Fifty Years Of Test Match Special - an interview with Peter Baxter

Peter Baxter first worked on the Test Match Special (TMS) programme in 1966, and has produced it since 1973. Peter will retire from the programme at the end of the 2007 England series against the West Indies. I interviewed Peter at the Lords Media centre and joined him in a slice of cake (a tradition now synonymous with the TMS team).

Have you seen a change in the popularity of cricket since the early days of TMS?

Cricket wasn’t that popular when I started, it was going through a bit of trough. It was the 1975 series that really got things going again. Tony Gregs England side and the fast bowlers from the West Indies rekindled public interest.
I was aware that when I was taking over I was inheriting a real institution. I had listened to it myself so I was aware of its popularity and its effect. I was doing John Arlott impersonations at the age of 10, so I was a TMS fan from an early age. It was unbelievable when I took charge. I remember Robert Hudson, who was the head of department at the time and one of the great commentators, said to me that TMS was company for people. I have often thought of that and I think it is as true now as it was then. People who listen like to feel part of the family and we like to see ourselves as a family, we probably spend more time with each other than we do with our families some times!

There are more and more issues with broadcasting rights, how do you see the future for TMS?

Well the ECB were delighted when TalkSport came on the scene recently because it meant that there was someone else bidding for the radio rights. TalkSport have been bought out by an Irish company and they are not interested in bidding again. In a funny way that did us a favour because I think the BBC realised that their involvement with cricket was under threat. They really rallied round and have been fully behind us since which has been fantastic. We had three miserable winters though; it’s very difficult to cover a series when you don’t have the rights. You are basically operating outside of the law which makes things difficult. Some countries treated us differently to others, some took the long term view that although we didn’t have the rights at that time we would in the future, so they were happy to help, others were not so agreeable. One of the South Africa series was tough and of course Sri Lanka was a bit sticky. But we are back on the straight and narrow now. I think Sky have probably taken the competition for the TV rights out of everybody’s hands but that has been beneficial for us because the ECB want TMS involved.

When you were writing the book was there anything that you had forgotten that suddenly jumped out at you?

It was a lot of fun researching the commentators that I did not work with in the early days, there are some very interesting characters there. I have been producing it for 34 of the 50 years so I have to say that there is not a lot that I don’t remember.

Is there another 50 years left in TMS?

That’s a good question, I certainly hope so. I hope that in 50 years it still sounds recognizably like Test Match Special. The game will certainly last 50 years and TMS is only as good as the game itself. Broadcasting I hope can produce the characters that are capable of doing that sort of job. You have to have people who can keep the integrity of the commentary and most importantly of all you have to have commentators who know cricket. It needs to be second nature, TMS commentators need to have the verbal ability to explain the cricket and paint the whole picture. We don’t have a high turnover of people so we introduce people into the team very gradually. Certainly there have been members of the team who has said that when they were first commentating it was very intimidating.

The recent World Cup in the Caribbean must have been an interesting competition for the TMS team.

It was a logistical nightmare. Just getting it on the air was a huge effort and I think it was about a third of the way through the tournament that we realised that it was quite dull. It was such an exciting exercise to get on the air mainly because the Caribbean is a difficult place to do a live broadcast. The trouble was that the technical systems are all different so you have that to deal with along with getting the right team to the right game. We started to realise that the World Cup was not improving and we started to ask ourselves how many good matches had we had actually seen? We decided that we had seen 3 good games; England v Sri Lanka, England v West Indies and Bangladesh v Ireland, which was a shame.

Do you think that the growing popularity of the short forms of the game will have an effect on Test Match Special?

We don’t get the same audience figure for One Day games as we do for Test matches. I like One Day games and the draw for the crowds is obvious, people can take a day off work and see a full game and a result. There are only a certain amount of things that can happen in a One Day game and we have seen most of them now. It is only very occasionally that the team batting first get the right number of runs to make an interesting and a competitive game. Test match cricket is still the pinnacle of the game.

