Wimbledon: New balls please

IT would not be entirely accurate to say that the subject of drugs is never mentioned at any point throughout the two weeks of the BBC’s coverage of Wimbledon. Why, I heard them mentioning it last week, with a reference to Dan Evans, the British Number Three, who faces a two-year ban after testing positive for cocaine.

They’re going after Dan, and no mistake. Condemnation has been swift and fierce.

The only voice raised in any kind of defence was that of former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic, who pointed out that cocaine is more of a recreational drug than a performance-enhancing one.

Which is a very good point to be making in the circumstances, a point so good indeed, it starts to make the other points seem quite poor. Because if anything, cocaine for a tennis player would be performance-inhibiting, though extremely disinhibiting in other ways — not just in the loud disputing of line calls, but in the equally loud proclaiming of non-existent movie and record deals, the outrageous propositions to “the ladies” in the crowd, and frequent visits to the locker room for another “comfort break”.

Otherwise it wouldn’t do you much good, and anyway loads of people in many walks of life take cocaine, without it having any significance for the overall integrity of their profession.

So the fact that Dan Evans happens to be a tennis player who took cocaine, has few implications for the game of tennis as a whole, being significant only to the career of one Dan Evans — which was never the most marvellous career anyway.

And yet, this singular transgression by one of the little guys gets a good mention on the BBC, a mention so rare in relation to the matter of drugs in general, I found myself re-winding and listening to it again, just to make sure that I hadn’t imagined it.

Now, I would not catch every minute of Wimbledon, but I would catch a fair amount of it, or at least I would be in the room while it is happening. And in all that time I don’t think I have ever heard a discussion of any significance on that drugs issue which has many implications for the game of tennis as a whole, the issue of performance-enhancing drugs.

Indeed if there was a fair representation of the relative importance of the downfall of Dan Evans, and the question of performance-enhancing drugs, you’d probably need a full day on the drugs, and as for Dan… well, Dan wouldn’t be there at all.

Moreover, you would need another full day, running into the next morning, on the enormity of the gambling which is taking place on every match on every court at Wimbledon, another aspect of this glorious fortnight in the bosom of the English bourgeoisie, which is utterly ignored by the BBC.

Drugs and gambling — you could of course still have Wimbledon without these phenomena, but frankly, it just wouldn’t be the same. The strawberries and cream would always be there, but without the drugs and the gambling, maybe they would not taste so sweet.

Not that these supernatural levels of denial are somehow exclusive to the BBC. You’ ll be watching the Tour de France on Eurosport for a long time before you’ll hear much mention of our old friend, the doping.

And as for Sky Sports, if it meant avoiding all the unpleasantness of such controversies, they would put on their straightest corporate faces and deny that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

So if I were this Dan Evans, I might consider the possibility that if I am to be monstered as a bad ’un, in the light of the sheer bloody-minded dishonesty of it all, maybe I should be giving something back by, shall we say, opening a debate on the drugs and the gambling.

Then again the “debate” has already opened, it’s just that those who have skin in the game have very little enthusiasm for taking part in it. Not this year anyway, on the BBC. And the smart money is saying, not next year either.