Three men in a box

Through the shires of England it rolls…

The Sky Sports Pod is a tricked-up fish-and-chip van-type affair from which commentary on the T20 Blast competition is dispensed, breathlessly, "at pitch level" (allowing, we're supposed to believe, this bunch of recently retired professional cricketers to be publicly astonished by the speed of the game).

Sky's coverage of cricket has been nothing if not innovative, and time stops for no one. Leaning through the Pod's serving hatch is the tasty menu of ex-pros now on the Sky roster, from the veteran Paul Allott, who last played in 1993, to the fresh-from-the-field Rob Key, until earlier this year captain of Kent.

The Pod is casual, fun, on point for the Blast experience, and behind its faux-ramshackle charm lurks Sky's ruthless modernity. A story in the Daily Mail last week said that there is soon to be a changing of the guard in the Test match studio too, claiming that Ian Botham and David Gower were no longer going to be the main men of the station's coverage as they have been for more than 20 years. (This was subsequently retracted, though.)

Then there are absences that leave a heavy heart: recent times have taken Tony Greig, Richie Benaud and Tony Cozier from us. There's a particular sadness that comes with the passing of voices from your cricketing childhood, the sense of a past receding forever.

Benaud, in particular, was a link between the old world and the new, and the subject of a famous story that illustrates well the change that has now fully come. Channel Nine were among the first broadcasters to switch from two commentators to three for each half-hour stint. So incident-free was one session involving Benaud, and so keen were his partners to fill it, that the 30 minutes passed without Richie uttering a word.

True or not (and it has the hint of the apocryphal about it), it showed the world view of someone who had been educated in the early language of television, when the viewer was assumed to be able to watch the pictures and see what was happening without being told. Benaud would enhance and complement when required, hence the genius of his pause-and-talk style: "Don't even bother looking for that… it's gone into the confectionery stall and out again" doesn't contain the words "Botham", "Alderman", "six", or anything else that immediately identifies it with the events it followed, and yet simply reading the words will transport anyone who remembers the moment.

Benaud was that rarity - a man who was highly accomplished in two separate fields, as a player and a broadcaster. The other greats of my formative years were clearly divided. On radio, John Arlott, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Brian Johnston, Henry Blofeld, Cozier, Don Mosey and so on were broadcasters, and were there to describe. Around them were experts - Trevor Bailey, Fred Trueman - former players there to illuminate. On television, the distinction has always been less clear: Jim Laker was in situ for the BBC, along with Raymond Illingworth, Ted Dexter, Jack Bannister and more.

Among them they created a kind of lingua franca, a paradigm for how the game was described, and by extension, how it was thought about - perhaps even how it existed in the minds of its followers.

Almost every cricket broadcast now features three commentators, cast in various roles. The idea that some may sit silently, a la Benaud, if there's nothing to say, seems as quaint as returning to 1970s' bats. In the full-on, muscular present day, cricket is endlessly happening, series piled on series, format on format, day upon day, and there is a wild clamour of voices keeping up.

And just as the game has changed, so has the way it's talked about. There are still the former pros who have an aptitude for the job. David Lloyd is utterly natural but steeped in the game. Mike Atherton, increasingly avuncular on the mic and a superlative correspondent for the Times, is a significant and important figure in interpreting this new era. Ian Ward has led a great leap forward in technical analysis, and Key and Mark Butcher have established a great rapport with both players and the camera. The quality of the coverage is incomparable to the '70s and '80s, when the single fixed camera presented every other over with a fine view of the batsman's backside.

But what of the lingua franca? How will it frame the game for the generation who are now becoming cricket followers? They won't have Danny Morrison in their ear in the same way that Arlott was once in mine (mercifully so). They'll think nothing of Nick Knight saying "Is that a boundary… yes, it is…" as they watch a ball rolling very obviously to the rope, because they would never have heard a simple, "marvellous" crisply uttered just as the ball breaks through the field.

This blog isn't intended as a lament. We have gained so much from the advancement in coverage and in access to the world game. But there will always be a demand for a language that makes things dramatic or beautiful or poignant or funny. That's the challenge to which the three in the box must rise.