Bland BBC coverage needs Andy Murray to add electricity to its broadcast team

It wasn’t the easiest of openings for Isa Guha, sitting on a high stool at the BBC’s lofty broadcast point, clutching one of those unfeasibly large yellow BBC Sport microphones, with wind threatening the sheaf of papers in front of her and guests not disposed to animated discussion.

Guha, sitting in the seat Sue Barker would have taken up had she not been ushered towards the door by the grey BBC suits, knew the size of the challenge, after a Test match for the ages, 12 miles north, gave way to a tournament lacking red-hot storylines this year. 

The decision to permit Russian and Belarusian players to compete seemed like one, though guests Tim Henman and Anne Keothavong, both members of the All-England Club board, were not intending to go rogue.

‘It’s just something we have to learn to live with and move on,’ Keothavong said. ‘It’s not easy, for anyone.’ 

No, it really is not easy for the citizens of Mariupol and Kherson, nor for the family of the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, killed by a Russian missile last week, but no one was going to puncture the mood of gentility by saying so.

Isa Guha didn’t get off to the easiest of stars holding the big yellow microphone at Wimbledon

Sue Barker (above) was ushered out of the Wimbledon presenting chair last year by the BBC 

A place on on the BBC pundit’s team awaits Andy Murray when he does finally retire 

The topic of Nick Kyrgios, a last-minute pull-out, surfaced and though he, too, divides opinion, electrifying spectators and terrifying officials last year, Henman and Keothavong didn’t shift the dial beyond the idea that Kyrgios is rather splendid.

It’s fair to say that Barker would not have been delving into foreign policy issues either, but after a build-up coloured by the BBC’s compelling Gods of Tennis series, Novak Djokovic being asked ‘Do you feel like the GOAT?’ in one of the prepared interviews made the heart sink.

Guha, a highly effective broadcaster who blends charisma with humility, was more comfortable on her perch than on her Wimbledon debut last season.

She did state early on that ‘I must correct myself’ about this being Venus Williams’ 24th Wimbledon.

But it’s not Barker who is missing from a broadcast which does all the essentials rather well, but lacks dynamic former players on whose every word we hang.

Its electricity arrives in those moments when John McEnroe, God of Tennis, materialises in the land of the yellow microphone, so where is a British analyst of his ilk? 

Currently playing tennis. 

The arrival of Andy Murray to a stool near Guha cannot come soon enough.