Sharply observed mimicry of sporting commentary is a niche comic form, but from the late 1980s, Australian comedian Billy Birmingham took it to chart-topping ubiquity with a series of recordings that gathered his small legion of impersonations under the sobriquet The Twelfth Man. Most famous were his recreations of a goonish Nine Wide World of Sports team from that golden age of television cricket commentary in which an ecru/ivory/white/cream-blazered Richie Benaud led the likes of Bill Lawry, Tony Greig, Ian Chappell, and Max Walker. Birmingham had the vocal measure of all of them, to genuinely hilarious effect.

His other comedic long suit was a roll-call of Sri Lankan, Indian, and Pakistani cricketers that mocked the forms and pronunciations of Urdu or Sinhalese names in a way that today would be called out for its obvious racism, but thirty years ago passed as mainstream comedy. There was no subtext beyond Anglocentric ridicule to the likes of ‘Somejerk Ramdmecar’, ‘Ahbroke Meandad’, or ‘Ramatunga Downathroata’, but one parodic invention carried the weight of sharp inference, Birmingham’s version of the great Pakistani bowling all-rounder and captain Wasim Akram: ‘Wasee A-Crim’.