As we view the wreckage of the Ashes series (No escaping the awful truth, Sport, 19 December), can I return to your critique of Geoffrey Boycott? Matthew Engel dismisses him as an irrelevance and claims “I think we’ve all heard enough” (9 December).
This indicates a profound misunderstanding of radio and how its audience listens. Boycott was a fine batsman, no doubt a really difficult man, but undoubtedly a great broadcaster. That’s because he has that extraordinary ability to connect the listener, the person who has never played professional cricket, to the mystery of international sport.
He does that by a form of intimate communication that scholars of radio have long explained. He addresses us as the batsman, by urging us to play better, to ignore that delivery but to smite that loose one. He reminds us of the perils of the “corridor of uncertainty” and, boy, the next time I face the Australian attack, how alert I will be to that danger!
Boycott tells us how to play better, as if we were striding out on to the Waca with his advice in our ear. Few have understood the true nature of radio and sports commentary better. We may be rubbish at cricket – indeed we are – but at sports commentary, with Boycott on our team, we rule.
Professor Hugh Chignell
Director of the Centre for Media History, Bournemouth University
• Which is the better metaphor for the state of the nation at the end of 2017: a leaky £3bn flagship aircraft carrier (Report, 19 December), or the performance of the England cricket team?
Jim Golcher
Towcester, Northampton
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