TNT Sports needs a Bob Willis or Roy Keane to give its cricket coverage some bite

Kate Mason, Sir Alastair Cook (centre) and Steven Finn are fronting TNT Sports’ coverage of England’s India tour

In the stark dawn light of Sunday morning, those as had been up since the wee small hours following the England cricket team’s most recent fiasco fancied that they could hear something whispering on the breeze.

Distressed family members ripped from the arms of Morpheus by repeated industrial language emanating out of the living room? A creeping biliousness from the second packet of Bath Olivers and that let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may refuelling strategy regards the overnight adult refreshments?

No, something even more terrible yet: a spectral reminder, a disgruntled admonishment from the otherworld, the ghost of collapses past.

Close your eyes and listen, slack-jawed and strung-out as England players took the positives, kept moving forward and said they wouldn’t change a thing, and there it was again. A peeved, irritable murmur delivering its verdict with a piteous righteous certainty. “Well Charles,” said the voice. “Abject, Charles. Absolutely pathetic.”

TNT Sports’ coverage of the cricket has much to recommend it, but the host Kate Mason, England batting legend turned gentleman farmer Sir Alastair Cook and charming, sporadically world-beating Steven Finn have a shared shortcoming, and one is sorry to have to draw attention to it. The problem is that they all seem like very affable and kind people. Decent, thoughtful, clever, fair-minded.

And this simply won’t do at all, not when there’s an England shambles to seethe at.

Whither the Bob Willises of yesteryear? Eyes bulging, switch-hitting between imperious professional contempt and a deeply personal affront at what he had just been forced to witness: the hero of Headingley 1981, former flatmate of Martin Tyler and lifelong Dylanologist would have been the dream booking for a cricketing catastrophe such as this.

An England opener run out in the fourth innings? Joe Root’s reverse sweep? Jonny Bairstow, in general? These are not just venial sins, these are full-fat mortal sins, and Willis – ideally in the company of long-time handler Charles Colvile – would have been the perfect man for the job.

Instead of the hanging judge Willis, TV viewers got pleas of mitigation from Sir Alastair and The Watford Wall. A brace of gentle, sensibly-dressed curates press-ganged into character-witnessing for a recidivist nest of local ASBOs who have, once again, befouled the village war memorial and duck pond.

Finn said: “A humongous defeat but it does not tell the story of the game. England can take heart from how they played in the first couple of days.”

Sir A: “England lost a couple of big moments.” Sure, like Paulus lost a couple of big moments at Stalingrad. This was literally England’s biggest runs defeat in a Test match since 1934! When actual Sir Donald Bradman scored 244.

It might be that they are both still too close in vintage to the current team, it might be that they are both just very nice chaps, but certain situations call for a certain approach. Football has Roy Keane, rugby has Brian Moore, cricket of course has An Esteemed Yorkshireman Of This Parish.

One is not suggesting that AN Cook or ST Finn should affect to be that what they are not – after all, the great sporting broadcast personalities just mentioned are all only foregrounding in their performance something that already lies deep in the bedrock of their characters – but sometimes you do just have to put the boot in.

From the post-match punditry, one might have formed the impression that it was an unlucky defeat where little else could have been done, the lads gave 110 per cent, as opposed to one of the all-time Test cricket pumpings.

Does it matter? In as much as any of it matters, there is a piece of wisdom to pass on to TNT Sports, and this is based on a lifetime of following the England cricket team on TV.

And that is a peculiarly English, curious and indeed rather kinky fact: fans of the England cricket team like it when they win, but they like it even better when they lose, and what they really, really like is when someone authoritative and charismatic calls them nasty names for their failures.

Weird, sure, but that’s where the broadcast gold is.

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