I talk to Peter Ackerley, Head of ECB Youth Development, About The State Of The Youth Game.

Could you explain how the increase in funding is improving the development of youth cricket in the UK?

There is wide range of areas where we now receive funding from. That funding goes into a single investment fund which it is then filtered out to the development programmes across the UK. What we do then, subject to an agreed funding formula with our 39 County Boards, is spread the money out to the County Boards. The funding the Boards receive is accountable to some very specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and some agreed roles and responsibilities that our County Board can work towards. The Boards get an agreed fixed fee each year subject to them fulfilling the KPIs which we have agreed with them.
75% of the Boards funding is fixed, the other 25% of the funding is linked to performance. What I mean by that is;
Are the boards increasing participation?
Are they increasing the membership to clubs?
Are the clubs on the way to, or already, being accredited?
They also have to increase the number of coaches, volunteers and the amount of roles out there for those volunteers. If they do that they get that extra 25%.
This is all about getting an inclusive, cohesive single approach to the development structure.

What are the County Boards bringing to this process?

We are now at a situation where we are in a business process with the County Boards. We work very closely to make sure that they improve their levels of strategic planning and we help and support them in that. We are looking into what they are doing for their own leadership and governance as well, where are they in their development programmes. Having gone through this process we now know roughly where the 39 Counties are in term of their development structure. At the end of September 2007 they have to deliver against key targets and core responsibilities.

How does the ECB and the County Boards work together?

Each County Board has now got, in addition to its main board, a very key operational management group who are responsible for working with the regional managers. This group decide what they can achieve and how they are going to improve. It’s a self assessment process and they agree to a level that they believe they can achieve. I do not mind if a County Board sets itself a low target as long as they are moving forward and improving. It realise on locally based decisions, which works very well, it’s a demand led system, what do Cornwall, for instance, need in order to progress. Once we know what a County requires in order to improve we can then work out how much funding they will need to hit that target.

And it is obviously a comprehensive approach to cricket development.

No County can get away with not supporting cricket for people with disabilities, women and girls, ethnic minorities and hard to reach areas in inner cities. It doesn’t mean that every county has to do it to the same level, it means that they have to hit the targets they have agreed with their regional managers.

Can you elaborate on the steep increase in the Cricket Development programme and where you see it going?

A lot of the people involved have been with us since the beginning. But let’s not forget that we are only 10 years young, this is the tenth anniversary of the ECB formulating. So for a young business we have made huge strides. In the last 2 years there has been a lot happening and that has culminated in a fantastic increase in income. From October 2007 – September 2010 I am going to be investing just over 14 ½ Million Pounds. That is from a single investment fund, just revenue funding not capitol. Now that does not including the Chance to Shine [approx ½ Million per annum] funding and other addition funding that will come in. That is quite a significant leap forward for us because 10 years ago we were getting around £50,000 per year, so you can see the difference. Clearly I want people incredibly accountable for that money, it is public funding.
By the end of this summer we will have articulated our 2009-2013 strategy will be. So you can see that we are working towards being bigger and better in the future. We have to be that forward thinking, in a smaller scale, it is what we are asking our clubs to do, plan ahead.

What are the main areas you are focusing on in order to reach the goals you have set for the programme?

The key to this is regionalisation, funding in the future will be based in regions.
Community is at the centre of this, it about people and encouraging them to get involved and be part of their local club. Once you start getting adults and children involved in initiatives like this you then start getting people away from their computer games and outside, it starts effecting obesity rates, social skills and many other things not related to sport.

Government funding is very important in all of this. Would they come in with such levels of funding if private companies had not chosen to invest as well?

There is a very key government agenda now where they want to invest along side private businesses and enterprises. A lot of the funding we have received from the government would not have happened without the private funding. For example, we have managed to take our Sky Sports Coach Education programme and match the funding with public finance to increase the network of coaches and tutors. That is a good example of what the government want to do. Off the back of what we are doing jobs will be created along with community and regional work forces, the government are aware of that and want to support that.

