Test Match Special

Test Match Special (TMS)

Genre	Sport (cricket) commentary
Running time	During England Matches
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
Home station	Five Live Sports Extra & BBC Radio 4 longwave
Original release	1957 – present
Audio format	LW, digital radio and digital TV
Website	Official website
Podcast	Official podcast

Test Match Special (also known as TMS) is a British radio programme, originally, as its name implies, dealing exclusively with Test Matches, but currently covering any professional cricket, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 (long wave), Five Live Sports Extra (digital) and via the internet to the United Kingdom and (where broadcasting rights permit) the rest of the world. TMS provides ball-by-ball coverage of most Test cricket, One Day International, and Twenty20 matches and tournaments involving the England cricket team.

BBC Radio was the first broadcaster to cover every ball of a Test match. Live cricket had been broadcast since 1927, but originally it was thought that Test match cricket was too slow for ball-by-ball commentary to work. However, Seymour de Lotbiniere ('Lobby'), who was responsible for live sports coverage and who went on to become an outstanding head of outside broadcasts at the BBC, realised that ball-by-ball commentary could make compelling radio. In the mid-1930s he got Howard Marshall to begin commentating on cricket, rather than only giving reports. From the mid-1930s to the 1950s the amount of ball-by-ball commentary gradually increased, but it was not until TMS was launched in 1957 that every ball was covered for their British audience.

Robert Hudson was responsible for the launch of TMS, writing to his Outside Broadcasts boss Charles Max-Muller in 1956, proposing broadcasting full ball-by-ball coverage of Tests rather than only covering fixed periods, and suggesting using the Third Programme (as BBC Radio 3 was then known) frequency, since at that time the Third Programme only broadcast in the evening.

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