We celebrate our very own Jim Maxwell who has been part of ABC for fifty years.
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On this week’s show, Stumped’s Jim Maxwell has been a part of ABC for 50 years – joining the organisation at the age of 22 in 1973 as a trainee and has now commentated on over 300 Test matches. Jim shares how he started his commentary career with Alison Mitchell and Charu Sharma, he also tells us about his favourite moments that he has witnessed and how recovering from the stroke he suffered in 2016 gave him a different outlook on life.
The team are also joined by former Australia bowler and a player who has shared the commentary box with Jim for many years, Kerry O’Keeffe. Kerry gives us insight into how the pair met, if he has ever known Jim to be tongue-tied and what they get up to both on and off air.
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Hello and welcome to Stumped. Your intercontinental hit of news, features and debate from the quirky world of cricket. I’m Alison Mitchell at my cousin’s house in Adelaide. Which is where I’ll stay for Christmas Day before flying to Melbourne for the Boxing Day Test. Hello, Jim Maxwell in Sydney. We love rain in Sydney.
We’re getting it all out of the way before a Test match in the New Year. So that’s the most pleasing aspect of the weather here at the moment. So it’s nice to be with you all again. I’m Charu Sharma for Akashvani. Back after yet another long bout of travel.
I’m really glad to be back home in Bangalore. Great weather amongst many other things. Let’s get on with the show and on this week’s Stumped, first of all, the year is 1973. The Sydney Opera House was opened, Richard Nixon was US president,
Billie Jean King won the Battle of the Sexes tennis match and most importantly, our very own Jim Maxwell, yes, that’s you, Jim, you were joining the ABC in that year. Australia’s ‘Voice of Summer’. So this week on Stumped, we’re actually going to be celebrating you and your fifty years with the ABC.
And let’s not forget the forty years you’ve been involved with the BBC’s Test Match Special as well. But goodness me, what a half century it has been. Wow it does bring back a few emotions when you start pouring over the red hot coals of fifty years and the rest of it, yes.
Have you actually kept a tally of how many Test matches you have now covered? There’ll be One Dayer’s and World Cups in amongst that, but for Test Matches? Well I started some years ago when asked this question, to do an audit, so I sorted it all out because I’ve missed quite
A few because I was doing other things at other times. But the one in Perth was 336. Which resonates with Wally Hammond’s innings against New Zealand for what it is worth being a statistical edit. Well we have got a special message for you from somebody who you have shared
A cricket commentary box with over many years and on many different occasions. Although most notably when Australia and England have been playing each other. Have a listen. Hey, Jim. Look where I am, I’m outside your favourite pub. You have made this place almost your own over the years haven’t you?
When you have come and stayed with me. It’s always great fun to have you in the village. Fifty years, blimey, how have you managed fifty years? How have we stood fifty years of listening to you? Well very easily is the answer. You are second to none and brilliant at what you do.
The true absolute voice to Australian cricket and it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you all these years. I’ve got traffic coming here, it is a busy junction as you know, so I am gonna love you and leave you. But I’m going to ask you,
Jim. What’s your favourite moment of cricket commentary over the years? Shame you weren’t on for Ben Stokes at Headingley isn’t it? See you soon mate, bye. Well, that was Aggers of course, Jonathan Agnew, the BBC’s cricket correspondent. Go on, Jim, your call to answer that question.
Well, I’ve thought about this in the last few years and over the last twenty years really. Thank you Aggers as you have been a great great companion and friend and outstanding at what you do. Which everyone in Australia enjoys and I do too. It has been outstanding.
Look when I think about things like the moment. You know, most of them are when Australia has lost. That is when you are almost at your best! We are the only Test team that has had 400 plus scored against them on a number of occasions.
And I’ve been there at the end of those. We have lost the game at Headingley, yes, in 2019. We won a couple of good ones just recently in the Ashes, at Edgbaston and Lord’s, yes. And I go back to South Africa and the West Indies. Those big runs scored against us.
There have been a lot where we have been on the wrong end of the argument. So it is like someone saying: ‘Who is the best batsman you have seen?’ or ‘Who is the best bowler?’ You could go on forever. Well I can offer you one, Jim.
You go and throw one at me and see if I remember it. My favourite clip of yours, it is when you called the end of the Edgbaston Ashes Test in 2005 and it was coming down to the wire, but it looked as if Australia would probably get these last couple of runs.
Runs are often more likely than a wicket, right? When you get right down to the wire and it’s often the case that the visiting or the commentator from the country you think will win are often given the honour of calling the winning moment in the Test match.