How do you see the ECB development programme moving forward?

We know now that when we invest money we can quickly get massive returns in terms of improving the participation rates of adults and children in cricket. We are starting to work with a Chance to Shine and the Cricket Foundation to look at using cricket as an educational tool. How cricket can become more literate, more numerate, informing kids about nutrition and how the body works. All of this will be available online to every teacher in the land. One of our key targets over the next two months is to breakdown the ECB website and make it easier for people to find the information that is there. The website is a great tool because it allows a groundsman in Lincolnshire, for example, to go online and find out how best to prepare a pitch, that’s a great tool and we have information for teachers, coaches, chairmen, you name it.
Within 12 months I want to be in a position to see how many people actually play the game. Now it’s not governed by any particular standard, it’s about the whole cricket family, from county cricket right down to youth Kwik Cricket. I want to be able to measure what the cricket family looks like.
We know the product is good, we want to bring the whole arena of cricket together and we are creating the links to enable us to do that. We know we are doing something right; you look at the increase in investment over the last ten years and the increased participation and it bods very well for a bright future.

The Great BurnOut Issue

Crickets Governing Bodies will lose the battle against player burnout unless they face up to the implications of an overloaded calendar and come to a happy medium.

Since the Ashes of 2005 the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) would seem to have had a hotline to the press with their latest announcement of injury. Michael Vaughan, Simon Jones and Ashley Giles have been the main ‘sicknotes’ within the England squad but there have also been ongoing problems for Andrew Flintoff and Jimmy Anderson that have necessitated surgery or extended periods of inactivity. Injuries to high profile players are of course nothing new. The two premier spin bowlers in world cricket over the last decade Muttiah Murilitharan and Shane Warne along with Shane Bond and Glenn McGrath representing the fast men, have had extended spells out of the game through injury over the last few years.

The Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA) headed by the former Australian spinner has long stated that there is too much International cricket on the global calendar. The main concern for the players’ union has been player burnout and attempting to maintain the highest quality by ensuring that the best player’s are fit to play at their best.

The International Cricket Council has a difficult balancing act in trying to raise funds to disseminate throughout the cricket world. Their philosophy is to try to spread the game globally by encouraging the established test nations to play the minnows more regularly, but also to encourage regular test and one day series between those same test nations. The league tables for both test and one-day cricket has further increased the pressure on all of the established cricketing nations to perform at the top of their game on a constant basis.

It would seem that the respective boards are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Do they continue to expose players to such a heavy workload or do they pick weakened teams on a regular basis to protect players from injury? The fact is that weakened sides are already being fielded regularly due to the surgeon’s knife. Having been on the consultant’s table some thirteen times (nine knee and four back operations) over the years I am well placed to have an opinion on at least some of the causes.

So how can we reduce injuries in cricket?

Traumatic injuries usually occur when the body is pushed beyond its limit and such strain leads to failure, be it to ligament, tendon, muscle or bone. Recent examples of such injuries are those suffered by Simon Jones and Andrew Symonds rupturing anterior cruciate ligament and bicep tendon respectively and are to a large extent unavoidable. David ‘Syd’ Lawrence remains a harrowing memory as he fractured his patella in the action of bowling in New Zealand. All that can be asked of players, trainers and physiotherapists alike is that players are as prepared as they can be to take the field. Certainly player preparation and fitness have increased exponentially over recent years but this does not seem to have transferred itself into fewer injuries for the players.

Fatigue injuries are slightly less obvious as they tend to creep up on players and selectors alike. Players attempting to perform at the top of their games over many years will inevitably have dips in form whether through physical or mental fatigue. Focusing on the physical aspect this can be broken into two categories. The player who feels physically drained and does not seem to be able to produce what was once expected. This player will possibly exhibit signs of an accompanying mental fatigue.

