Looking forward to Lord's
While the debate rages about whether the England selectors have picked the right team for the first Test of the summer, you'll be pleased to know there is little controversy about our squad for .
Leading our commentary team as usual will be cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew, who will be joined by Christopher Martin Jenkins MBE and the voice of West Indies cricket Tony Cozier.
Our expert summarisers at Lords will be the irrepressible , Phil Tufnell, who knows a thing or two about bowling at the home of cricket after his long Middlesex career, and .
Viv enjoyed an eventful winter as part of the TMS commentary team. In Jamaica, we heard his excitement as ; in Antigua, we saw his and then in Trinidad, as the West Indies nervously , Viv simply could not watch the climax to the match and instead stood at the back of the media centre listening anxiously to the roars of the crowd. Let's hope he's calmed down now!
On top of our ball by ball commentary we will be profiling during the lunch interval on Wednesday and among our guests will be the man who brought Flower into the England set-up, former coach .
We'll also hear from Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook who have played alongside Flower at Essex and will now be playing under him with England and we'll be joined in the commentary box by .
During the lunch interval on Thursday we will be hearing about two forthcoming cricket based documentaries.
, recently tipped to be both the next James Bond and the next Dr Who, will be at Lords to tell us about "The Empire of Cricket", a major new 91Èȱ¬ programme looking at the history of the game in England, Australia, the West Indies and India and we will also be hearing about a forthcoming film documentary, "", which tells the incredible story of the Afghanistan cricket team who recently against all the odds came close to qualifying for the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
For our traditional "View from the Boundary" on Friday, Jonathan Agnew will be joined by a man who will probably rather enjoy a relaxing day out at the cricket, the executive chairman of Marks and Spencer, .
As we know it is not the easiest time to be a top businessman and Sir Stuart will be giving us an insight into his current challenges and, of course, will be talking about his love of cricket.
During the lunch interval on Saturday, around Lord's and we will be taking the opportunity to celebrate their achievements and ask what the long term affect of their success down under will be on the Women's game in Britain.
Former captain, now the ECB's head of the women's game, Clare Connor will be joining us along with and other members of the winning team.
You'll be delighted to know that Jonathan Agnew and Geoff Boycott's now legendary "Test Match Special podcast" will be back after each day's play. The interactive scorecard running alongside our commentary will be available again as well as the text commentary - all the details at bbc.co.uk/cricket.
We will, of course, we welcome your e-mails and texts to the programme, tms@bbc.co.uk or text us on 84040 and there are lots of other ways to stay in touch with the action from Lord's. Arlo White will be joined by England's most capped player to provide updates every 15 minutes on 91Èȱ¬ Five Live and David Garrido will be broadcasting live from the ground for Radio One.
This promises to be quite simply the most exciting summer in English cricket history - and it all gets underway at 1045 on Wednesday morning on Five Live Sports Extra, Radio 4 Long Wave and online. Don't miss it.
Comment number 1.
At 1st May 2009, jollygrandsamster wrote:No surprises really and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing Boycott slugging it out with Aggers and Tuffers although I don't rate Boycott's chances against Sir Viv who is soooooo easy going in the commentary box - let battle commence on Wednesday..............
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Comment number 2.
At 1st May 2009, Wilo wrote:Sounds great!
Wish I could listen to outside the UK... etc. etc. as usual, etc. (yawn)
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Comment number 3.
At 1st May 2009, Belmons wrote:Is there any chance the estimable Sir Viv can manage to get through a sentence or two without using the words "particular" or "individual"?
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Comment number 4.
At 1st May 2009, Lights Out 56 wrote:Any chance of hearing blowers this summer? Decent line up otherwise.
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Comment number 5.
At 1st May 2009, aflfan wrote:Where is Vic Marks? He should be there for every test match, along with Mike Selvey. I think Simon Hughes is also an excellent commentator and I'd like to hear him more often as well.
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Comment number 6.
At 2nd May 2009, duncanedwho wrote:Looks a good team and fortunately we have some familiar voices. Consistency of selection might not have benefited the England team but it certainly does benefit TMS: last winter's coverage was superb because we had the same commentators throughout. Just one gripe. Could we please have fewer 'legendary', 'irrepressible', 'traditional', 'simply the most exciting ever' etc etc in these blogs? TMS is at its best when understated. Good luck for a very hectic TMS summer!
