Sports

The British media and, I presume, the people who read, watch, listen to it absolutely love sport. This love often manifests itself as “We are”, “She is”, “He is” the Best in the World. Sometimes this is even true as, for example, in the current cricket test series with the England side trouncing the visiting Indians. On the other hand, the build-up to sporting events offers an opportunity to anticipate the Best in the World status for the British team or player.

BBC Radio 4 and BBC1 TV are two of the media channels that can’t seem to resist this impulse. For reasons that I’ve never been able to understand, this applies especially to tennis and particularly to the prospects for Andy Murray and, before him, for Tim Henman. I like tennis and am a faithful watcher of the Wimbledon tournament every summer. In the two or three weeks leading up to Wimbledon, the BBC manages to interview a surprising number of “experts” who dutifully predict that this year Murray/Henman will surely win. Of course, so far the experts have all been wrong.

During the tournament BBC TV has several hours a day of coverage of the matches with expert commentary by former players. Between matches the commentary team spends its time interviewing each other mainly about how Murray is up to win this one.

In my opinion, Murray is not a bad player; maybe a bit too emotional, inconsistent and sometimes not very sportsman-like for my taste. If it weren’t for players such as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, Murray could probably win one or two of the major tournaments. Unfortunately for the BBC those competitors are there.

I have to grudgingly admit that the BBC’s promotion of Murray year after year is pretty entertaining.