Change of delivery as voice of cricket aims for fresh stage in life

David Lloyd doesn't really answer questions – he tells stories.

Is he enjoying being in Yorkshire? He answers with a tale about his wife choosing to go to Scarborough for their 10th wedding anniversary –"she's as mad as a balloon" is offered by way of explanation. Asked about how much he enjoys his job, he sings the praises of the street markets he visited in Karachi while working out in Pakistan.

Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre is not David Lloyd's natural home, but it's sunny outside and this natural raconteur is in his element. The previous night, Lloyd was on duty at Headingley, commentating on the Twenty20 Roses clash when his native Lancashire lost to the Tykes.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"Your lot turned us over," he laughs, talking very much as a fan and making anyone listening feel like they missed a fantastic match.

"Your lot got 155, that's far too many for this lot," he says, meaning the current Lancashire team.

"They had no chance. Couldn't get anywhere near it.

"Ah well, stuff happens."

David Lloyd, former first class cricketer, former England coach, commentator and Twitter phenomenon, has been taken into the hearts of cricket lovers, and many with hardly even a passing interest in the game cherish him.

Especially in a football World Cup year, cricket can feel like a minority sport, and certainly a long way behind the nation's favourite game. For Lloyd to have broken out of the confines of the game and become not only well known, but well loved, outside the arena of cricket, is remarkable.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Even in Yorkshire, I suggest, where his unmistakably Accrington burr might grate from any other mouth, Lloyd (or Bumble, as he is better known to cricket followers) is admired.

"You must be joking," he laughs at the suggestion that Yorkshire folk have taken a Lancastrian to their collective bosom.

"Last night at Headingley, we had a 10-minute build-up. I'm in the dug-out (all his stories are told in the present tense] on the ground and they're starting. I've got to get to the other side of the ground. I realise that I'm going to have to run the gauntlet – I can't go

straight across the ground, can I? You can say I'm popular, but there were plenty Yorkshire folk shouting 'get back to where you came from' as I ran down the back of the stands."

He pauses for laughter but rarely for breath.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In the commentary box, whether accompanied by the sonorous Michael Holding, the informed Nasser Hussain or the bullish Ian Botham, David Lloyd stands out as the enthusiastic joker in the pack.

"Start the car" has become a well-known Bumble-ism which was used as the title of his book published last month, and "this pitch is as flat as a dodo" is another oft-quoted gem.

Where does he get them?

"Start the car was one that just came out of my head – it's in the subconscious, I think," he says, before remembering later he probably borrowed it from comedian Mick Miller. "I'm coming up with my own words this summer. I've got a new phrase – biff, bash, biffability. I'm hoping that'll catch on this year."

Lloyd began his first class cricket career in the Sixties, playing for Lancashire, later as captain, and graduating to play for England in the Seventies, representing the national team for only a year.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Despite a modest playing career, the all-rounder was appointed England coach in 1996 for three torrid years.

His tenure was characterised by outspokenness and ill-advised comments to the press – he famously said after England had had two close draws against Zimbabwe that "we flipping murdered them".

After being dumped as England coach, he was approached by Sky, and began his second career as a commentator.

Lloyd is in Scarborough for Twenty:20, a new play written by fellow Lancastrian James Quinn. They met through a mutual friend in Lancashire.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Lloyd says: "He's cracked, is James. Mad. He knows more than me about cricket. When we met, he told me about games I played in that he remembers and I don't."

When cricket fanatic Quinn wrote his new play, which premieres at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre this summer, he asked Lloyd if he would provide a recorded voice as a commentator for the show.

"I don't know much about theatre, but I went along to a show James had written at The Library theatre in Manchester and I laughed my socks off."

"There were four short plays on that night. It started at seven and was finished by 8.30pm. That's my kind of night out at the theatre.

"I think I'm ready for Don Giovanni."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

With his penchant for a slightly mangled turn of phrase, David Lloyd is one of the superheroes of Twitter, the social networking site on which users provide updates on the minutiae of their day-to-day lives.

Boring? The 71,000 people who follow him don't think so.

He takes great delight in announcing: "I've got twice as many followers on Twitter as Aggers (fellow commentator Jonathan Agnew)."

One of his most high profile followers on Twitter is pop star Lily Allen, the daughter of Keith Allen. She became engrossed in cricket during the 2005 England Ashes campaign.

A Twitter superstar, author of a book that is essentially his rambling, meandering thoughts and hero of cricket commentating – does all of this late and varied success come as a surprise to him?

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"It's great, I'll do anything," he says, not for the first time

answering a question that he appears to have heard in his own head.

"I travel the world watching the elite play the game I love. I'm a good traveller, not like some of them others who commentate. Sri Lanka's lovely, a lovely place, but it's too hot. The only place I have trouble is Bangladesh, I'm not going there again. I always get ill. Not because of the food – every time I've gone, I've got a chest infection.

"I always eat the local food. I love it – that's my one tip for when you travel – always eat the local food."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Another question is asked, another question ignored and Lloyd ends on a story.

"I'll tell you another story that shows you how popular I'm not," he says.

"Myself and Paul Allott, we're coming home from a match in Nottingham recently. We stopped off at a pub in Macclesfield, a real ale pub and we had our Sky Sports jackets on. This bloke's standing at the bar and he says, 'Have you got any freebies?'

"We realised he'd seen our Sky Sports jackets and he thought we were dish installers.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"We told him we were commentators. He asked for what, and we

said, 'Cricket'."

"He said, 'I don't like cricket', and turned round and carried on watching the telly."

n Twenty:20 is at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from July 13 to September 11.