So you had been given the microphone thinking that Brett Lee and Michael Kasprowicz would squeak Australia over the line and then that last wicket fell and the catch behind from Geraint Jones. And the emotion in your voice there. The feeling. You captured the moment, which I think is just testament to your professionalism
As a commentator and the fact that it didn’t matter whether you are an England supporter or an Australian supporter in that moment. You felt the moment. And for me, that’s a hallmark of absolute greatness for a commentator. You’re the neutral and you have to make it as exciting and thrilling for all the
Listeners and no matter who they are supporting. Well, thank you Ali. Yes, I remember Peter Baxter keeping me on, because at that moment, it looked like Australia was going to win and the same thing happened in 2019, you might recall. When Ben Stokes guided England to that thrilling victory at Headingley
And Adam Mountford kept me there for a long while. Because it looked certain that Australia was going to win and they eventually got to a point. I had been on for quite a while and I turned to Adam and I said, ‘I’m going to get out of here, the only way we’re
Going to win this game, is if I’m if I’m not on air and Aggers is here’ . It might have gone that way, but still, yes, the moments. And another one that comes back now that you got me going on the nostalgia and the rest.
Is in a One Day game that Michael Bevan famously won off the last ball of the SCG. By hitting Roger Harper over his head for four. That was quite an occasion too when you sort of sum up all of the adrenaline and excitement that is going into the conclusion of a match.
But just to be part of so many aspects of the game, and not just a thrilling finish, but thrilling cricket to watch and you talk about the 2005 Ashes. But you have to say, other than the washout at Old Trafford which even had some excitement when it was playing.
The last series for the Ashes was probably as good as any we’ve ever had, in terms of the adrenaline pumping and the need to go to the cardiologist after every game. I think the birds behind you Jim, are also aware that it is a special occasion,
Because they are chirping away saying: ‘Jim, congratulations on the fifty’. Well I’ve got to quickly mention a moment where Jim, we met for the first time. This was a series where, I forget the year because my memory is not as magical as the rest of you.
2011 in Sri Lanka. And you were doing the radio and we were doing the television. I was invited for that. And then you were invited into the television commentary box for a few stints. And I remember the producer at the end of, there was somebody who got a hundred,
Like I said my memory is not quite like yours. Of course they showed the montage for the one hundred, right. So many commentators on television, have the habit of saying that was another lovely drive through the covers for a boundary and then, of course he flicked this one through mid-wicket,
With all the details when you are seeing it yourself. Anyway, there was Jim Maxwell, who came in and said: ‘And he cut and he pulled and he drove and he got to his hundred’. So there was in here. You’ve got the rest of the fluff out.
I remember the producer saying: ‘Hey, that’s how you do a highlight’ So Jim, the thumbs up for that one. And of course I’m so glad that we’ve had eight years to share these wonderful memories through Stumped. And of course I remember you ordering everybody barramundi in Sydney, saying:
‘That’s the thing to do’. The barramundi. And what did I get for my prize, as somebody who bested the two of you in that little cricket quiz we had here? A bottle of Vegemite, thank you. I think you ate it all. That is why I am still alive.
You didn’t clean your shoes with it did you I hope? Yes some people do think that it is good boot polish, I disagree. Jim, I want to ask you a personal question because you did have your stroke back in 2016, whilst you were broadcasting the Rio Olympics.
How has that impacted on your outlook on life? On you yourself, but also on whether you thought that you would actually get back into commentary and cricket commentary in particular? Ah, well, in the immediate aftermath of it, I wasn’t very confident because I wasn’t spitting the words out.
And I was less mobile than I am now, so that was a little bit of a downer. But I dunno, somehow I got it together and it took a while and I think out of that, I probably, I don’t think you’d have to say
I have taken a bit more, at times, an irreverent view of life and cricket. It’s just a game, you know. Maybe you focus a bit more on your mortality. When you had of bit of a setback and realise that you’re no longer indestructible and immortal
And you have to change your behaviour a little bit and stick with the flow of it. But, yes, it was an extraordinary period of my life and I am grateful to my wife Jen and to everyone else who was around me, because
It didn’t, it didn’t look good for a while there, about ever broadcasting again. But it was it was just a phase as it turned out, which a bit of TLC got me over. So here it is. I’m still putting my foot in my mouth and getting on with it I think.
Well we are mighty pleased you came through it and tremendous credit to you and your personal willpower and dedication to rehab. Well Jim, we were thinking long and hard this week about someone who could join us on Stumped to tell us some stories about your very distinguished commentary career
And we think we’ve found the right person. And when we asked him to come on, he said and I quote: ‘I will be 10% complimentary about Jim and the other 90% will be a roasting’. So that might give you a clue as to who we are joined by.
Welcome to Stumped, someone who sat next to you in the ABC commentary box for many a year, its former Australia leg spinner Kerry O Keeffe. Kerry welcome to Stumped, I am very glad Jim and Kerry to be able to reunite you both and it is wonderful to have you on.
First of all, what do you make of Jim reaching this milestone? Fifty years is a heck of a long time, more than my entire lifetime? It’s a triumph for resilience, isn’t it, let’s be frank. And for an undiminished love of Test cricket, to get through half a century,
Where his passion for the game is the same as it was when he started under Alan McGilvray all those years ago. And in an era where, the Australia passion for Test cricket is diminishing, Jim’s our flag bearer and I’ve fallen in behind you.
