Has Test Match Special lost its wits?

There’s a 13th man at the table at Lord’s this week as England resume the Ashes contest with Australia, which began so thrillingly at Trent Bridge, where England prevailed by 14 runs. For the first time in half a -century, -Christopher Martin-Jenkins is not present to renew one of the great rituals of the English summer.

‘CMJ’, who passed away on New Year’s Day at the less than grand age of 67, was always going to be missed and listeners to Test Match Special, the programme he adorned with his balanced commentaries, are cursing Time for being so vicious in his reaping. The graveyard, it is said, overflows with people once thought to be irreplaceable. Yet CMJ, for many years the BBC’s cricket correspondent and latterly its emeritus figure, cannot be replaced because the world of broadcasting no longer produces such men. At times it seems not even to value them.

To say that TMS, the most celebrated of all sports programmes, is not what it used to be is a commonplace.