England’s glorious day in the sun lifted the BBC pundits but there was still caution amid the commotionComplain about the licence fee if you must but the bottom line is the BBC’s comprehensive World Cup coverage offers something for everyone. Toddlers across the land, for example, have been cavorting joyously to the simple pleasure of the Kicky Kicky Kick Kick song from the Hey Duggee cartoon. Meanwhile on Radio 5 Live there is the Robbie Savage breakfast show, for those who have not yet graduated to CBeebies.It is a broad church. But the actual match coverage must please everyone at once, no mean feat. England’s support can be roughly split into two categories – the blindly optimistic and the morbidly fatalistic – and...
Kremlin’s state-funded English language TV station is derided for its more sinister motives but its World Cup coverage has largely proved a pleasant surpriseTwo things in Russia are fairly constant. First, there is the scale. In St Petersburg I stayed in an average chain-style hotel that was like a ziggurat for alien giants, its footprint spread over roughly 4% of the world’s crust, spooling down into sub floors and bunkers and swimming lagoons, upper floors dusted with rock deposits from the rings of Saturn.Everything is massive. It’s also, and this is crucial, very far away. Related: England’s Harry Maguire offers perfect antidote to Panama power | Daniel Taylor Related: Stan Collymore: ‘The thing white men hate most is outspoken black...
News that the BBC had lost the radio rights to England’s winter tours was greeted with dismay but cricket fans should realise a different voice for the sport is both possible and necessaryStop all the clocks. Stamp a single steel-toed work boot through Mrs Blenkinsop’s sensational triple-tiered Victoria sponge. Prevent the dog from barking with a bag of gravel. For BBC Test Match Special is dead. Or at least, suspended for a bit over the autumn and winter.Instead commercial radio is back in the shape of TalkSport, which has outbid the BBC for rights to England’s autumn and winter Test tours to Sri Lanka and West Indies. And nothing now can ever come to any good. Except, of course for...
The fetishising of Team GB feeds into the notion of medal hunting, of glossy PR at the expense of sport for allIn medical practice the phrase “the dose is the poison” is sometimes used to describe the principle that an excess of anything can be deadly. Take enough of it and it will kill you, from kitten tears to unicorn laughter to everyday ingestion of diesel residue from your own family car.At times during the BBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics it has been tempting to wonder if this rule also applies to extreme, nauseating doses of public niceness; if it is possible, given sufficient exposure, to die of niceness. Related: How much will Team GB's 'medal moments' in Pyeongchang really...
From England’s victorious youth football squads to cricket’s county championship underdogs, there are strong claims aplenty this yearThey did not beat the double world champions over three compelling Tests, but Warren Gatland’s Lions deserve a place on the list for their part in a thrilling series in New Zealand that will stand the test of time. Often under the cosh, there were times when it looked as if the Lions would be hopelessly outmatched against a team as brilliant and confident as the All Blacks, especially after losing 30-15 in the first Test. Instead of allowing their hosts to run away with it, Gatland’s tourists responded with a magnificent performance in the second Test, fighting hard to win 24-21. Their...