Talking with Sports Writer and Radio Broadcaster Pat Murphy

Oborne & Heller on Cricket

For well over forty years, as author, reporter and commentator with the highest standards of integrity, Pat Murphy has been telling the world about cricket as it really happened. He is the guest of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast.

He sets out his ideals as a radio commentator, above all, being authentic, the same person off air as on it – like Terry Wogan. He adds: “you’ve got the best seat in the house, bring people alongside you.” The paramount need is to tell the score as soon as it changes. He shares the wonderful experience of a private seminar with John Arlott over 1 ½ days. He cites Arlott’s special gift for bringing in the crowd, one shared with other great commentators, in football and other sports, and how the current lack of crowds is a handicap to sports coverage. He hails Test Match Special in the 1970s as the apogee of cricket commentary, but notes how commentary styles have to change to meet public demand.

He reveals his favourite commentary bloopers – including the one which earned him after 45 years his first mention in Private Eye’s feature Commentator balls.

As a ghost writer and collaborator with such greats as Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Imran Khan, he shares the secrets of getting sports personalities to speak in their own voice and be open about issues which present-day readers expect to be discussed. He reveals which great cricketer could remember less about his on-field achievements than his celebration of them afterwards. He apologizes for some terrible punning titles of his books.

Pat Murphy dwells on his collaboration with “Tiger” Smith, Warwickshire and England wicketkeeper, then umpire and coach, whose long life covered a huge span of cricket history: he played with W G Grace and gave expert advice to Mike Brearley, then England captain, in 1979.

He reveals the astonishing pace (5000 words a day) at which he produced his recent detailed and multi-layered analysis of Warwickshire’s triumphs in the mid-1990s and the discipline he set himself to achieve this (including shaving before writing).

He shares his withering contempt for Rupert Murdoch and his impact on British sport and public life.

Offered the post of dictator of British sport he sets out a personal agenda for English cricket:

-Abolish the Hundred (an “atrocity”)
-End the dominance of marketing people at the English Cricket Board, and prevent them reducing and downgrading the County Championship
-Combat the marginalization of cricket in English life and declining participation thanks to the Sky paywall
-Stop cricket becoming a sport only for white children who have been to independent schools (just three black England cricketers so far this century)