We are a small group, we are ageing, but we’re not going away. No, I think there are some other lovers of Test cricket as well. It depends whether the authorities also love Test cricket doesn’t it? Tell us Kerry, about when you and Jim met for the very first time.
Oh, we met in the early 1970’s, but it wasn’t until, it was my watershed moment in my life in 2001, when I was asked to do the final Test of an Australia against West Indies series at the SCG. And I dabbled in cricket commentary for a few years.
And I decided that I would commit completely to that Test match and I thought I would last one Test. And despite hundreds of complaining emails every year, I did fourteen years alongside Jim. And it gave me compass. My life has changed markedly in the last twenty years.
It’s been the best twenty years of my life and I owe a lot of that to ABC Grandstand Cricket, of which Jim was a principal in that. Jim, these days of course it’s largely cricketers and very few of those who haven’t played the highest grade survive.
But luckily you’ve started your commentary at a time when people were a little bit more accepting of those who may not have played at the highest level yet. Was it a problem, was it a stress and was there an undue pressure when you started your career?
It was intimidating, because I had Alan McGilvray right alongside me either in the box or perhaps in the bar, we may have gone there too, and Lindsay Hassett on the other side. I mean, these were hugely respected people in the game of cricket
And I was just a kid comparatively who had crept into ABC sport as a trainee, so I didn’t have any place really and I had to go quietly. And you have to remember that the whole thing about cricket commentary in those days was so much more formal
Than it became when Kerry was on board with Peter Roebuck. It’s so conversational now. People are more relaxed, just generally in life I suppose. But there was a formality about broadcasting in those days and you had to stick to the disciplines and (Alan) McGilvray was a stickler and as knowledgeable as he was,
There was not a lot of laughs in the commentary box as there were later, when Kerry arrived with his keen observational humour on almost everything that was going on. So it was a different world. Kerry, have you ever known Jim to be tongue tied in commentary? Um, no I haven’t.
I mean the thing about Jim is that his grammar is absolutely faultless. And I have never seen him lost for the right phrase to use. The best part of my day was the crosses from the studio. They’d often be very promotional of the fact that
Jim was going to be the first voice you hear. But Jim always paused for about five seconds before he spoke and you actually thought that somebody’s going to say: ‘I’m sorry for that break in transmission and we are working on it’.
Because Jim is the king of the pregnant pause and it was part of his broadcasting. He didn’t rush in and finish his sentence for the guy in the studio because, when the moment came, he said: ‘Yes, welcome to the Melbourne Cricket Ground’. He was forever a polished performer, Jim Maxwell.
May I ask you, was there some event that you regretted not doing or a challenge or an event ever been very challenging that you were unfortunately not a part of? Probably, but as I was not doing them, then I was not missing it so to speak.
I think to be honest, I’ve always valued in my work those that can do what I do, but a lot better. And I always think of people who are good enough to call horse racing. I reckon that’s the most exacting job of all commentary because unlike a lot of the other stuff,
You are constantly examined and adjudicated on your accuracy. You cannot make a mistake as a race broadcaster and you are not paid to make a mistake. You’re supposed to get it all right. So I envy those blokes that can do it.
Now, I am colour-blind, so I was never given the chance to do it. And thank goodness for that because I would have had my foot in my mouth. But look, I am sure there are a lot of Test matches that I’ve missed here and there, but I don’t like to dwell on it.
You have got to take this sort of optimistic view and take what you get and move along. That’s what I say at the moment. I’m sure there’s been something, somewhere, along the way that I one of my colleagues has been doing, and I’ve missed out.
But look, there’s been so much across the spectrum of Hockey, Olympic Games, I have done rugby league and rugby union big games and golf tournaments way back. Can I give you the final word on Jim, then Kerry? Day/night cricket was always going to be a problem for him because as
He freely admitted, it cut into his cordial time. I thought you were going to say because he is colour-blind. No, I just think that he gives Australian cricket broadcasting, gravitas and has done for fifty years. And so many have come and gone yet he remains because of his great love for his craft,
And the fact that he is the best at it, means that nobody is going to surpass it. And that’s it, you know, he should be very proud of his half century of service and his work ethic. We have talked about the off hours, but if there’s a Fifty Over game between Tasmania
And New South Wales at Blacktown, then Jim is there calling it in October, with the same relish that he would call an Ashes Test Match at Lord’s and that is his signature. Yeah we couldn’t agree more and as someone Jim, who has followed behind you as well
And in the ABC commentary boxes with you being the lead commentator. I have always looked up to you and the enthusiasm is never ending. And I think that’s a great thing that follows on from what Kerry always said about making the bland interesting
And the cricket is always interesting when you’re behind the microphone. No matter what is going on, on the field of play. So thank you for all of your commentary and we love the fact that you are with us every week on Stumped and we get to reminisce and do this also.
Jim, that was great fun. Charu that was great fun as well. That’s all we’ve got time for on this week’s Stumped. My thanks to Charu Sharma and Jim Maxwell and to all of you, our listeners. We will see you soon. Bye.
2 Comments
Jim learnt from Alan Mcgilvray and Norman May
Beautiful, and thanks