Viv Richards video from the BBC archive

The BBC have uploaded a whole raft of videos of West Indian greats from their archive as part of their coverage of the England v West Indies series. They're only available within the UK, unfortunately.

Like any right-thinking cricket fan, we went straight to the Viv Richards video. It's been a while since we saw any footage, but he's just as we remember him: Standing nonchalantly in his cap, like a cricket balls's made of foam or something similarly non-threatening, rather than rock hard and bearing the potential to actually kill you.

Our favourite moments are when he steps away from the stumps and positively flays the ball back over - or is it AT - the bowler's head. You can see why no-one liked bowling at him. Murderous.

Manish Bhasin and Rishi Persad

When the BBC made the announcement about its presenters for its new cricket highlights programme before the Ashes, we were understandably preoccupied by the return of Richie Benaud.

Now that the BBC are well into their World Cup coverage, we feel that we've had long enough to evaluate the two brash young bucks entrusted with covering the world's greatest sport on the world's greatest TV station (no adverts - top that).

So here's our evaluation:

Manish Bhasin - crap.
Rishi Persad - all right.

In order to be a little more transparent, we'll attempt to justify that. Manish Bhasin has spent the whole of winter sounding like he's reading stuff. He probably is, but we don't like being reminded of that. When he's on camera, he wafts at the air to punctuate his sentences. When he's off-camera (but still talking), all we can do is imagine him tracing the words with his finger.

His questioning's offered nothing either. Not to us anyway and not to Geoffrey Boycott who was clearly irritated at times during the Ashes. Perhaps it's meant to be 'inclusive' - ie, appealing to new cricket fans - but his questions seem designed with ONLY new fans in mind. The overall impression we get is of a presenter ticking all the right boxes on a BBC progress report.

Rishi Persad's a geek. We like geeks. We're a geek. He seems genuinely enthusiastic about cricket and while Bhasin's occasional stabs at humour have felt hackneyed and formulaic, Persad's have seemed more genuine and warm.

Perhaps it's their respective roles that are giving us this impression. Maybe Persad gets more free rein. Manish Bhasin used to present Football Focus and we see his segments as being cricketised versions of that show. It's a different sport with a different audience. That style just doesn't fit.

We're not actually feeling all that happy about bad-mouthing Manish Bhasin to be honest. We just get annoyed when cricket coverage isn't as good as it should be.

Nathan Bracken's BBC column

A picture of a perfectly executed cricket ball header there. Good work Nathan. You wouldn't have been able to pull it off without the extra padding of your bouffant though. Don't try this at home, kids.

The BBC have recruited Nathan Bracken to be their new voice of Australia. Justin Langer previously held this post, writing regularly and well about his experiences playing for his national side.

He was a bit prone to irritating pronouncements about 'executing our skills correctly', but so would any of the Australian team under John Buchanan. Overall Langer was great value. So how will Nathan Bracken compare?

His first column has appeared today and it contains some intriguing grammatical decisions. We were mostly struck by the following line which describes the aftermath of Australia's recent one-day series losses.

"There was no more time for questions - just answers. We had to improve our skills, knowledge and tactics to if we were to win the World Cup."

It reads like an eight-year-old's story about winning the World Cup. 'We had to improve... if we were to win the World Cup' - doesn't that sound like Nathan's already won the World Cup and is now recounting the tale of how it happened? Bit presumptuous.

A really lame update because it's been a long day and we're willing to do anything other than work right now

Alternatively, you could look on it as the worst job application for the role of BBC Sport proofreader that's ever been made: 'Look how crap you are', it says.



The bit we're on about is the caption 'McGrath has played for Yorkshire for the past 121 seasons'.

Yes, we've read the BBC's cricket website pretty much every day since they first started it and the worst mistake they've made is a single numeral typo. We've probably got more mistakes than that in one paragraph of this update.

Let's not laugh at us and our worthless station in life though. Let's laugh at the idea that Anthony McGrath's well over a hundred. Hilarious.

Update: Immediately after publishing this, we went to the BBC's cricket page and immediately saw a far worse error - the omission of the word 'he'. It's a dark day for the BBC. A dark day indeed.

Richie Benaud returns!

Yes. It's an exclamation mark day: Richie Benaud is returning.

In a world where people actually employ Dean Jones and where Sky only employ ex-England captains, the BBC have done the decent thing and hired the great man as a studio analyst/discussion bloke. They've also hired Geoff Boycott, Jonathan Agnew (a BBC employee anyway) and, hilariously, Tony Greig, who's always worth listening to if he thinks Australians might be within earshot.

There was always a fair chance that Richie 'free to air' Benaud would accept a job at the Beeb, but until it was actually confirmed in writing, we were edgy. Now it's true and the world is a better place. Bizarrely the BBC are focusing on the new pair of anchormen, relegating Benaud to a lower paragraph. If the BBC knew the first thing about marketing, they'd realise that their two biggest draws are Richie Benaud and The Cricket Tune, which has another name, but we're not using it because nobody calls it that.

This is such important news we deliberately used the word 'returns' in the title instead of 'back'. If you don't know what we mean, just put 'back' in the search box on the left and you'll see yet another of our 'repeat until funny' instances of humour.