Test Match Special's secret ingredient

In praise of the "effects microphone" and the crowd noise it picks up

The love people have for Test Match Special strikes me as similar to the love they have for the Shipping Forecast. There’s a sense in which what one is listening to — although it’s made up of words — operates at the level of pure sound. The meaning of those words is somehow secondary to the atmosphere both programmes create, with their evocations of realms that are timeless and also very English.

Testament to the TMS effect isn’t hard to find. I especially liked some chat about it that I just came across that included the following: “I could listen to this nonsense all day — which is good because it is on all day. I don't profess to understand cricket. But I find all the terminology incredibly poetic, and hearing a bunch of (generally posh) old blokes waffling on about sport is just very enjoyable.”

That writer nails much of the appeal of TMS, but as I listen to today’s commentary — it’s day four at Edgbaston, where England are playing India — I find I’m more and more aware of an element in the TMS magic that maybe doesn’t get the credit it deserves, and that’s the contribution of the crowd.

Just as TMS is great background radio, so the commentary benefits from the bed of noise on which it sits — the constant thrum of the chatter in the stands, the eruptions of cheering and applause, and as the day progresses and drink takes hold, the chanting that you’d associate more with football. Once you start to notice this secondary layer of audio, it becomes its own fascinating object of focus, to the point when it can feel like the crowd is upstaging the commentators.

For me, just such a point was reached when I was listening to TMS during the first Test of the current series, which took place at Trent Bridge. Someone in the crowd had succeeded in smuggling a trumpet into the ground, and over the voices of Jonathan Agnew et al, they were tootling away with a rendition of Bring Me Sunshine. The trumpet-playing was what you’d call gifted but amateur, and for those few minutes it gripped my attention.

The job of producer of TMS gained a profile during the era in which it was in the hands of Peter Baxter, because as well as producing the programme (for 34 years, from 1973 to 2007), he also chipped in with bits of commentary. Latterly the job has been done by Adam Mountford. He’s remained behind the scenes, but the way he balances the foreground (the commentators) with the background (the crowd) is truly a thing of audio beauty.

It sure isn’t accidental because when I was listening to TMS yesterday, commentator Simon Mann made reference to the most vociferous element in the Edgbaston crowd — occupying the Hollies stand — and how the noise they made was being picked up by TMS’s “effects microphone”. Who outside radio production was aware of the existence of such a bit of kit? I certainly wasn’t.

Right now the Edgbaston effects microphone is really doing its job. Things are getting boisterous in the Hollies stand. In the commentary box, Michael Vaughan is asking Jonathan Agnew whether he’s into Black Sabbath, and Agnew is trying to steer the conversation back to the cricket. It’s just another day at TMS, in other words. Lots more to look forward to this summer.