While everyone is obviously a fan of Richie Benaud as we have all listened to his nasal whine for the last 45 years or whatever... there are other commentators.
Who makes you laugh, who makes you cringe?
I quite like Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain from what I've heard and Bill Lawry's enthusiasm for the game is still incredible. David Gower can be wonderful or rather half-assed. You've got to laugh at Boycott too, with all his stereotypes "My Granny ....." etc.
Not a fan of Ian "boring" Chappell (though his brother Greg was much worse). Mark "Tubby" Taylor's gasping for breath gets on my nerves a bit too.
Like the best sledges, the best commentary one-liners tend to be claimed by and attributed to anyone who happened to be walking past the media centre on the day they were uttered. And so, it is hard to work out exactly who came up with the following gem on Brian Lara's epic 277 at Sydney in 1992-93, an innings so good that he named his daughter after the venue. "It's a good thing the game was not in Lahore,"
I find that Kerry O'Keeffe is always always good value - great sense of humour and never dull. Admittedly though, he tends to enjoy reeling off anecdotes about his times playing for Australia rather than talking too much about the game, but was there ever an ex-player who didn't love telling anecdotes? Boycs of course; Blofeld for sheer amusement value; Jeremy Coney is superb; and Donna Symmonds from Barbados makes a refreshing change.
Blofeld's alright if only cos it's just so great to hear him still going ... there's a lot of history, shared and personal, in his voice, approach and so on.
On Sky I think Holding's great. Test Match Special (TMS) is just excellent radio - it offers so much more than simply sporting commentary - listening to ABC a little during the Ashes I thought they managed to convey the action very well, but the overall experience was really lacking in breadth. What "banter" there was was very "locker-roomy". Just didn't have that mix of anecdotes, personality, fun and serious cricket appreciation.
I liked whoever did the "skytrator" stuff in the AShes ... who was that.
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