This test match has not, on the pitch, been very special at all.  Pietersen’s two hundred yesterday was as routine a test match double century as I have ever heard about.  But the commentators have known for days now that the weather this morning was going to be horrible, and they had a couple of treats lined up for us.

First, they arranged to repeat the Radio 4 show from last night fronted by Rory Bremner about the fifty years of Test Match Special, which they duly did repeat, in two chunks, in among chatting about the weather.  It’s getting brighter, no it’s getting darker, blah blah.  Play will start at 1.30pm, oh no it won’t.  That was the sort of self-congratulatory guff you would you would expect, all of it entirely justified, I hasten to add.  Arlott, Johners, Blowers, Truman, CMJ, Aggers and the rest of them, culminating inevitably in Johners and Aggers giggling about how whoever it was couldn’t quite get his leg over.

Equally entertainingly, anticipating rain, they had lined up Sir Viv Richards, already a part of the commentary team, to reminisce with them, about such things as what it was like playing for a dominant West Indian side, and what it was like being a young West Indian starting out in county cricket.

I realised how special this was and started scribbling notes.

Thomson (yes that Thomson, of Lillee and Thomson fame) bowling for Middx, to Richards, batting for Somerset.  Suddenly a routine county game before four hundred at Lords becomes a mini test match, with two giant egos clashing like King Kong versus Godzilla.  “All the batting side comes out onto the balcony.  At the other end it was Selby v Roebuck and they all went back in again.”

Richards on his chewing gum.  “I reckon someone missed out on a sponsorship deal there.” Yes, indeed, it was as much part of his preparations as his bat, pads, gloves, box, etc..  No chewing gum?  My God, where’s my chewing gum?  Throw me my chewing gum! He didn’t wear a tooth protector guard gum shield, because it interfered with the flavour of the chewing gum.

Boycott about Gooch and Boycott batting against the Windies pace men in the seventies.  Holding and Roberts open for the Windies.  After they have done their worst, Gooch says to Boycott: “We’re alright now, it’s the second stringers.” Garner and Croft.

Agnew is the night watchman in a county game against Hampshire.  He survives for the night, and spends the first half hour of the next morning at the other end, while Andy Roberts bowls to David ("he always had time") Gower.  Not to be forgotten.

Brian Close, a giant of a cricketer still very fondly remembered, captains Somerset, and he takes a shine to the new lad Richards.  Close drives Richards along the motorway, but his head starts to wobble forward into the steering wheel.  “How do I tell the Skipper that he must stop and have some coffee?” They do stop.  Richards does get Close some coffee.  Again, not forgotten.  Imagine if they had both died in a crash.  Close played twenty-two tests and never made a test century, so they said.

The Viv Richards way with bowlers.  The better they were the more he tried to dominate them, it was generally agreed.  Vic Marks remembers consoling fellow spinner John Emburey: “He must think you can bowl because he keeps hitting you out of the ground.”

Richards reckoned that coming to play county cricket when a quite young cricketer toughened him up, and made him concentrate and be more responsible, about cricket and about life.  In the Caribbean, they pride themselves on being a little too laid back.  Playing county cricket added that polish of ruthlessness to his game.  So, naturally, the thought arises that if England want to help world cricket, it might find a way of ceasing to polish Australians, and instead to polish the current crop of horribly unshiny Windy players, especially their bowlers.

And so on.  There were at least another dozen titbits at least as good as those.

None of the commentary of the actual game was as special as this rain-stopped-play stuff.  Apart from that chat, the classiest thing about this Headingley Test so far, the highlight of the TV highlights last night, was when an Avro Lancaster, the last one that can still fly, flew over the ground.