OTD in early British television: 25 June 1938
John Wyver writes: At 11.30am on the morning of Friday 24 June 1938, television’s cameras were at Lord’s for an hour of the second Test Match between England and Australia. Coverage ‘by kind permission of the MCC’ featured commentary by Captain H.B.T. ‘Teddy’ Wakelam, assisted by David Hofman, and Joe Hulme giving his opinion on the match and the players.
In addition to watching the all-important 22 yards of the wicket, viewers saw, as the PasB noted, ‘shots of the crowd, the ground, scoreboard, pavilion, stands, etc.’ Two further hours of play were shown later in the day, either side of a variety show, along with a wrap-up 20 minutes featuring the end of the day’s play.
This was the second day of the Lord’s Test, and the first Test match to be shown on as an outside broadcast. Despite welcoming the increased attention to the game, radio commentary of which had been featured since 1927, cricket’s governing body, the MCC, had a number of concerns. As historian Richard Haynes has written,
Foremost was the threat of television to well-established rights agreements with the newsreel company British Movietone News, and also, with regard to newspapers, contractual agreements with the General Press Agency that ensured access to cricket journalists and photographers.
The BBC had to agree not to permit reproduction of any still television image and to ensure no broadcast was shown in cinemas. In a detailed account of the first day, where the cameras appear (see above) to have been positioned with a view at an angle to the pitch, Peter Purbeck noted that,
The size of the receiver screen does not permit a very satisfactory view when we are shown the whole field at once. Alexandra Palace, therefore, confined itself in the main to showing us close-ups of the players in whom we were most interested at that particular time.
First, the camera would follow a bowler as he walked back to his bowling mark, during his run, and up to the moment of the delivery of the ball. Then our view would turn quickly to the other end of the wicket and we would watch the batsman in action.
Initially, the timing of the move from one shot to the next was misjudged, but the quality of the camerawork improved rapidly. Praising ‘a brilliant account of the excitement of the game,’ Trevor Baird in World Film News noted that ‘The television camera cannot make a cut in the film sense but the quick mix from bowler to batsman was an indication that television had something of its own to offer.’
Purbeck’s account continued:
During the afternoon of Friday, and on subsequent days ,it was hard to find any fault with it. From time to time we would go back from these close-ups of particular players to the general view of the pitch – particularly when the fielders were moving at the end of an over or the positions of the slips were being changed. From time to time, too, the camera would turn to the scoreboard so that we could refresh our memories as to the state of the game.
The Lord’s Test was a high-scoring draw, with Wally Hammond achieving a first innings of 240 for England, while at the close Australia’s Don Bradman was 102 not out. Still to come that year at the Oval was, at least for the home fans, one of the greatest of all games, as a later OTD will detail.
And you can find a wonderfully evocative Gaumont British News report on the match here.
[OTD post no. 190; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain in January 2026.]
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