The coverage of Sunday’s England v Pakistan T20, the first match on the BBC in two decades, will be very different to the days of Peter West and Tony Lewis
Nostalgia is the comfort blanket of our times. The BBC knows this, which is why it spent lockdown pacifying or existential angst with golden replays of the Olympics, Wimbledon and West Indies tours. When it shows Sunday’s England v Pakistan T20, the corporation’s first live cricket TV broadcast in two decades, there will be a quiet sigh from older viewers, of something finally being put right with the world.
Cricket and the Beeb used to be wedded to each other. For 60 years – it first showed the game on TV in 1938 – the BBC enjoyed a near monopoly on televising the game, and gave it more airtime than any other ball sport. Each generation of viewers inherited their own spirit guide, be it genial genie Brian Johnston, the headmasterly Peter West, or the silky toned Tony Lewis. It was a marriage made in St John’s Wood, until the Great Divorce of 1998.
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