The Gardeners' World Blog

This is a transcript of a speech I am giving at the Professional Cricketers' Association Business Summit meeting today.

You may have spotted that the BBC loves an anniversary. This is certainly a vintage year.

It was 80 years ago (so in 1927) that we did our first ever sports commentary on the radio. It’s 70 years this year since our first TV commentary – from Wimbledon… which is a reminder of how quickly the experimental BBC television service followed from the birth of radio.

And soon we’ll be marking the 50th anniversary of Test Match Special, which was launched in something like its current form in 1957. There had, of course, been cricket commentary before then; but the historic nature of TMS was that the BBC became the first broadcaster to cover every ball of a Test match. The slogan for the programme in the Radio Times was, "Don't miss a ball, we broadcast them all".