'Cricket's taken too seriously now'

The doyen of television presenters, Sir Michael Parkinson is perhaps best known for his eponymous celebrity interview programme, Parkinson, which ran for over 20 years, till 2007. His cricket connection is less well known, but in his day he played with the likes of Dickie Bird and trialled for Yorkshire alongside Geoff Boycott. In 1990 he hosted a World XI team against Yorkshire. He spoke to Cricinfo about how the game has changed in the time he has been watching it, cricket fandom, the Yorkshire spirit, and more.

Would you describe yourself as a fan of cricket?
Yes. I was born in Yorkshire where there's a great cricketing tradition, and I've followed cricket all my life. My first cricket started when I was three. I played for Barnsley in the Yorkshire league when I was 15 or 16. I tried becoming a professional and had trials for Hampshire and Yorkshire but wasn't good enough, so became a journalist instead.

Your father wanted to name you Melbourne, didn't he?
Mainly because we had won a Test match in Melbourne [when I was born]. Imagine if we'd won in Adelaide!

My father was a very, very keen cricket follower. For him, no matter what I achieved or did on television, I was a failure, because he thought playing cricket for Yorkshire was better than being a TV star. And that's the difference between fame and immortality - if you wore the white rose of Yorkshire on your cap you were immortal, but if you do a talk show you're just famous.

What to you makes a great cricketer? And who would you rate as great cricketers?
A great cricketer is a great athlete, who brings to the game character and charm, a personality and style that very few others have. Sachin Tendulkar and Fred Trueman are great players. Trueman and Dennis Lillee were the two greatest fast bowlers I saw. The greatest cricketer is Sir Garfield Sobers without a single shadow of doubt. The greatest bowler was Shane Warne because he played the game like nobody else ever played it.

You haven't mentioned Keith Miller, for whom you had a special affection.
Keith was a boyhood hero of mine. When I was a child he was almost a kind of a film-star figure for me because he was so good-looking. He was dashing, hit big sixes, was a big fast bowler, and women adored him. Then when I went down London to Fleet Street in London to work, he was the cricket correspondent for the Daily Express, which I worked for. They had a cricket team and I used to stand at second slip with him at first slip. We became firm friends and were until he died. I treasure that friendship. He was remarkable.

Nowadays people take the game too seriously - they talk too much of life and death and that's nonsense. Keith and his generation didn't believe that because they'd been in the war, so they were able to put cricket in proper perspective and play it that way. They understood that, no matter how hard you play, you are playing a game. That's all it is, a pastime, not life and death. It still stays with me. There was his great saying on pressure. He told me on my TV show that what he couldn't stand about today's game was the use of the word "pressure". He said pressure was having a Messerschmitt up your arse. All today's cricketers will do well to remember that.

You've seen the game for more than 60 years. How have things changed in that time?
I'm prepared to tell you that cricketers of today are fitter and in many ways overall better than they were in my day. The one thing that's happened in all of sport is that the standards of fitness have lifted the players and the game itself to a different level. Today's teams would murder the teams of my day simply because of their athleticism in the field and the way they chase down balls. In my day the thought of a fast bowler flaying himself around the field was unthinkable.

But what's been lost to the game is a bit of charm. The older guy wasn't just the captain, he was the voice of wisdom in the team and stopped younger guys from making asses of themselves. That's missing too, maybe.

What's really missing is, like I said earlier, the sense that we are playing a game, and the word "pressure" is much overused. We should think of another word to describe the joy of playing cricket for living. These guys are very lucky men indeed - very good at what they do, but the demeanour of a modern player sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. It's not just cricket, it's in almost every sport. In other words, it's taken too seriously. They believe it is a matter of life and death. It never was, it never will be.

Is there also a perception that cricketers of today play for themselves?
I don't think that's true. The collective team effort nowadays is much more concentrated and important than it ever was. That is one thing that has really fundamentally changed about team ethic - it's a much more comprehensive unit. In my day teams were generally a collection of gifted individuals. These days guys are assembled like a piece of engineering to become a very, very tight unit.

Speaking of teams, which is the best one you have seen?
The recent Australian team that had Warne and Glenn McGrath were without a doubt possibly the best team I've ever seen. I did see the Invincibles in 1948. They were a wonderful, glamorous team that played cricket to a very high standard, dominated by the world's greatest batsman ever, Donald Bradman. But the England team they played against was a very, very impoverished collection of players. So you have to actually judge them against that background.

