On The Ball, BBC1

2:05pm Monday 23rd June 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

TUCKED away at the back end of Saturday night's viewing was a little treat of a programme over on BBC1.

On The Ball, a history of sports commentating, was one of those great bits of TV which brought an instant wave of nostalgia to the viewers.

Its aim was self-explanatory and using interviews with some of the great commentators over the years we got a brief insight into the strange world of the people who are paid simply to talk.

Everyone knocks commentators as they do occasionally come out with some rubbish. But then, how would you sound given a full day of a cricket match to talk about without a script, or could you react to the excitement of a live football match without becoming a gibbering wreck?

Thanks to TV, sporting events have become as much a part of our history as any political events or international incident.

So once again we got to hear the rolling vowels of John Arlott and the manic inflexions of the great Murray Walker.

The best quote of the programme came from the vastly underrated Barry Davies who described dear old Murray as "a man who has been in pursuit of a single full stop all his life and has yet to find it."

Part two is on Wednesday. If you like sport, tune in.