“Is it going to go over his head? Oh no way, no no way, you cannot do that Ben stokes! That is remarkable! That is one of the greatest catches of all time! You cannot do that!”
The art of commentary is matching your words and tone with the moment, of capturing the feeling of what you have just witnessed with the phrase you choose on a whim.
It’s why Martin Tyler’s “Agueeroooooooo” is so perfect - a howl of insanity in a truly insane moment. It’s also why the more measured line that follows “I swear you’ll never see anything like this ever again!” is also genius - the dawning realisation of what you’ve just scene after the visceral pleasure of seeing it.
To that end commentators are kind of like clocks - in that even if they are broken they can be right at certain times. You just need one moment and one dart to hit the bullseye.
Nasser Hussain is the opposite of the IRA commentator, the one that only has to be lucky once, and is so comprehensively good at it that moments, insight and joy flow from his commentary as naturally as rivers into the sea.
There’s something of the high class comedian to him - his is a persona and viewpoint so well established that you know what he would likely say or think in numerous different circumstances.
This quality is essential to any performer - it doesn’t mean that output becomes boring or predictable; that he’s consistent and coherent over time makes it all seem so much more true and therefore comfortable and inviting to you the listener.
I think the main quality that underpins Nasser’s commentary is joy. This might run contrary to his grumpy- former- Captain persona, and no doubt he could be spiky as a player and as a man, but it always feels as though Hussain is looking for the joy in what he’s watching.
There are the iconic moments, like the one quoted at the top of this piece celebrating Ben Stokes taking a ludicrous catch in the opening match of the 2019 ODI World Cup, but there is a more pervasive sense of seeking the fun and the pleasure in getting to watch elite level cricket every time he’s on duty.
I often find myself comparing him to Gary Neville who operates in similarly rarefied air as a football commentator. Neville often seems to be attemting to articulate, highlight or sometimes even find the horror of what a player is going through, the challenge to their masculinity that is being played out by a manager targeting their flank or the pyschic drama of having an absolute nightmare with the entire country watching on Super Sunday. Yes there are the ecstatic groans and moans that accompany goals but it often seems like the beauty of football is incidental to the battle of it all.
This is likely a function of Neville’s career, in constant one-on-one battles as a comabtive full back, and his manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who prized the ability to break player’s and team’s spirits in service of the ultimate goal of winning. It’s the lens through which Neville views football; shame, humiliation, weakness being exposed, machismo.
Cricket is ripe for being analysed in this way - it’s a series of one-on-one battles where mental strength is often at the forefront, where the imposition of one players will over anothers, through nothing more than superior technique and hand-eye coordination, can lead to humilating records and statistics (Stokes, the uber-lad of all gun cricketers everywhere knows this more than anyone after being carted for 4 sixes in the final over of the 2016 World T20 against the West Indies).
But I don’t get the sense that this is how Nasser Hussain views cricket - at least not anymore, just north of his 53rd birthday and safely ensconsed within the Sky Cricket bubble, his glasses perched on his nose and a self-depracting joke about said conk never far from his lips.
Instead he celebrates the magic and the madness of cricket in all it’s forms. Maybe it’s a heightened awareness of the mental trauma that the game can inflict on it’s participants (it’s hard to even see Jonathan Trott on the bench as part of the England set up and not wince when thinking about what he was put through by a naive ECB and a malevolent media) or maybe it’s just that he loves the game more than ever.
It was apparent, as it always is, this Sunday just gone as Sam Curran almost led a stuttering England side to an improbable game and series win in the final match of their Indian tour. Nasser talked the viewer through the last stages of the game, slowly building his excitement and anticipation at the opportunity that was there for the taking, responding to the cosmic feeling in the air that we were all watching something.
In the end Curran came up just short but Hussain celebrated what we had all seen. He can mix negativity in when required but it wasn’t then and he knew it. He had, as he always does, an ear for the moment, an alignment with the lay-person on the sofa who is there for the pleasure and the diversion of it all. Long may it continue.