Quick World Record

It’s a rare mix that makes a good cricket commentator: erudite descriptions of action, comprehensive knowledge of great players, faultless recall of statistics, and needle-sharp sense of timing and judgment.

Zimbabwean-born Dean du Plessis, 32, has all these attributes and has been delivering commentaries on matches for nine years. But he has never seen a game in his life, because his green eyes are glass. He was born blind, with tumours on his retinas.

That has been no obstacle to him sharing the commentary box in Tests, one-day and Twenty20 tournaments involving all the Test-playing nations in worldwide radio broadcasts.

He has worked with the likes of Tony Cozier (who pronounced Dean’s delivery “very smooth”), Geoffrey Boycott (“the nastiest person I have ever met”), Ravi Shastri and Australia’s former spin bowler Bruce Yardley, who himself lost an eye. In 2004 the two became the first team to deliver a commentary with a single eye between them.

Mr du Plessis’s accentuated sense of hearing makes up for being sightless. Wired up to the stump microphones, he can tell who is bowling from the footfalls and grunts, a medium or fast delivery by the length of time between the bowler’s foot coming down and the impact of the ball on the pitch. He picks up a yorker from the sound of the bat ramming down on the ball, can tell if a ball is on the off or on-side, and when it’s hit a pad rather than bat. When the wicketkeeper’s voice goes flat, it tells him a draw is in the offing.

He can’t play the role in the commentary box of the anchor — who delivers the ball-by-ball passage, who can see the silently raised finger of the umpire and the unspoken redeployment of fielders. Mr du Plessis can only tell from the crowd noise whether a ball has been gathered in a fielder’s hands, or spilled. “I have to work with the anchor,” he said. “I am the guy who supplies, well, the colour.”

Last month Bangladesh were playing a gradually improving Zimbabwe when Mr du Plessis heard that the visitors’ captain had sent a fielder far down to fine leg after the Zimbabwe batsman Charles Coventry had smashed a four. “A sixth sense told me it was a double bluff,” Dean said.

“He wanted to give the impression that the next ball would be a bumper, to make Coventry use a hook shot.” As he suspected, the next Bangladeshi ball was a sneaky yorker.

“The thing about Dean is the intuition,” said Andy Pycroft, the Zimbabwean opening batsman from 1979 to 2001. “The public love to listen to him. If he has the right person at anchor to support him he is brilliant.” Mr du Plessis hated the “blind cricket” he was taught to play with a plastic-wrapped volleyball at the blind school he attended. One day, 14 and bored, he tuned the radio in to a station devoted to ball-by-ball commentaries. It was to change his life: “There was a phenomenal noise in the background, 80,000 people in a stadium in India, people roaring. I realised it was cricket. I was fascinated.”

Dean pushed his way into the commentary box at Harare Sports Club in 2001 and was allowed to try out with the microphone. He never looked back.