0Blofeld & Baxter — Memories Of Test Match Special

A couple of nights back I went to Shef­field City Hall with a few of the fam­ily to see Henry Blofeld and Peter Bax­ter doing what they do best — telling stor­ies and reveal­ing some of what goes on in the TMS box. Unlike many “per­formers” they star­ted on time at 7:30 and car­ried on (with a short inter­val) until past 10pm. If they’re com­ing to a place near you and you have a free even­ing I really recom­mend get­ting a tick­et and going down — it was one of the best even­ings of enter­tain­ment a crick­et fan could ask for

I’m not going to spoil the show by repeat­ing all the stor­ies, and I sus­pect its only vaguely planned any­way as both are won­der­ful racon­teurs and to some extent prob­ably make the show up as they go along. How­ever I will give a little detail of some of the stor­ies. There were many stor­ies of drink includ­ing an incid­ent with a pint of whis­key. There was the story of the first TMS team in India, where Henry decided to drive and a friend took him in a 1920’s Rolls Royce. There was even a story where the press coach was held up by armed mili­tia!  And there were plenty of stor­ies involving 3 won­der­ful former com­ment­at­ors: John Arlott, Bri­an John­ston and of course CMJ.

Lastly — thee was the reveal­ing story about the fam­ous “Bowl­ers Hold­ing” com­ment­ary. Accord­ing to Blowers this really did­n’t hap­pen — the story ori­gin­ates from Johnners talk­ing about it in inter­view and say­ing he did­n’t know if he’d said it, but that he had received a let­ter say­ing that he had. The give-away that it was all made up was the name of the sender on the let­ter, but I wont spoil Henry’s story by giv­ing that detail away here.