Physical signs can also be represented by a chronic injury that whilst allowing the player to continue taking the filed will lead to the player being unable to concentrate as well as before and being less effective in terms of their level of performance and the amount of work that they can get through. Andrew Flintoff is a good case in point as at times he has continued playing at the highest level with a persistent ankle injury leading to an inevitable decline in performance and ultimately to enforced rest after surgery. Both types of fatigue injury represent a great challenge to selectors, trainers and physiotherapists. Players are reluctant to admit to any kind of mental fatigue and those that have chosen this path and have taken time out of the game have been roundly criticised in the media when choosing to rest during a winter campaign. Players that have perhaps not judged those moments well enough have received support and sympathy rather belatedly, though it is important to stress that certainly the ECB and the Professional Players’ Association (PCA) have both improved their act in this area immeasurably in the more recent past. There is however no doubt that more could be done to help players with chronic injury to better rehabilitate. Players coming back from injury need to be given more time and more appropriate quality matches before they are rushed back into contention for test places. This winter the likes of Michael Vaughan, James Anderson and Ashley Giles have all been rushed into contention too soon and have to a man not been able to produce the sort of form of which they are capable. Selectors need to develop a much more rigorous attitude to player fitness and ensure that players coming back from injury really are ready to step back into the cauldron that is international cricket. They need anticipate player fatigue, both physical and mental, and rest players so that they can expect to perform at their very best whenever they pull on their national colours.

What are the techniques?

Presentation of lumbar stress fractures (spondylolysis) is not well covered within the literature. Symptomatic patients typically present with focal low back pain that sometimes can radiate into the buttock or away to the lower extremities. Symptoms are often of a gradual and mild in nature for some time, with an acute worsening after a particular event, causing the pain to become more chronic and dull with time. Typically in the early stages, the fast bowler becomes aware of pain after bowling only, followed by an earlier onset of pain as the condition progresses, until the pain is felt very early in a bowling spell and ultimately to the point where bowling becomes impossible. Right arm bowlers almost exclusively develop pain to the left side of the lumbar spine at a point named the pars interarticularis. A combination of rotation coupled with hyperextension and left sided lateral flexion is known to give rise to such fractures. This means that bowlers that lean back prior to delivery or that collapse on their non-bowling arm side or show excessive rotation of the spine through the action are very vulnerable to these types of pars fractures.

Historically there was thought to be just one bowling action for the fast bowler. The side-on action. A study by Elliott and Foster (1984) of four Australian International fast bowlers led to the recognition of a second technique known as front-on. Most of the studies into spondylolysis injuries in cricket were carried out by Elliott and Foster in Western Australia. They determined that for both the side-on and front-on techniques the hips and shoulders need to be in alignment with one another at back foot impact (BFI), and for there to be no notable deviation from this position until just prior to release.
The ECB cricket coaching manual (2000) equally stresses the need to keep the shoulders and hips in alignment as much as possible through the bowling action, and puts great emphasis on the position of the hips and shoulders at both BFI and front foot impact (FFI). The basic message is to reduce any twisting of the spine by keeping the hips and shoulders in the same alignment throughout the bowling action, and that the hips and shoulder orientation should match the side-on or front-on position of the feet. The ECB also have guidelines in place known as ‘the fast bowling directives’, designed to limit the numbers of balls bowled both in practice and matches in age group cricket. Almost universally players, parents and coaches alike dislike these limits but they are essential if we are to protect young bodies during the major growing years.

However much the bowling directives are disliked it is essential that we both limit the number of times young bowlers put their bodies under maximal stress and that we are ever more vigilant in assuring that techniques adhere to those in the coaching manuals. Given that
Elliott and Foster (1984) found mean vertical ground reaction forces (GRF) at front foot impact to be 4.7 times body weight. Similar mean vertical GRF have been noted in later studies ranging between 4.1 and 9 times body weight irrespective of the standard of performance (Elliott et al (1986), Mason et al (1989), Foster et al (1989) Elliott et al (1992), Elliott et al (1993) and Hurrion et al (2000). The lower limb absorbs much of the force but is unable to shield the lumbar spine from some of this impact (Nigg 1983). The lumbar spine is exposed to these forces whilst potentially hyper-extended, rotated and laterally flexed as the bowler attempts to summate a high degree of power from within the musculoskeletal system (Burnett et al 1998). By its very nature fast bowling is an extremely stressful occupation. When the body is required to absorb impact of such high values even with a completely pure action it is not assured of escaping injury. Without strict adherence to preparation and technique the chances of both minor and serious injury are inevitably increased.

