Who won the Ashes, really?

Who won the 2017/2018 Ashes series?

(The Ashes, for those who don’t know, is possibly the most famous sporting contest on the planet.  It is a competition taking place every two years between England and Australia.  The game in question is cricket.  For those unfamiliar with cricket, please press the backspace icon a few times and Google ‘Kardashians’, this will be a far better use of your time than reading the following).

Of course, there are those that will say that Australia won the Ashes.  There are those also that will say that England lost the Ashes.  There is, after all, an important difference between the two matters.

What is undoubtedly true is that England’s tour Down Under was trouble-prone.  There were players that could not join because they had got into a spot of bother back home (famous sports stars get into ‘a spot of bother’ rather than being ‘charged for assault’ just like middle class students involved in vandalism are involved in ‘high spirits’ or if you go to a decent public school; ‘japes’.) and the performance on the pitch was not great.  Hovering over all of this was the unique cricket pastime of ‘sledging’ or as non-cricketing types call it ‘abuse’.  Any cricket fan will recognise the title of this Blog (although it is named G&P for quite different reasons) and will have drawn their own conclusions about which category certain Aussie and English players.

So, Australia retained the Ashes.

But BBC Radio 5 Live won the Ashes.

Here’s why.

The coverage was magnificent.  There is nothing like Test Match Special.  Arguably, the best thing to ever happen to TMS was for the BBC to lose the rights to televise cricket and then for digital radio to come along.  This meant live and uninterrupted coverage of play in Australia throughout the night, bookended by anticipation and analysis.

The BBC rightly committed programming time to exploring the phenomenon of nocturnal radio.  But it boils down to this:

If you are watching television through the night there will come a point about three in the morning when your entire body craves sleep and you feel as if somebody has replaced certain parts of you with grit.  You trek up to bed late/early and get up a few hours later feeling shocking.

Not so with radio.  One places the radio by the bed, turned down low because distractions are falling away as the midnight hour advances, and then you listen throughout the night.

Of course you don’t.  You are soundly asleep by 12:05 but occasionally stir as you subconsciously process the fall of wickets and any streakers.

You awake refreshed and ready for the day.

Radio coverage is far, far better than television coverage because the quality of the commentary is so much better.  TMS is an institution and can afford to only accept the greatest talents.  Ideally, one should apprentice until one is about 80, and then one may consider oneself a TMS fixture.

The thing about TMS is it knows that it is shepherding souls through the darkness half a world away, and it takes this privilege and responsibility seriously.

On this tour, with the performance of the England team, there was an element of pastoral care to be considered, as the commentary team did not want to wreak untold psychic damage to the unconscious subconscious attentive minds.

Moreover, this was happening over the Christmas period.  The best Christmas present that the TMS team gave the listening public back in England at the commencement of the Boxing Day test was hope.

The obvious joys of Radio 5

The controller of Radio 5 was grilled recently on Radio 5 and defended his station against accusations that it was ‘Radio bloke’ by pointing out that it has a lot of female presenters.  It certainly does, and very pretty they sound too.  The genius of Radio 5 is threefold.  Firstly, where a Radio 4 interview with a politician may last two minutes, on radio 5 they have nothing but time, and so interviews turn into conversations.  It’s fantastic to hear people whose media training means they have developed the skills to put their point in ninety seconds have to discuss matters in depth and, in truth, one gets the sense they actually enjoy it.  Secondly, as mentioned in a previous blog, it keeps middle-aged men off the streets, in this case the sheepskin-swaddled commentators that sit in media boxes at football grounds around the country, reporting into the mother ship back at Broadcasting House.  And of course, thirdly, still with middle aged me, gives purpose to those that call in to share their thoughts with their presenters and, quite incidentally, with the nation.  One thing I have noticed is that Radio 5 sports presenters treat their listeners with respect, and if you mention that you’re a season ticket holder, you can espouse whatever view you want, no matter how unconventional, no matter what subject.
What radio 5 has done is build a community.  If Radio 5 were a village, it would probably be the sort you only stop in long enough to realise you should be getting along, but for the people that live there, they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
And it’s worth mentioning that Radio 5 Extra is, of course, the home of Test Match Special.  Not for nothing was the original inscription above the door of Broadcasting House intended to be ‘Nation shall speak cricket commentary and remark about cake unto nation’ before somebody realised that wouldn’t fit and that cricket commentary and cake can be summarised simply as ‘peace’.
I am increasingly drawn to Radio 5.  I even occasionally listen to shows about soccer, a sport I know nothing, and care even less, about.  But it’s lovely to hear the presenters and the fans get excited about it, and heartwarming when some poor sod whose team has just had a six nothing thrashing starts by congratulating the opposing team before going on to describe how his team’s manager really does need to be beheaded, ‘Game of Thrones’ stylee, on the centre spot at the start of the next home game.