ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, or Bradman Doth Murder Sleep

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 6

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, or

Bradman Doth Murder Sleep

| Written for "The Listener" |

by

A.

M.

HE test matches in England are over-for the teams, the spectators, and the immense audience of listeners at home and overseas. Cricket lovers in Australia and New Zealand no longer creep to work in the morning blearyeyed with night-watching. There has never been anything to equal this ball-

by-ball. commentary from England — so full, so expert, so clear, so- intimate. Out here at the Antipodes — or as

near to them as doesn’t matter-we had a free grandstand seat without eyes, but with ears delicately, and now and then clamorously, informed of the progtess of play. Of late years we have supped so full of wonders that the sense of wonder may well have been dulled, perhaps to the immeasurable spiritual loss of man, yet, really, what is wonderful should not cease to be such because it is oft repeated. Listening to radio till it becomes an old armchair habit, we may still remind ourselves that it is a miracle that Wellington, Taihape, Whangarei, or Gore should be able to follow in detail the fortunes of a game twelve thousand miles away. Indeed, served by expert commentators in qa favourable position to report, listeners at this extreme stretch of distance may know at the moment more of what is happening "in the middle" than a man at the back of the watching crowd. Football and Cricket ’ I was struck afresh by the difference between cricket broadcasts and those of other sports. Football is dynamic, tense, close-packed with incident. The position is apt to change so quickly that . the commentator finds it difficult to keep pace, and has to fire off his description with the rattle of a machine-gun. Fond as I am of Rugby, I find the rat-rat-tat-tat trying after a while} and I wonder, supposing football was played all day, how many listeners could stand the strain. Cricket is ruminative. Between balls, "and much more ‘so between overs

and a batsman going out and another coming in, one can look round and reflect, discuss anything one likes, from prospects of the match to the particular blue of the sky, a bird on the wing, or problems of philosophy. One can even dream. Neville Cardus said of an afternoon in a county match at Old Trafford _that everybody went to sleep until a batsman woke them up with a six, which

sounded like the banging of a door on a still night. Of course the unexpected frequently happens. Play that

resembles a modern story of psychological analysis suddenly becomes a drama of sword play and cannonading poetry, with corpses strewing the field. But even then, if the agony is prolonged till men chew the handles of their umbrellas and find that the great globe itself is annihilated to a stabbing green thought in the sun, there are these interludes to bring a measure of merciful relief. The fast bowler takes his long -walk back. The fieldsmen move across at the same leisurely pace. The umpires are unperturbed. It is as if on the fall and confession of Laertes, someone called out "Over"; and there was a stroll round before Hamlet killed the King. Time for the Job This is all jam to the commentator. He has time for his job. . However exciting the drama, there will always be @ pause, in which he can tell the world just what has happened. The roar of the crowd at some stroke of fate, as when Pollard bowled Bradman, may drown his voice completely for a minute or two, but he can afford to wait. Of course the job has its problems. The! commentator must keep going through the Doldrums as well as the spanking Trades and the Cape Horn storm. "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man"; when the batsman’s defence takes on a drowsy rhythm, and the very houses seem asleep, the commentator has to say something about each ball. He must fill in intervals. As they say on the stage, he must never "dry up." Yet, when the commentating is organised as it was by the BBC, I don’t think the work is particularly difficult. The men know the game through and through. They may themselves have won distinction in it. They work in short relays; The man at the microphone can consult a colleague. "Alan, did you see exactly what happened then? Did second slip get a hand on that tall?" Or, "What do you think the weather is going to do, Arthur?" This deepens the sense of intimacy at the listener’s fireside. The BBC has kindly provided him with a team of commentators, and what nice friendly chaps they are. And these links have the history and atmosphere of the game to help

them along. As they wait for play to start, or for another batsman to come out, they can discuss the weather, the wicket, the crowd,. or past performances. "Let me see, this is X’s fourth century in tests, isn’t it?" "How many wickets has Y taken this tour, and what’s his average?" "Just a minute till I work it out." Quite a family affair.

