"Sharing my love of cricket", Henry Blofeld
This interview with Henry Blofeld and book review first appeared in the Yorkshire Post Magazine on 07 September 2024, reporter Guy Williams.
Henry Blofeld, the distinguished broadcaster and writer on cricket, has just published another set of entertaining memoirs - SHARING MY LOVE OF CRICKET.
His newest book emphasises Blowers’ major concerns about the future of Test cricket. Guy Williams reports.
Given Yorkshire’s passion for cricket and its traditional ability to produce some of the best players in the history of the game-exemplified currently by England batsmen Joe Root and Harry Brook - many supporters of the sport will enjoy the latest book by Blofeld, 84, one of the outstanding observers of cricket in the last 50 years.
SHARING MY LOVE OF CRICKET is a combination of reminiscences and, importantly, an urgent appeal to preserve the County Championship and Test matches whose survival are threatened by the relentless expansion of the T20 format, financed by the billionaires operating the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Blofeld, universally known and appreciated as Blowers, established his reputation as a distinctive BBC commentator on Test Match Special between 1972 and 2017.An entertainer par excellence, Blowers’ voice and manner of speech, taking you back to the drawing rooms of the 1920s, conveys a love of the game matched by few.
So, when his book warns that “Test cricket is under threat because it’s been pushed to the margins and if it were to cease, all two innings cricket would finish because there’s no point to it”, Yorkshire County Cricket Club and, indeed, all enthusiasts should pay attention.
Blowers’ favourite line- “My dear old thing”- while amusing is instantly followed by serious and well-argued opinions on the dangers the traditional game faces if current trends persist.
“ The only competition that breeds Test cricketers is the County Championship which has been pushed to the far ends of the season between the old football season and the new one. And the world calendar is being filled up with T20 franchise competitions, as in the USA, and the problem is that players who’ve signed contracts with franchises will not be allowed to play in Tests.
“ The T20 franchise world are saying there’s cricket that doesn’t produce money, and that’s the trouble. Once money takes over as it’s done with the IPL, greed comes hotly in pursuit.
“ T20 and The Hundred have done wonders for the women’s game which is absolutely splendid, but The Hundred worries me because it’s a sterile competition. You can’t have a Hundred World Championship because we are the only country playing it.
“ Do you really want to see four sixes being scored an over? You don’t talk about four sixes in an over for a week, as you do in Tests, because you’ve got another four sixes in the next over in T20 or in The Hundred.
“ Boundaries are being brought in and everything’s in favour of the batsmen as in the IPL where in one game between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Bangalore Royal Challengers, runs were coming at the rate of 13.8 an over. One of two of the IPL franchises are, I think, trying to get a foothold in English cricket, including Yorkshire.
“ I don’t want English cricket to sell itself completely to the IPL. It will damage the future of Test cricket, and if Tests go in this country, it’s got no chance anywhere else, I think.
“ What concerns me is the inability of the game’s administrators to fight back, so what has to happen is the franchises will have to agree to free up their players to play a certain amount of Tests. There has to be a spirit of reconciliation because what we have in front of us is pretty bleak, and it may be too late to save the game I’ve lived my life around.”
Thankfully, pessimism doesn’t dominate Blowers’ book, and nor did it when he chatted to The Yorkshire Post.
“Yorkshire continue to develop cricketers of the highest standards which is simply wonderful. Root is probably going to be the best English batsmen since the war with the possible exception of Peter May(the former Surrey and England skipper and scorer of 27,592 runs and 85 hundreds between 1950-63).
“ Joe is extraordinary and having been relieved of the England captaincy, he’s probably an even better player. He’s magnificent. I have, though, one complaint. He sometimes loses concentration and drops slip catches.
“ As regards Brook, Harry’s simply staggering. He’s still young(25) but has to start converting his 60s and 70s into big meaningful scores and, ultimately, win matches. That comes with experience. You have to admire Harry because of the stand he took when his grandmother was ill, and he wanted to be there at the final stages of her life.
“ So, he didn’t go to India. That was a brave decision for a young man who’d just begun his Test career. It showed great strength of character. Harry will, I think, eventually occupy the all-important No 3 position in the England batting order, and I’m sure Harry will go on to captain England. It’s a great tribute to Yorkshire that they still keep finding these wonderful cricketers.
“ Jonny Bairstow is another Yorkshire cricketer I admire. There’s so much of his father, David, in Jonny, but he’s probably got to the end of his England career. That happens to everyone in time. Since that accident on a golf course in 2022, he’s never been quite the same player.
“ Jonny’s been a great addition to England because of the spirit with which he plays, and off the field too in the dressing room when things aren’t going well. He’s been such an essential part, and I think that Brook will inherit that role.”
For many years, Blowers shared the BBC commentary box, not least at Headingley, with Fred Trueman, arguably the greatest personality in Yorkshire cricket history-a world class fast bowler who took 307 Test wickets (1952-65) and 2,304 wickets in a first-class career from 1949 to 1969.
“ I liked Fred enormously, we became tremendous friends, and he just didn’t regard me as a southern toff. He had a marvellous sense of humour - never better that when rain stopped play, and he talked about the old days.
“ Fred was one of the great fast bowlers and would have taken well over 400 Test wickets if he hadn’t missed Tests after he’d been dropped following the West Indies tour in 1953-54.I know Fred was fairly wild as a young man, but the England captain, Len Hutton, whom Fred played with at Yorkshire, was not good at dealing with young players. England did not cope with Fred properly.”
Yorkshire cricket, not surprisingly, has played a prominent part in Blofeld’s career in which he covered up to 700 Tests, many at Headingley.
“ Without doubt the best was at Leeds in 1981, Botham’s Ashes series. I shall never forget it and was lucky enough to be on air when the last wicket fell as Bob Willis(England fast bowler) removed Ray Bright’s middle stump to win the most dramatic of Tests.
“ I was also there when Geoff Boycott got the 100th century in his career-the famous innings against Australia in August 1977. Geoff got many bullets fired at him, but there’ve been many occasions when we would have given our eye teeth if we’d had a batsman half as adhesive as Geoffrey going in first for England.”
Blowers’ thoughts on Boycott and his approval of Bazball, the exciting style in which England skipper Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum have revived Test cricket, stress the central message of his book…the essential importance of Test cricket, now endangered by T20 and the IPL.
SHARING MY LOVE OF CRICKET, HENRY BLOFELD,
HODDER STOUGHTON £ 22.00