Allison Pearson
Now the thought police are coming for our soldiers
Well, which did you watch on Sunday? At Pearson Towers, we tried to watch both. He was upstairs with the cricket, I was down with the tennis. “COME ON, ROGER!” “COME ON, STOKESY!” “Darling, you have to come and see this.”
“No, you have to come and see THIS!”
“Siiiiiiiiiixxxxxxxx! Sorry, you actually have to come and see this right now. COME ON, ENGLAND!”
Two of the finest sporting events in history were in competition with each other. Minute by minute, the tension
corkscrewed into the watching millions. The first man out was ejected from a church for checking the cricket score on his phone. Honestly, is nothing sacred? Imagine coming between a man and his batting idols!
“Today would be a good time to stage a coup,” quipped ITV newscaster Alastair Stewart on Twitter. Coup – was there a coup? They could have demolished Buckingham Palace, brick by brick, and no one would have noticed.
At Wimbledon, the Duchess of Cambridge summed up the feelings of the entire nation, or the quarter that was watching the men’s final anyway, when she covered her face with her hands. Couldn’t bear to look. I tried watching with the volume down. It helped. A bit.
“Come on, ROG!” Federer was playing the most sublime strokes, Rembrandt strokes, but Terminator Djokovic kept coming back. How was that possible?
Downstairs, the tennis score achieved a cardiacarresting symmetry – 2-2, 11-11, 40-40 – when there came a sound, half scalded yelp, half jubilant shout, from up above. I couldn’t make out what Himself was saying. Supernova? I ran to the foot of the stairs to check. “SUPER OVER!”
What’s a Super Over? “It’s like Article 50. No one understands it, but we’re still in with a chance. COME ON, JOFRA!!!”
At Wimbledon and at Lord’s, there were simultaneous tiebreaks. So good for the nerves. Twitter was all a-twitter. “And so the torture continues.” “You couldn’t script this – and I’m a bloody scriptwriter.” “This is taking years off my life.” “Could this be more tense?” groaned a cricket fan. “Try the tennis, mate!”
Bafflement was followed by a sensation that is resisted by England supporters under all circumstances, except, could it be? A flicker of something. Not hope? (Sorry, there was definitely hope.) A ball travelling at speed through the air towards a waiting pair of hands. So much that could go wrong. The safest pair of hands in the land waited. Jos Buttler caught the ball, struck the wicket and nine million of us exhaled as one. “YESSSSSSS!”
Lovely Federer played better and lost, England (arguably) played worse and won. The gods were having a laugh, weren’t they? Mocking us mortals with their sport. That bit where the fielded ball was thrown back in, accidentally hit Ben Stokes’s bat and went shooting off to the boundary for a six in total. Magic. If magic is two parts disbelief to three parts delight.
A day to savour for all time, as my friend Colonel Stewart said. A day also to marvel that the cooling embers of Britain’s love for cricket could be reignited, all this time after it was taken off terrestrial television and sent to die on Sky.
Why the hell does the Cricket World Cup no longer feature on Ofcom’s A1 list of live sporting events that must be offered to the main free-to-air TV channels? Until Channel 4 agreed to show the final, the World Cup was passing the nation by. Several elderly chaps I know can no longer enjoy the sport they have loved since boyhood. Not to mention all those kids who thrilled to the exploits of Stokes and Jofra and who now want to pick up a bat and ball themselves.
Blame the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) for letting down fans and taking the highest offer, from Sky, in order to bail out the debtridden 18 first-class county clubs.
Can Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright please now turn his attention most urgently to getting the forthcoming Test matches on free-to-air TV? The BBC website, which has been providing cricket updates, had 40 million hits, the most for any story ever. A true public service broadcaster would reduce the vast pay of some of its main sports presenters and spend the cash to bring cricket to its viewers.
After such a sublime Sunday of sport, how dare the BBC do anything less. It’s simply not cricket.