You write in your book that you tried interviewing Bradman but were never successful.
He was very elusive. He used to write me letters, and I've still got four or five authentic Bradman letters. Sadly, the one interview he did do before he died, with Channel 9 in Australia, could not be described as a raging success. Perhaps it was the wrong time for Bradman, who was too old by then. Maybe he never quite got to grips with the medium of television and never quite understood what it was that I wanted.

At the time I had said to have Bradman talk about cricket was like having Mozart talking about music. Bradman invented the modern game. There were only two figures in cricket who profoundly changed the game - WG Grace and Donald Bradman.

What about your old pal from Yorkshire, Geoffrey Boycott?
After I got the knighthood, he called me from South Africa, where he is living now, to check why I got the knighthood and he hadn't. I replied that it was because I'm better looking and I always was a better cricketer.

At Barnsley I played with him where I opened with Dickie Bird. Geoff used to come at fourth wicket down. He hasn't changed but he always had the making of a top-class cricketer. He had all the dedication that you require, and became a force to reckon with.

How would you define the spirit of Yorkshire cricket?
There used to be a great tradition in Yorkshire - it was about that. We felt about cricket very much like the Indians felt about cricket: it was our sport. You had to be a cricketer in Yorkshire otherwise your father would kick you out of the house. So you grew up playing cricket and every child's ambition was to wear the white rose of Yorkshire before the England cap. And the Yorkshire leagues were very, very high standard indeed.

Did you know Sir Len Hutton?
I knew him - not very well, but I knew him. He was a strange man, was a very, very fine player. When he was appointed captain of England, he took elocution lessons and it was one of the most mangled versions of Yorkshire and Queen's English you ever heard in your life. He used to place the "h"s in the wrong place.

You've never been too fond of the MCC.
When I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, England was a very class-ridden structure. And if you came from a mining community from Yorkshire as a working-class boy, you weren't like these people who'd been to posh schools and things. They talked differently and you were judged by your accent.

I got on the wrong side of the MCC very early on in my career, which I was delighted with because I hated the bastards. They (MCC) ruled cricket in those days.

Fred Trueman was a classic example. They disliked Fred's attitude, the way he wouldn't kowtow to them, because of which he missed at least three or four tours. He never toured the subcontinent, for instance. At one time he missed out an Ashes tour after he'd taken 185 wickets at 7.5.

Now it's changed. Society has changed now and those barriers are no longer there. But still I like teasing them: I insisted at my knighthood that the only people who must call me "Sir" are the MCC members.

What was the most memorable interview you did?
Muhammad Ali.

When it comes to cricket, it would be Shane Warne because he is an extraordinary man, and I've said before that he was the most gifted, remarkable bowler I'd ever seen. But it was more than that. He was an impresario. He came on to the field and you felt he ran the game. His sense of theatre and drama was unmistakeable. He was a star. He was like Trueman. When he walked on to a field people looked at him, watched him, because all of sudden it was happening. These people are important for who they are.

Was there an interview you regretted never doing?
Bradman was the only one. Sobers wasn't a good interview because he couldn't explain to me what he did - because he just did it. He was a genius.

One great cricket spectacle you watched live.
The nice thing about watching sport is, you always feel that at any given moment of time something beautiful or wondrous might happen. Watching Warne bowl at any time was a joy. Recently I saw VVS Laxman score a beautiful innings in Sydney and I was transfixed at every shot of his.

You're known to have strong views on many aspects of cricket. What's your take on walking?
Every game must be played honourably and to not walk is to cheat. Basically, what I believe is, every game belongs to the players. Players themselves must decide what kind of game they want to play.

I still remember one game at Barnsely where I snicked a ball very faintly to the keeper and the umpire gave me not out. My skipper was at the other end. He walked up to me and asked, "Did you hit that?" I said "Yes". He said, "F*** off". And I went. From that point, I walked. So it's up to the players. Watch English football to see how corrupt the game can be when players decide they'll dive, cheat and try to get the other fellow sent out.

What has cricket taught you?
I've learned about companionship and humour. It's the most beautiful of games, most complex of games. It's a game of many, many facets and that's what fascinates me. And I never met a cricketer I didn't like, actually.