Comedian Matt Green: "I do wonder how young people today are supposed to get into Test cricket"

FROM THE MAG: Award-winning comedian and actor Matt Green occasionally references cricket in his satirical Twitter videos. He told us why he loves the sport.

Every month in The Cricketer magazine somebody from cricket or beyond tells us why they fell in love with the game. This is an abridged version of comedian Matt Green's 'Why I Love Cricket' article that features in our May 2023 issue. To read the full article, grab a copy of the magazine by clicking here.

I do a lot of politics videos, and cricket is one of the things I do to get away from 'stuff'.

I would love to do more cricket jokes – both in my live stand-up and on Twitter – but you usually find that 10 per cent of the audience loves it, and 90 per cent have no idea what you're talking about. That's not a ratio that works too well! 

Cricket, in the UK at least, is widely seen as an elitist sport, or certainly one less widely understood, and so you have to rely on a much more limited cut-through.

I am a bit jealous of Australian comedians. I was out there seeing family and did a show. I dropped in a cricket joke and it went down really well. Cricket was everywhere in Australia, in all the papers, and just more part of the culture than it is here, if we're honest.

Cricket is taken a metaphor for life in Britain too, but in a slightly different way, almost in a way that if you don't understand the game, well, that's almost part of the point.

It's great that the England Test team are winning and doing well. I'm so used to waking up and discovering they've been bowled out somewhere in the world for 150 again. But it does make doing satirical videos about Stokes and McCullum a little harder! In a way it's sad that England are not being watched by more people right now.

^{Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes [Matthew Lewis/Getty Images]}

A couple of years back I did a video poking the fun out of IPL commentary, especially all the incessant plugs for sponsors – and that obviously got a lot of play in India.

I might do The Hundred when it rolls around again. I find there's a slight desperation on the part of the broadcasters – how every single ball is incredible and how groundbreaking this match is, that nothing in the field of cricket has ever been like this before.

Football commentators can be over the top too, but even they don't feel the need to say, 'this is a good match, isn't it?' every ball.

I understand how kids can get into T20. I do wonder how young people today are supposed to get into Test cricket. This is going to make me sound ancient but, like most British people of my age, I grew up watching Test matches on the BBC, when it was just on at home in the background. But unless you commit the time to sit down to watch a Test match, and get through all those periods where not much is happening, and then something does happen and the game flips on its head – if you don't experience that, then how do you understand the magic of Test cricket?

My dad's the real cricket fan. We played it out in the back yard together. He played for our local Sunday village team in Yorkshire and I would occasionally go down, bat No.11 and do nothing!

Dad's claim to fame is that he helped spread cricket in Germany. He's a German speaker and teacher, and when he was sent to a posting years ago in a small town called Selle [in North-Rhine Westphalia] he introduced cricket to a school and they started their own team. During my childhood a few German visitors came to stay with us and some even turned out for the local village side.

Headingley '81, though I was too young to remember it, is seared into my consciousness. That miraculous story has been told and re-told, not least by my dad, who was at one of the days but not the crucial day. It's one of the biggest stories in English cricket.

We did go and see a few games at Headingley. I saw the West Indians there in the early 1990s, we were sat fairly side-on, and I just remember the bowling being so fast.

^{Devon Malcolm greeted by fans [Clive Mason/ALLSPORT]}

I've always loved fast bowling. Devon Malcolm was my favourite player as a 10-year-old – for that incredible contrast of someone so accomplished at bowling and so useless at batting. I've thought a lot about this, and I can't think of another sport where you can be simultaneously really brilliant and so rubbish. Courtney Walsh could barely even hold the bat let alone score a run with it!

Perhaps it's those aspects of underlying silliness that appeals to comedians. Andy Zaltzman is the obvious one living his dream on TMS. Chris Addison, Nish Kumar, Geoff Norcott, Miles Jupp and Tim Key all like it… I think Rory Bremner even played a bit.

There's a bit of a comedian cricket-playing scene, but I was never any good myself so I'm not really involved.

Follow @mattgreencomedy on Twitter or visit mattgreencomedy.com for information on his upcoming live dates.

Inside our May 2023 issue of The Cricketer magazine, you'll also find:

- MAY COVER FEATURE: Rob Key chats to David Gower about the Ashes, Bazball, philosophy alignments, Zak Crawley and what he thinks of the tag ‘saviour of Test cricket’
- New feature: Cricket’s great photographers, starts with Patrick Eagar
- Vic Marks greets the start of the new county season at Taunton
- George Dobell calls for the end of the men’s Hundred
- Azeem Rafiq gives The Cricketer an exclusive interview
- Steve Harmison on the Ashes, fast bowlers and franchise cricket
- Barney Ronay heralds the rise of Harry Brook
- Huw Turbervill dissects Richard Gould's first meeting with the press
- Mike Selvey looks at why England have returned to David Saker
- David Hopps says county cricketers must resist the American dream
- And much, much more...

Related Topics

• Six reasons to pick up the May issue of The Cricketer!