too tight? The camera follows the bowler in and keeps going with the ball, so that at the point of the stroke, pretty much only the batsman is in shot. And there are square-on shots in which you can see neither of the running batsmen. And like the cameras, the microphones are concentrated on the square, too. We hear the umpires, clear as a bell ("That's the over"), but little else. There are 30,000 people in the ground but, for all the noise that comes through, we could be at a poorly-attended church fete. Would it hurt to up the volume?

Away from the action, it's all very chatty and chummy. More nearly, possibly, than any other sports broadcasting operation, the Channel 4 cricket squad approach the benchmark for smiley team bonhomie set by the presenters of Blue Peter. No one uses a first name where a nickname will do. (Did my ears deceive me, or did Nicholas really refer to Wasim Akram as 'Wazzy' at one point?).

But the history of television punditry suggests that viewers enjoy a little confrontation. As yet, the only candidate to express even a vague interest in running for the vacant Jimmy Hill role is James "very much so" Whitaker. In the opening day's most imaginative attempt to account for England's history of poor form at Lord's, Whitaker pointed out that the England players who didn't play for Middlesex would be more familiar, from their visits to Lord's as county players, with the away team's dressing-room than with the home team's dressing-room. "There might just be something in that," he concluded. There was a pause. "Like what?" said Nicholas.

Thursday's bad light forced a time-filling dip into the Channel 4 archive: i.e., this year's Edgbaston Test. After that, they were going to be down to Polish cartoons of men moving pianos. But luckily Ruscoe had found the umpire Merv Kitchen - no mean feat, given that it was almost dark, and also because Kitchen has a reputation for being an irascible figure who believes the best place for an inquisitive media figure is at the bottom of a wet pit. As the old adage has it: if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the way of Merv Kitchen. Big bad Merv confirmed that play had been suspended on account of bad light rather than, as some suspected, sympathy for last man Phil Tufnell.

For viewers, the first snorter comes at 2.55 this afternoon when Channel 4 will honour its longer-rooted commitment to horse racing by trotting off to Newcastle and Market Rasen for an hour, missing about 45 minutes of cricket. At the launch, a promise was made to return to the cricket if anything critical happened, though there was no definition offered of what constitutes 'critical'. Either way, someone is going to suffer, whether it's the cricket fan or the backer of Tipsy Cider Boy in the 3.15 who doesn't give a stuff about Mark Ramprakash.

But there's no pleasing everyone and perhaps it's sensible for cricket people to take the long view and say that three-quarters of an hour is a negligible slice out of a five-day event. Then again, it depends who's batting. If England are out there, 45 minutes is probably worth about four wickets.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)