Neil Foster represent England in 29 test matches and 48 one-day international matches and taking over 1,000 wickets in all first class cricket in that time. Due to knee and back injuries through his career Neil spent more and more time on the physiotherapy table and it caught his imagination. Neil is now a member of both the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (CSP) and the Organisation of Chartered Physiotherapists in Private Practice (OCPPP). Neil's main clinic is run from East Bergholt in the Dedham Vale but he also runs clinics in Clacton-on-Sea and Great Bentley.

Dark Clouds Hide Flintoff Injury

During the launch of Asda’s annual Kwik Cricket initiative at Regents Park yesterday (May 14th) Andrew Flintoff batted and bowled against a gaggle of young cricketers. It was a wet and windy day in North London and with many of the ECB staff present discussing the weather forecast for the rest of the week it appears that the First Test against the West Indies will be a wash out.

This will no doubt be a huge relief to Peter Moores. Moores will be keen to start his new tenure with the best team possible on the field. With Vaughan injured and Flintoff going for a scan the appearance of a bit of rain is probably not unwelcome. Freddie announced his ankle was still giving him some pain and that he was only “hopeful of being fit for Thursday”.

An ECB spokesman commented on Flintoff fitness:

"A further re-assessment of Andrew's injury will be made by the ECB Medical Team tomorrow morning prior to the England team's net practice at Lord's." However, hearing word from Flintoff’s manager, Neil Fairbrother, it appears that Freddie is having a scan at a Harley Street clinic before an announcement is made about his fitness by the ECB medical team.

Flintoff was cautious during the interview and would only class himself as “all right” when asked. “Sometimes when it is the ankle the alarm bells start ringing a bit but I’m still very hopeful. When I was operated on it was on the back and the inside of the ankle but this pain is more on the outside. This discomfort is something I felt during the winter so it is not something completely new.”

He was jovial for the most part though. When asked a seemingly bizarre question by an Indian reporter regarding the likelihood of him retiring by the next World Cup he was bemused and stated that being “only 29” he would “hope that he would certainly be playing in that one”. But with the constant injury problem that are starting to plague Flintoff it may not have been such a ridiculous question.

The captaincy issue is one that has created much hype since 'pedalogate' and when asked about this he was keen to lay any fears to rest regarding any possible animosity. “The issue of captaincy hasn’t crossed my mind since I got back from the Caribbean, I have just been concentrating on getting my game back in order. I’ve spent some valuable time in the nets with Neil Fairbrother and I have got some good scores for Lancashire. I am happier with my game than I have been recently.”

When asked about the poor performance of the England team in the World Cup Flintoff obviously wanted to look forward. "Staying in the West Indies gave me some time to reflect about what had gone on over the winter and, more importantly, how to move on from there and how I'm going to get back to playing my best cricket. I feel I'm going in the right direction," he said.

"The bowling does seem to take care of itself for the time being and the emphasis has been more on batting. I've worked hard and it seems to be coming back a bit now. "I've by no means cracked it, or am where I want to be, but I'm a lot happier about how I'm playing.”

In a light hearted exchange Freddie was asked by an Irish TV crew about his huge popularity in Ireland, especially with the Ladies. “I have no control over the Irish women; I don’t see myself as a sex symbol. I want to focus on playing cricket and playing well. I’m just pleased that I can help this (Asda) initiative; anything that can make thousands of kids take up cricket deserves my support.

Tom Cowle© Cricket World 2007