Yes, the BBC did a fine job. Their commentators -were knowledgeable, pleasant-spoken, easy-mannered, neverfailing, and impartial. These good sportsmen carried on with a nice turn of phrase and an agreeable wit. "Hutton has gone out to pat down the wicketreverently, for this is Yorkshire soil." If you follow English cricket you realise that nowhere else could the jest be so pointed. . In Yorkshire they take their cricket very very ‘seriously. The Oval wicket is better for runs than Lord’s, but gasometers and tenements give the scene a dour drab look compared with the graciousness of cricket’s headquarters. Filling in time before play began at the Oval, a commentator told us he had instructions to. refer, not to "gasometers" but to "gas-holders." "What happens if they leak?" he asked. "Gasholders" is certainly better, for "gasometer" should mean, not a gas container, but a gas measurer. But the incident, shows how lynx-eyed officialdom may become. Perhaps this is a result of Mr. Churchill’s campaign for better English in Government Departments. The State, remember, now owns the gasworks of. England. The Night Watches Now what of the vast listening public on our side of the world? How many listened all through the night, and every night? How many cups of tea were drunk during the voluntary vigil? How many men and women were more or less unfit for work next day? On Friday and Saturday nights it did not matter so much, because the morrow was an off day. It is another argument for the forty-hour week that the New Zealander should be able to sit up on Friday nights and listen to cricket if he wants to. But the dombstic problems that arise are intriguing. Thousands of New Zealand ' houses are small and lightly partitioned. What happens if father wants to listen and the family doesn’t? When one young woman told me, with an air of. grievance, that she had sat up till two ene morning, I expressed surprise. "Was she interested in cricket?" | "No, but the bloke I was with was." "Couldn’t you read?" "You try reading with that stuff coming over the air: so-and-so bowls to so-and-so, and that so-and-so hits him to silly-mid-on, or some sillier place, and it goes on and on with local comment. ‘By Jove, that’s good!’; ‘Splendid!’; ‘That must have been a

snorting ball!’ They asked what I thought of it, and I said it was great fun, and they believed me!" ‘To which I replied that she was old enough to be aware of the danger of irony. "And the post-mortems next day!" she added. Sleeping and Waking But there are women who listen to cricket. I know a man and his wife who sat up till four-thirty one night, and an old woman of eighty in the household lay in bed listening from her own set. There were men who took themselves to their bedrooms. Some of them went to sleep with the story going on, and woke and listened, and slept again. They may have dozed off happy with the thought of England in a good position (many New Zealanders, I-know, wanted England to win) and wakened to find her in the soup, or as the schoolboy said, "viva voce." There must have been some confusion between the dream and the reality. The total mounted--Eng-land no wickets for 100; no wickets for 200; no wickets for 300, with Hutton and Washbrook hitting sixes in every over-and then thesquiet voice from the set: "And the score is England six wickets for 150; it doesn’t look too good for England, ‘does it, Arthur?" As Keats said on another and perhaps more important occasion: "Fled is that music; do I sleep or wake?" This prone position would not satisfy all men. I know one New: Zealander, passionately anxious for England to win, who paced up and down and made his own running-commentary, "Good Lord, can’t anyone bowl straight?" "What about a yorker?" "Doesn’t anyone think of a high full toss?" The Non-Cricketing Wife But what did the non-cricketing wife do all this time while her husband was listening through the sleeping hours? Toss about and wish that she had married someone whose love was bowls? I asked a man who did a lot of listening, "Oh, my wife sleeps like a log." Cricket broadcasts seem to me to be a strong argument for twin beds. And what of next morning? Was this particular listener tired? "Oh, no," he explained, "I've been in the army, and I’m used to losing sleep." He admitted, however, that some of his office colleagues were a bit sticky about the eyes. But perhaps it is no more curious that many New Zealand workers should decide to draw on their strength like this, than (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) that on non-holidays, in an England where everybody is expected to work, cricket grounds should be packed. How much refreshment was used to keep things going? I asked one couple how many brews of tea they made. "Only one." "And you good New Zealanders!" "We had two bottles of beer and two gins as well." I hear of a party of men whose careful arrangements for the night included enough beer to provide drinks at frequent intervals. There is some doubt as to whether by five o'clock they knew which side was batting. We've had our fun. If you can’t see Bradman bat, or Lindwall bowl, the next best thing is to hear them. I have many

cricket memories, I saw Trumper make 87 out of 137 in an hour on the softest possible wicket, and another time, 293 in an afternoon. I watched Hobbs and Sutcliffe put on 150 for the first wicket in a test match. I was at Eden Park when Hammond hit three sixes running. I add to them that over of Pollard’s when he got Hassett and Bradman. With Hassett, the commentator managed to say, "He’s out!" before the crowd took charge; when Bradman went, the crowd, as I have said, beat him. I have never seen Don bat, but I have heard him go out. As the English yokel said when asked if he had ever seen Queen Victoria: "Naw, but I’ve an uncle who come very nigh seeing the Dook o’ Welling-

ton.

Well, here’s to next time, which may be the New Zealanders’ tour of England in 1949. The world. will put these matches on a lower level, but our own men will be playing, so lights will be on all over the country (provided the matches are broadcast), and wives will sleep or groan and much tea and other comforts will be drunk, and heads will nod over desks next day. Who was it said life would be tolerable if it were not for its amusements?