This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Eras end less frequently than we are encouraged to believe. But a curtain is falling at BBC Sport, where Jonathan Agnew is approaching the last over as cricket correspondent. Although he will carry on as the lead commentator on Test Match Special, “Aggers” signed off in England after the final Test of the summer at the Oval. Only a tour of Pakistan remains.

It has been an assured innings, and a long one. Since he assumed the job in 1991, taking over from Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Agnew’s well-modulated voice has been a friendly feature of the British summer. Once a cricketer himself, for Leicestershire and briefly for England, he has represented the game with distinction.

Who will follow him? The corporation will obviously look to appoint a woman, or a non-white person, because cricket is notoriously sexist, racist and regressive. You may also throw in “classist” because Agnew attended Uppingham. After CMJ (Marlborough) and Brian Johnston (Eton), it is clear that TMS is staffed by enemies of the people.

How greatly cricket coverage has altered since Agnew took guard! In those days clarity of expression was highly valued, and the ball-by-ball description of a day’s play counted for more than witless accounts of the commentators’ social activities. There has been a carefully calibrated tilt away from a Radio 4 mentality towards 5 Live, with its self-consciously demotic tone.

In such a world the likes of Agnew have become curios from a past of which the BBC is ashamed. There are still good reporters. John Murray, the football man, is welcome in any household. But the likes of Cornelius Lysaght (another Etonian) and Ian Robertson would struggle to get a game today, when intellectual rigour does not always count in a candidate’s favour.

The decline of TMS since Peter Baxter left the producer’s stool has been well documented. Old listeners pine for the days of CMJ, “Jonners”, the young “Blowers” and, of course, the formidable John Arlott. They also hear the ghosts of “the Alderman”, Don Mosey, who was a reliable witness; and those twin summarisers, Fred Trueman and Trevor Bailey.

Trueman, it’s true, became self-parodic, though there was humour to be had from listening to his constant griping. “Neil Mallender has bowled well,” Agnew once said of a county stalwart who had been selected as a horses-for-courses pick for a Headingley Test. “I’ve seen many great fast bowlers run in from the Kirkstall Lane end,” replied Trueman. “And he’s not one of ‘em.”

The rot set in when a senior figure in the sports department told the TMS team that “every ball must be an event”. In a game like Test cricket, which has three two-hour sessions each day for five days, that remark is self-evidently absurd. So the witterers were loosed upon the public, waffling and chortling, with little regard for those odd folk who want to know what is going on.

A Sky Sports commentator once said privately that he got into his car at the local golf club and drove 10 minutes to his home, with TMS on, and not once did the commentator give the score. Thousands of listeners would second that tale, for there is a woeful lack of basic journalistic discipline.

There are now women in the box, which ought to be a good thing, though it depends on who they are. Sadly, Alison Mitchell, who shares commentary duties, has not been a success. At the fall of a wicket, one of those “events” that executive had in mind, she is frequently unable to tell listeners what happened. A cricket commentator who cannot describe a wicket is not much cop.

Isa Guha, a former player, spends too much time giggling. Alex Hartley, another cricketer, sounds like Jimmy Clitheroe’s little sister, and has been heard to tell people she has just been to the toilet. Her presence on TMS is an abomination.

The language has changed, too harshly for traditionalists who think the lore of cricket is a quality worth preserving. The fielding position of third man has become “third”, presumably because it is more inclusive. Can’t we all grow up? The clueless Mitchell has taken to calling it “deep third”, a position of no known provenance. Change and decay …

As with Katie Derham and Clive Myrie at the Proms, everything on the field of play is considered “amazing” or “incredible”. TMS loyalists, it seems, cannot be trusted to form their own judgements. They must be battered into submission by hyperbole.

We’ve come a long way from Trevor Bailey, who would call Viv Richards, the greatest of the great, “a fairly handy performer”. Understatement is a tongue his successors have yet to master.

Farewell, Aggers. One suspects he withdrew in spirit a few years ago. His voice belongs to a different world, which very often was a more agreeable place, no matter what they say. You kept your bat straight, usually, and carry our best wishes back to Melton Mowbray.