Old-school BBC in need of new tennis classes

BRITISH tennis has changed a lot over the past decade and a bit, and will continue to do so at an accelerating rate. Roger Draper, the chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association, has made it plain that his mission is to shake the sport out of its complacency; indeed, his very appointment was proof that, after years of underachievement, there is a recognition at the top that radical reform is overdue.

It has been obvious for some time that the cosy old ways are no longer producing the goods. The affluent clubs of the Home Counties, for most of the last century the major source of Britain's leading players as well as being big beneficiaries of LTA funding, are now no more than a backwater.

That much is clear when you look at a list of the country's leading players from the past ten years. Greg Rusedski grew up in Canada. British No1 Andy Murray, as you may have heard, is thought to be Scottish - and so, unsurprisingly, is his brother Jamie. Jamie Baker is too.

Alex Bogdanovic was born in Belgrade, not Belgravia. Elena Baltacha spent her infancy in her native Kiev before moving with her family to Ipswich then Perth.

Anne Keothavong, who has succeeded Baltacha as British women's No1, is from Hackney. Granted, this is in London, but it's a part of town which hardly abounds with grass courts and Virginia creeper.

And so it goes. Of course, there are players from the traditional strongholds of tennis in the top ten of both the men's and women's British rankings - and so there should be, given the advantages they have had. In general, though, the face of the sport has changed, becoming less stereotypical, more diverse.

Not long ago, the inclusion of a boy from Dunblane in the world top ten would have appeared as random and fanciful as JK Rowling's decision that the top Quidditch teams on the globe should come from Ireland and Bulgaria. Now it's a reality.

Can you see where we're going with this, and how the foregoing relates to the BBC's coverage of this week's action from the Queen's Club and its treatment of tennis in general? Thought so.

Quite simply, while there have been many welcome technical innovations in the BBC's coverage - the latest being the screening of the Hawk-Eye replay on contested points - the presentational side of the corporation's operation has not been so quick to adapt. In fact, it's still a smug club, one in which most of the leading presenters speak with the same accent, and voice the same attitudes.

Sue Barker, John Lloyd, Andrew Castle and David Mercer unarguably know a lot about playing tennis. But they don't give the impression of knowing a whole lot about the world beyond the locker rooms.

Peter Fleming, a regular guest this week, offers a welcome change of perspective, as does his former doubles partner John McEnroe, who has made frequent appearances on the BBC over the past few years. Yet it's still far from being enough.

One hesitates to use the word 'diversity' within earshot of a BBC employee, lest they respond by jumping into a taxi, taking it to Brixton, and offering a presenter's contract to the first black kid whose slang they could not understand. But that's what we need all the same - a more diverse group of presenters, with a wider range of backgrounds.

This need not be done in some tokenistic way, and of course it would be counter-productive to come up with a commentary team which slavishly reflected the ethnic and economic differences across the British population. Just a change on our screens to reflect an altered reality, that's all we need.

Granted, the BBC is not beholden to the LTA and does not to have to follow that body's agenda. But it does have a big financial stake in Wimbledon, and it does have a keen interest in attracting bigger audiences.

And speaking of Wimbledon, it is no longer the Pimm's-and-strawberries stereotype it once was either. Like the people who play it, the men and women who watch tennis no longer inhabit just a thin slice of the social spectrum. The greatest day in the recent history of the championships was the Monday of the 2001 final between Goran Ivanisevic and Pat Rafter, when Centre Court was electric, being packed with ordinary fans who had queued up all night to get in.

If the BBC could begin to harness a fraction of the energy of that afternoon, it would do wonders for the sport.