CRICKET - CMJ calls it stumps

ANENDRA SINGH
CHRISTOPHER Martin-Jenkins must have felt like Jamie How yesterday - trapped lbw by Monty Panesar.
It wasn't so much the inevitability of going out that caught him by surprise but more so the manner - a public announcement at McLean Park.
The outgoing chief cricket correspondent of The Times and commentator for Test Match Special on BBC Radio 4 was lost in thoughts in front of the Rodney Green Centennial Hall with a hot cuppa when SportToday approached him.
"Sorry, I don't really know how many [matches I've covered]," said a stumped Martin-Jenkins, flicking his wrist around to glance at his watch as a reminder to both parties that he only had 10 minutes before he had to crawl back into the kennel for another spell. For the record he has covered more than 350 test matches.
Known as CMJ or "Jenkers" to the initiated, the 63-year-old said his wife Judy, who had returned home to Sussex after the one-dayers here, was a party to the discussions towards easing the load.
There's nothing sinister about his decision. No he hadn't had a gutsful living out of a suitcase or have an acrimonious falling out with the editor or, for that matter, feel technologically challenged.
"It's because I've got a bit weary of going around the world every [northern] winter, virtually, for the past 35 years or so. There comes a time when everything has to come to an end.
"I'm not retiring [totally] but I will still be doing some work in cricket [although] not as much as I have been."
Writing about cricket since the late 1960s, he had no regrets as such but a tinge of guilt for the time spent away from home when his family was young.
"It was the only difficult thing but they've all grown up happily, I'm glad to say," he says of his children, James, 34, Rob, 32, who plays for Sussex County, and Lucy, 28.
The privilege of covering the game "in the wee small hours" of the pre-internet days, especially of the Ashes series in Australia, has left an indelible impression.
"A lot of organisation had to be done to be on the air whereas now it's much easier and there are more people involved than there used to be."
Some of the touring English journalists said to ask CMJ about how he had to lug two metal suitcases on tours predominantly stuffed with almanacs to keep abreast with the game of statistics.
"Oh I don't know about that," he said with a laugh. "We always had to take a certain amount of books. I usually had to pay excess baggage wherever I went, yeah. But it's easier now with the computer age, it's all in there."
He savoured the "rare occasions" when England won the Ashes, particularly in Headingley in 1981 when, amid a follow-on scenario, they triumphed after Ian Botham played his famous innings (145 not out) and Bob Willis bowled them out (8-43).
"It's been great knowing the players and at one stage they were the same age as me and now they are very much younger and you tend to forget that."
While there have been moments of discomfort he has no regrets visiting myriad countries.
"In the subcontinent, in India and Pakistan, you didn't get very near such good hotels as you now do. India, on the other hand, is such a fascinating country to go to and their passion for the game is so tremendous and the skill of their players make up for it.
"It's lovely to come to New Zealand and be able to drive around in a car from one place to another as opposed to getting into a plane in the bigger countries. The scenery is sensational here."
Having a fit of uncontrollable giggles on air with former famous BBC commentator Brian Johnston (who he incidentally wrote to in 1962, asking him how to become a cricket commentator and subsequently succeeded in BBC 11 years later) has been his most quirky moment. "He [Johnston] was inclined to get the giggles himself and once he started it was very contagious. We were together in a commentary box in a very unimportant World Cup match between Canada and England on a rainy day at Old Trafford and I pointed to a fielder with the name Showkat Basch, who'd come on to the field to substitute. He [Johnston] thought I was joking and he could not believe someone could be called Showkat Basch," he said, relieved and convinced that not too many listeners were tuned in "because it would have become quite notorious".
The author of more than a dozen cricket books and after-dinner speaker, Martin-Jenkins will remain as an "occasional columnist" and continue calling the shots for the BBC.
But after all those countless words from him, it's over to a younger lad (former England skipper-cum-commentator) Mike Atherton on the print frontier.