FAILURE OF BROADCAST

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29714, 6 January 1962, Page 5

FAILURE OF BROADCAST

Tense Wait By

Listeners

Following the play in the third test at Newlands very early yesterday morning was like hearing someone else's synopsis of a broken record, according to some enthusiasts who woke up to listen to 2YA’s broadcast at 3 a.m. It was about 3 a.m. that the seventh South African wicket fell, swinging the gvne well New Zealand's and leaving South Africa • to score 89 in about an hour to win. » At this crucial moment, with tense but jubilant listeners mentally and vocally egging the New Zealand bowlers on, the radio link with South Africa resolved itself into a caeophany of blurps and snarls. The 2YA announcer switched the horrible noise off, and said the link had been lost and he would try to get it again. While his distraught ' listeners waited he offered them some music with a rumba beat. Impatient feet and fingers tapped to the Latin Ameri- * can music for another 10 minutes, when the announcer broke in to assure his listeners that he was still trying . to raise the South African broadcast. After another 10 minutes of music he announced that he could hear only a few irvelligible fragments from South Africa. He had learned that the ninth W’icket had fallen, but he did not know the score. About 350 a.m., only a few minutes before play was due to end, the announcer said he still had no satisfactory link but he had heard commentators discussing the play, which led him to the conclusion that the game was over. It was fair to assume, he said, that New Zealand had At that, “The Press’s" informants rumba'd off to bed.