Bile at the BBC

Courier Countryside Column for 8 August 2014

Far From Bowled Over

            There are few things I find so enticing in summer as the prospect of watching a game of cricket on our village green while supping a pint. The vista of  the parish church behind men in white hitting a red leather ball with a piece of carved willow has a timeless quality that connects one to generations past and, it’s hoped, with generations still to come.

            But for the cricket aficionado it’s the county and national games that really matter.  When I was a boy, my father used to take me to Hastings to see the local ‘derby’ matches between Kent and Sussex.  Sadly that can no longer happen. There was already a hierarchy of First Class and Minor Counties but then the authorities split the 18 upper level clubs into two divisions.  Kent languishes in Division Two, while Sussex retains its place in the one above.  Living on the border of the two counties, it’s frustrating never to be able to watch my two local teams play each other in the proper three-day game.

            My boyhood experience can also never be revived because of the calamitous decision to turn Hastings’ Central Cricket Ground into the Priory Meadow Shopping Centre. In 1989 the ground hosted its last county game when Sussex beat Kent in front of 1,000 spectators.

It’s just possible the town actually needed an anonymous shopping mall – but surely not by destroying one of most revered first class grounds in the country, and at the expense of a wonderful bit of open space right in the urban centre. (The final insult is that ghastly sculpture of a batsman falling over his own wicket after playing the most ungainly shot in the history of the game, right in the centre of Queen’s Square.)

But my real bile concerns the national game and is reserved for the decision of the BBC (an institution I worked for and generally admire) to ban Test Match Special to internet listeners overseas. This incomprehensible and ludicrous action means, even as a license payer, when travelling abroad I can’t listen to Radio 5 Live Sports Extra or Radio 4 Long Wave.  Well actually I can. Unofficially.  I can hear both channels on the TV via Freesat or Sky, or with a little technical jiggery-pokery, I can use a proxy server. Which makes the decision even more absurd.  Tony Hall – please reverse this one NOW!