Come on be honest, we've all laughed at David 'Bumble' Lloyd's unique brand of cricket commentary at least once over the years. He brings an old school irreverent Test Match Special style to the Sky Sports team that both John Arlott and Brain Johnston would probably have approved of.
But behind the familiar soundbites like 'start the car', lurks a shrewd cricket brain honed as a player, coach and umpire. Bumble knows what he is talking about and he makes watching cricket for the armchair fan both enjoyable and interesting.
Lloyd wasn't a bad cricketer either scoring over 19,000 first-class runs and taking 237 wickets with his slow left arm bowling. He played nine tests for England, averaging over 42 with a top score of 214 not out in his second test against India. As an opener on the ill-fated 1974-75 Ashes tour, Bumble just about survived intact from the Thomson and Lillee onslaught, although he never played another test after that series.
He also started the process of professionalising the England team during his stint as coach from 1996-99. Results weren't always great and Lloyd was at the helm during the World Cup of 1999, where the home team went out in the group stages. But he was never short of a quote with his "we flipping murdered 'em" analysis of a drawn series in Zimbabwe perhaps being the best.
But it is as a cricket commentator and Tweeter extraordinaire where Bumble excels and for what he is almost universally loved. Unpredictable? Yes, you never know what he is going to come up with next (and nor do his colleagues in the commentary box), but beneath the humour and the irreverence there is normally a sharp and incisive point.
Winston Churchill once said that his motto during World War II was to "keep buggering on", well we hope that Lloyd keeps bumbling on for as long as possible.
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