A COMMENTARY ON SPORTS

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27988, 7 June 1956, Page 3

A COMMENTARY ON SPORTS

FAMILIAR VOICES WILL BE HEARD IN TEST CRICKET BROADCASTS

Although it is but two days to the start of the Springboks’ tour of New Zealand, the thoughts of many New Zealanders will leave Rugby this evening for the cricket at Trent Bridge, where the Australian and England teams meet today in the first test of the 1956 series. ‘ '

For the first test at least, ball-by-ball commentaries will be rebroadcast by the Wellington national station, and listeners will hear again the familar voices of John Arlott and Rex Alston. The third member of the broadcasting team this year is Michael Charlton, of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and the expert asides and assessments will be contributed by the former England captain, Norman Yardley.

Rex Alston has been broadcasting on cricket, Rugby football, tennis, and athletics for more than 10 years. He broadcast the athletics commentary on the Olympic Games at Wembley in 1948 and was in charge of the English commentators at Helsinki in 1952. He expects to visit Melbourne this year for the Olympic Games. He was at Vancouver, covering the Empire Games in 1954.

Last year Alston gave commentaries from Prague and Moscow on the British athletic tour of Czechoslovakia and Russia. In 1953 he was one of the 8.8.C.’s commentators on the Coronation; an unusually versatile commentator, he has described such diverse events as the Royal Academy dinner and the farewell at Wembley to the American evangelist, Billy Graham, last year, Alston was a schoolmaster at Bedford School before joining the 8.8. C. in 1942. At Cambridge he took am honours degree in French and history. He was captain of cricket and athletics at Clare College, played Rugby for the college, and won his running blue. He also played cricket for Bedfordshire for several years, and for two years was county captain.

Poet, essayist, columnist, author, radio producer and-radio commentator, John Arlott is almost as well known in New Zealand as Hutton and Bradman ever were. His loamy, Hampshire voice, his swift humour, his turn of phrase and his clear understanding of the listeners’ requirements have made him popular among cricketers all over the world.

Arlott, born at Basingstoke, was twelfth man for Hampshire for a period, but when he joined the 8.8. C. in 1945 it was as a producer in the Eastern Service in charge of poetry programmes and literary talks. Since then he has been producer, script writer, news commentator' reader, and interviewer, on radio and on television. He has taken leading parts in many feature and variety programmes, and for two years was senio? instructor at the 8.8.C.’s staff training school. He, too, was a commentator on the Coronation.

Leaving the 8.8. C. in 1953, Arlott wrote for the London “Evening News,” and last year began a regular column in the “News Chronicle.” He has written about 20 books—on cricket, poetry, football in the main, He still writes poetry, and finds time for his hobbies, which include watching cricket, conversation, drinking wine (especially the wines of Bordeaux), sleeping; collecting engraved glass, topographical books with aquatint illustrations, Victoriana and books about Gladstone.

Michael' Charlton, who is 28, is an announcer, news-reader, sporting and general commentator, and was outstanding among the A.B.C. commentators who travelled Australia describing the Royal Tour in 1954. During the tour he flew 10,000 miles, from north-west Queensland to the southwest of Western Australia, and on the last day he was presented, with the other commentators, to Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Charlton joined the A.B.C. in 1948 and his cricket broadcasts for the corporation began in 1951. He has been commentator in test matches between Australia and the M.C.C., Australia and the West Indies, for many Sheffield Shield games and for the recent Mailey - Taylor testimonial match in Sydney. He has also covered every major golf tournament played in Sydney during the last four or five years. During his visit to Britain in 1950-IPSI. Charlton acted for a time as an announcer in the 8.8.C.’s General Overseas Service and Pacific Service. Among other unusual outside broadcasting assignments, Charlton covered the big floods in New South Wales in 1955, and spent a week with the R.A.A.F. flying in helicopters dropping emergency food supplies.