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Classic View From The Boundary on BBC Sounds.

Hello, this is Jonathan Agnew. Welcome to a very special edition of our 40 from 40 podcast

series, celebrating 40 years of View From The Boundary interviews. Now, this interview

is one that so many of you have asked us to dig out of the archives and it really is one

of my favourites. It's very rare to speak to a guest away from the commentary box, Prince

Philip was one of the more notable examples and here's another. In 2005, English cricket,

of course, reveled in the glory of Ash's success and it subsequently emerged that one of

the team's dressing room anthems during that series was Sir Elton John's Rocket Man.

Well, 12 months later in May 2006, Ingenor Rounder Andrew Flintoff invited Sir Elton

along to a charity event where he would join him on stage to sing the England team's favourite.

Well, the gig part of Flintoff's benefit here was at Battersea Park and I popped along

to speak to Sir Elton on his piano stool. Well, it's an out question, one of the most

significant musicians of Britain has produced his sold hundreds of millions of records

in a career that's lasted more than half a century and he began by telling me of his early

cricket memories.

I was at school when I went to grammar school and we played cricket and of course, growing

up cricket with Dennis Compton and Brian Statham Freddie Truman. When I was at grammar school,

they were the two England fast bowlers and Compton and Caudrey Edrich, all those people.

You know, they were heroes, they were a great British sporting figures and so you idolise

them. I mean, cricket commentary in those days was so exciting, it was like boxing commentary.

And Truman's coming into bowl now and he's saying, you know, the descriptions were so fantastic.

...