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Comment number 7.
At 2nd May 2009, badalandabad wrote:I live in Switzerland and I am unable to receive the TMS over the radio here. I don't think I will be able to listen to the commentary online either. Can someone advise me as how I can access the TMS commentary on radio or online, if you have managed to do so living abroad?
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Comment number 8.
At 3rd May 2009, Damien Cahill wrote:I'm in Ireland, and last summer I was able to hear all of TMS online, unless things have changed this year??
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Comment number 9.
At 3rd May 2009, CollisKing wrote:Looking forward to sharing an "oversaturated" summer of international cricket in the company of TMS. What happened to the more simple times of 3 Texaco Trophy one-dayers and then the 5 Test match Series? Ah well ... times have changed. Sterling job by the team in the winter, good to hear all the familiar voices again. Hoping the West Indies batting is up to scratch, or Boycs will be all over them. And where is Vic Marks? An integral member of the TMS Team.
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Comment number 10.
At 3rd May 2009, David Shield wrote:Don't worry Vic Marks will be part of the TMS team for the second test.
No Blowers though, I hope he is being saved for the Ashes tests.
Its Aggers, Simon Mann and Tony Cozier with Vic, Viv and Alec Stewart.
I hope Pat Murphy will be on Five Live duty for the second test.
Good blog though Adam.
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Comment number 11.
At 3rd May 2009, jabsco79 wrote:No Blofeld...there's a relief...
I like Alec Stewart who provides strong and respected views and is a refreshing addition. As much as I like Boycott, please encourage him to use some new lines. His 'my mom could bowl 'im out' and his teasing of Agnew 'i could have scored oondred and fity against you in no time' (in Geoff's language, no time probably means after six sessions)are now really tiring and boring.
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Comment number 12.
At 3rd May 2009, geefer1982 wrote:Good news with being back in old blighty is that it'll be cold so the commentaries will be from behind glass :-) have to admit I found it hard to hear some of the coverage from the Windies because of the crowd noise.
Keep up the good work!
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Comment number 13.
At 4th May 2009, Cricket_cloggie wrote:Re AZ - 1981, 2009 - Kampioenen van Nederland's comments: I like his name, as I went to school around the corner to AZ! But, more importantly, I like his name a lot.
On another note: in the run-up to (and during) the World T20, I'd really like to see some involvement of the past treasures of Associate cricket. I'd be really interested to hear (e.g.) Tim de Leede battling the airwaves with Aggers et al. Can we expect such contributions this summer in addition to the TMS stalwarts?
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Comment number 14.
At 6th May 2009, blowersisking wrote:Are we going to get to hear Blowers this summer. I certainly hope so...
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Comment number 15.
At 6th May 2009, David Shield wrote:Great to have TMS back today - the start of the summer.
I was quite surprised to hear Simon Mann though? Not that I'm complaining as he is my favourite commentator but he is not mentioned in Adam's blog or the Radio Times for this test, he is due to be part of the team for the second test at Durham.
Also no Sir Viv, I heard why and that he probably won't make any of this tour but where is Crofty - I hope he will be around to replace him.
I'm looking forward to the first commentary from Blowers whenever that is going to be.
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Comment number 16.
At 7th May 2009, londoncornishman wrote:What a day we had today! And so good that the summariser at the crucial time was Tuffers, whose gentle and generous humour is so opposite to the carping and crowing of his alternative. For me this lightness of touch and positive attitude is what makes a summer's day.
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Comment number 17.
At 8th May 2009, Jintygirl wrote:An excellent team, but I'm seriously missing Blowers, so will have to disagree with the line about 'little controversy' for the TMS Team line-up at Lord's.
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Comment number 18.
At 8th May 2009, comeonsussex wrote:TMS, my favourite outside broadcast. However with a Wednesday start to a 3 day Test Match, Lord's and its Friends,have lost Test Match Saturday and Sunday from their schedule of days Cricket. I luckily enjoyed Thursday in the Warner Stand.
Who is the winner in this debacle.
1 The Players with 2 days off. 2 The Members and crowd/attendance with a free weekend, deprived of live Cricket, paid for well in advance. 3 The TV station with blank schedules or 4 The International Planners who start Test Matches on a Wednesday, thus allowing BLANK WEEKENDS.
Money should not rule. 11am Thursday starts Please.
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