Now top commentator and famously poor time-keeper really is the late CMJ

CRICKET:The cricket world knew him as CMJ, initials that became synonymous with the very best in cricket journalism, spoken and written

The late Christopher Martin-Jenkins. We always said it had a pertinent ring to it, because generally that is what he was. And now he really is. It is hard to believe. I last saw him at the end of October when a few of us went to visit him in Sussex.

He was between treatments and quite perky. We took him to the pub for lunch and he paid, which is pretty much when we realised how ill he was.

The cricket world at large knew him as CMJ, initials that became synonymous with the very best in cricket journalism, both spoken and written. Then one day, he arrived to set up shop in the press box. “Hampshire won,” he announced by way of greeting. “Did it, Major?” was the immediate response, reprising Fawlty.

He was known as the Major ever since. And through his entire working life, the Major championed cricket and cricketers of all abilities. The game has lost perhaps the best friend it ever had.

For many years he had been not just colleague but friend, travelling and dining companion, and golfing partner. If ever I write an autobiography, I once told him, I shall call it Waiting for the Major, because that is what I seemed to spend much of my time doing. To this day I have a text template specifically for him that reads: “Where the f*** are you?”

He would always try to cut it finer than a sushi chef and mostly failed. Only the Major, staying at his “club” during London Test matches, could not only turn up late for the start of the match, but do so at Lord’s when the game was at The Oval. Only the Major could turn up at the Rose and Crown in Snettisham when he should have been at the Rose and Crown in Bury St Edmunds two hours away.

Arrive late

Only the Major could arrive late on the first tee on a busy day at Caymanas in Jamaica, to realise he was still wearing his sandals, and that his new clubs had bubble wrap on them. These clubs incidentally were to replace those that centrifugal force had, unknown to him, ejected from his golf bag at regular intervals as he careered his Mini Moke through central Bridgetown in Barbados and which he never retrieved.

He was of course, running late at the time.

Stories of the Major have become embellished over the years, but almost all have their root in fact rather than the apocrypha.