Well, you live, you learn. In the 1980s, when I collected commentating gems for a daily column in the Melbourne Herald, Lawry was up there with the best exponents. "Gower was elevated down the batting order," said Lawry, up-ending gravity during the 1986-87 season. He followed up with some mind-blowing word pictures, suggesting that, "Jones has already picked one boundary off his toes".

Such tortured vernacular provided a steady stream of newspaper copy during the snoozy summer months and one can only lament the polished sophistication that has beset the microphone since the sport became truly professional. Where, one asks, is the sort of observation we got from Max ''Tangles'' Walker when he noted a fieldsman ''holding his hands in his head'' and later a fieldsman ''holding his hands cupped upwardly down''. It was not clear whether the latter pair were the same hands that had been held in the head but, either way, one expected very little success for the fieldsman in the way of catches.

You could not blame Aussie cricketer Bruce Laird for a modicum of confusion in December 1981 when, according to Richie Benaud, he was ''brought in to stand in the corner of the circle''. Laird's heroic endeavours in pinpointing the precise part of the circumference that constituted a ''corner'' were matched only by the efforts of Pakistani fieldsman Qasim who, in a subsequent innings, pulled off a spectacular dismissal. ''He's running away from the ball and just catches up with it,'' raved the late great Norman May.

It was indeed fortunate that Qasim was not running towards the ball or he may have missed it altogether.

Lawry was to the fore again in a West Indies match when he spied ''Clive Lloyd talking to his slippers'', sparking suspicions that some had spiced up the orange juice at the drinks break. And, fizzing with excitement in a later match, Lawry honked that ''he's hit it a mile in the air and that's no exaggeration''.