Christopher Martin-Jenkins: the passing of the inspirational amateur leaves us all the poorer Perhaps there is some sense in this modern attitude. Perhaps his failure to play cricket at the highest level meant that CMJ was deprived of certain insights into how the Test match game is played, though I personally doubt this. But Mr Martin-Jenkins also gained great compensating strength by not being a member of the guild of ex-professional cricketers. Throughout his life - and this was one of his most attractive qualities - he retained the same boyish enthusiasm for the sport as the ordinary cricket fan. His vantage point was that of the hugely knowledgeable amateur. This meant that he saw cricket not through the cynical and often claustrophobic prism of the ex-pro, but rather from the wider and much more nutritious perspective of civil society. In consequence, CMJ was relatively slow to censure players for failures of ability, but did look for high standards. He expected players not to cheat, to behave fairly, to walk when they knew they were out, and to understand the traditions of the game they played. In the fine words of his friend John Woodcock, the great cricket writer, he was "the staunchest adherent of ancient conceptions." CMJ was sometimes mocked for this fastidiousness, personal integrity, and sense of values. In truth, this was the very reason he was loved by so many people who never met him - but who revered him and everything he was and stood for. His death (CMJ was given out far too early by the umpire in an agonisingly cruel decision) therefore poses a problem for Lord Patten's sorely troubled BBC. Let's spell it out: CMJ would never have had a chance of breaking through today as a cricket commentator in the 21st-century BBC sports department. He stood for everything the corporation's middle management hates most: his elegant diction, eccentricity, deep religious belief, perfect courtesy, public school education, refusal to sensationalise, dislike of modernity, sense of right and wrong, above all his quiet conservatism. It was a miracle that he got in to the BBC 40 years ago (the Leftists had grabbed control even then). So who will be chosen to replace him? We know what the corporation (whose sports department attempted to rechristen the young CMJ as "Chris Jenkins" but was politely rebuffed) will instinctively want. Don't forget that the BBC is now transfixed with the worthless cult of celebrity. It will need someone who is far better known than the quiet young man who was hired by Test Match Special in the early Seventies. All the evidence suggests that it will attempt to replace CMJ either with yet another former pro or, just as likely and almost as bad, with the latest protégé of the Radio Five Live sports desk - some young thruster who would be just as much at home doing a match report from Manchester United or the darts from Alexandra Palace. I'm sure that either would be adequate, but much would be lost. It is relevant to recall that 25 years ago TMS could boast four very fine presenters, each one of whom were civilians rather than ex-professional cricketers. Besides CMJ, there was John Arlott, a former policeman and poet; Brian Johnston, a wonderful comic and fantasist; and Henry Blofeld, who, though increasingly decrepit, mercifully staggers on to this day, and remains one of the leading ornaments of sports broadcasting. All of these figures have brought with them, in their extremely different ways, an outside perspective and individual sensibility. The BBC used to produce a large number of such figures. Sir Patrick Moore, who died just before Christmas, is another example of an eccentric amateur enthusiast who turned out to be a wonderful communicator over the airwaves. Like CMJ, there is no hope that he would be welcome today. It is no coincidence that neither of the two greatest cricket writers of the 20th century were professional sportsmen. One of them, Neville Cardus, a self-taught man and son of a prostitute, came up the hard way in life. Eventually he found a slot on the Manchester Guardian, where he established himself as a music critic and cricket reporter. The second was even more remarkable: the West Indian revolutionary and Marxist academic CLR James. His autobiographical book on West Indian cricket, Beyond a Boundary, is probably the greatest sports book ever written, because it looks directly at the wider significance of the sport he loved. In the book's preface, CLR poses the rhetorical question: what do they know of cricket who only cricket know? The answer is, of course, very little indeed, which is why Christopher Martin‑Jenkins was such a wonderful and truthful broadcaster. His quiet, unassuming and lucid commentary, informed by Christian beliefs and sense of place, was in its way an expression of a world view and a philosophy. That is why the BBC needs to think long and hard on what made him so good at his job. And not just the BBC - the political guild has plenty to learn too.