John Arlott

Leslie Thomas John Arlott (25 February 1914 – 14 December 1991) was an English journalist, hymn writer, author and cricket commentator for the BBC's Test Match Special.

Quotes

• We've got a freaker! We’ve got a freaker down the wicket now. Not very shapely and it's masculine. And I would think it's seen the last of its cricket for the day. The police are mustered, so are the cameramen, and Greg Chappell. And now he's being embraced by a blond policeman. And this may be his last public appearance but what a splendid one.
  He's now being marched down in the final exhibition past at least 8,000 people in the Mound Stand, some of whom perhaps have never seen anything quite like this before. And he's getting a very good reception.
  • On Test Match Special (5 August 1975), as cited in "All out at Lord's: streaker Michael Angelow paints memorable Ashes scene", The Guardian (2 August 2016)
  • An account of a streaking incident at Lord's during The Ashes Second Test between England and Australia. Angelow was a Merchant Navy cook who had been offered £20 to carry out his action; when told the remuneration, a magistrate decided it was the amount for which he should be fined.

• Cricket is the most senior, widespread and deeply rooted of English games.
  • Quoted in The Guardian Book of Cricket (1986).

• God, whose farm is all creation,
  take the gratitude we give;
  take the finest of our harvest,
  crops we grow that all may live.
  • From various hymnals.