"I'm getting into cricket. I love the way you stop for lunch and afternoon tea. I've had strawberries already and some Pimms." – Judy Murray
I have always liked to watch sport and when I was young I especially liked the BBC cricket Test Match coverage. It was cricket heaven with literally hours and hours of England v Australia, England v West Indies, England v India and so on and so on.
If I wasn't playing outside I'd be ready for the Test Match from the very first delivery of the day, take lunch and tea at the same time as the players and watch it right through to the end. In the days before teletext or the internet I even used to keep a scorecard up-to-date so that I could show my dad when he came home for lunch and when he had finished work for the day.
It was perfect for someone who liked cricket as much as I did, five long glorious test matches from about June through to August. Perfect that was until about this time of the year when Wimbledon fortnight came along and interfered with the schedules. This was in the days of only two (later three) TV channels so it was difficult accommodating conflicting sports coverage and there I was sitting in front of the (black and white) television when I'd hear the dreaded words: "Well, that's all from Lords for the moment as we return you to Wimbledon for coverage of the tennis"
I hated Wimbledon, I never liked tennis and they used to take the test match coverage off to broadcast it. It was boring, especially the women's matches! What made it worse was that this was in the days before tennis became a glamour sport.
I see no fun in watching tennis, men and women knocking the ball backwards and forwards over a net for almost three hours in long boring base line rallies. a form of repetitive torture.
I realise now that this was selfish but I used to pray for rain at Wimbledon and hope the sun was still shining at Headingley, Trent Bridge or Edgbaston so that the BBC would be forced to return to the cricket and I used to wish so hard that a game would be over in only two sets so that the ordeal would be over and we could get back to a real sport.
Rain doesn't really help anymore of course because they have put a bloody roof over the court and just carry on.
The reason that it was so bad was that the Wimbledon fortnight would disrupt the coverage of two test matches. The last two days of the second test match and the first three of the third (test matches started on a Thursday and finished on Tuesday and there was no play on a Sunday) were completely ruined in terms of continuity by this to and froing, backwards and forwards to SW19.
Things have changed a great deal since then of course and these days you can't get test match coverage on the BBC (except on the radio) but you can still get Wimbledon. According to the website:
- Approximately 2,500 broadcasters work in the Broadcast Centre
- Nine courts have live television coverage
- The BBC uses nearly 100 cameras around the grounds
- There are positions for 120 commentators on Centre Court alone
Sadly there is no way of getting away from it, the BBC spends so much of its sports coverage budget on it that to justify it it is on BBC1, BBC2, Radio Five Live, Radio Five Live Extra and then when it is all over for the day it is shown all over again in the days so called highlights.
So there is really no way of getting away from the dreadful blanket coverage of the Wimbledon fortnight.
I wish the BBC would spend their/our money on cricket again.
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