Why Sir Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Vaughan, Gareth Batty and Darren Gough should take a bow

But have you noticed how the best cricket radio summarisers seem to be Yorkshire folk?

In my view, they are streets ahead of anybody else.

Now before I am pelted with rotten tomatoes by “southern softies”, or accused of favouritism towards the good people of the Broad Acres, I should point out that I am the first cricket correspondent of this estimable organ who is not a Yorkshireman and that Lincolnshire – birthplace of your great Lord Hawke – is my native soil. My belly is yellow and my favourite landscape is flat. I was brought up in Lincoln, tha knows.

That point established, you can throw away your rotten tomatoes, any “southern softies” out there, and hear this...

Sir Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Vaughan, Darren Gough, Gareth Batty, etc... they are miles better than the rest in the trade.

Boycott, of course, is no longer dispensing his wisdom on Test Match Special, which is part of the reason why TMS, in my opinion, is losing the appeal it once enjoyed.

As a cricketing analyst, Boycott was – still is – as good as it gets. He was quite right to say that the BBC has “sacrificed quality for equality”. How true that is.

“It is now all about political correctness, about gender and race,” he said after his TMS exit. “When you work for them (the BBC) you are wary and frightened of saying anything. It is a minefield out there, and that is sad.”

Nowadays, I can only listen to Vaughan in the TMS summariser’s chair. Anybody else, and I have to retune my DAB to Smooth Radio or Planet Rock.

I find the others either poor comedians or paint-dryingly dull in comparison.

With Boycott and Vaughan there is always opinion and insight – the only reason for having summarisers, when you think about it – and, in Boycott’s case, an unparalleled appreciation of the game’s history and the ability to link past and present, which is so important and now almost lost.

With TMS not having the rights to the ongoing India tour (like Sky, they no longer have a monopoly on England cricket as the landscape of cricket broadcasting changes), I have spent quite a bit of time lately, listening for the first time to Talksport 2, which does have those rights.

The only reason I have not listened to it before is my technical ineptitude in actually locating it, but, that problem resolved, I have been extremely impressed by Gough and Batty, to go with the timeless commentating skills of such as Mark Nicholas.

Gough, of course, is a wonderful character, a natural showman to go with the wonderful skills he showed as a fast bowler for Yorkshire and England.

But you also underestimate his intelligence and skills as a summariser at your peril; he is as sharp as anyone and, like Boycott, he comes across as someone who has actually bothered to put the work into his media duties, unlike those ex-players who simply think they can stroll into the media just because they played the game.

Indeed, on the few occasions that I ghosted Gough’s column for this newspaper, I was struck by his professionalism and the fact that he had clearly thought about what he was going to say and how he was going to say it.

Believe me, this is not as typical as it should be and, again, Gough is someone with a strong opinion who is not afraid to express it, which makes him so much more enjoyable to listen to than others in his field.

Batty is also an excellent listen, another with a natural feel for the role and an interesting voice. Something of an under-rated cricketer, I have always thought, Batty is a shrewd observer and articulate with it.

So, why is this? Why are these Yorkshire folk so good at the job? The obvious, if simplistic answer, is that they are all Yorkshiremen (albeit Vaughan, technically, was born on t’other side of t’hill), and that they come from a county that prizes blunt speaking.

Personally, I think there is something in that; they call a spade a spade and do not beat about the bush (other cliches, incidentally, are available).

I know this much: whether it was Boycott in years past, or whether it’s Vaughan, Gough and Batty now, I like listening to these fellows on the airwaves.

I also think, particularly when you are listening to those who have captained, as they have, that you can see why they have done that job successfully, in that they often articulate things that you wouldn’t otherwise have noticed or thought of.

In short, they often see the game one step ahead, and if you can get summarisers who can do that, as well as give strong opinion, and match them up with commentators who can provide great dialogue around that and colour of the occasion, then you have pretty much the perfect combination.

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