Don’t call me the new Sue! Guha says she’s not a broadcasting natural, but is set on making her mark

Isa Guha’s reaction is at odds with the composed presence she has become in our living rooms. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever feel comfortable with that, no,’ she says.

Guha, the former England cricketer, is addressing rumours she has been lined up by the BBC to be the next Sue Barker following a successful transition into other sports, including the fronting of the corporation’s Wimbledon coverage and highlights of the Commonwealth Games.

‘Look, Sue Barker is irreplaceable. Sue was an incredible broadcaster and she was really emotional in her last few days. We were all sat in the studio watching that support for her during those final Sunday celebrations and it was really heartening, and I was just so in awe of what she’s done,’ says Guha, 37.

Isa Guha was handed responsibility for shaping the BBC’s screening of The Hundred

Former England cricketer Guha has enjoyed a successful transition into other sports

Guha was originally meant to shadow broadcasting doyenne Barker in her 30th and final Wimbledon for the BBC, a move designed to help the newbie being wrenched from her comfort zone. But when Barker requested to start work at 1pm daily, two hours into the eight-hour TV schedule, plans changed. Guha would preview the day’s play as the 11am anchor.

‘I checked in with Sue to make sure that that was exactly what she wanted to do, recognising it was her last Wimbledon,’ says Guha.

In the build-up, she sat down with the 66-year-old at Queen’s Club for a brief on what to expect during the biggest fortnight in the calendar of British tennis. A warmth of welcome that placed Guha at greater ease but one that did not suppress the nerves altogether.

A lack of sleep preceded her debut alongside Tim Henman and Tracy Austin. Facts and figures, swotted over by day, refused to leave her head at night. She was soon feeling at home, however, when bad weather interrupted the opening hours of the tournament. That decade of cricket experience came in useful. ‘I just had to get to rain-fill mode,’ she says with a smile.

And so, 10 years after she stopped playing cricket to talk about it, Guha has followed the lead of Barker — and other leading female broadcasters like Clare Balding, Gabby Logan and Hazel Irvine — by moving into other sporting spheres.

Guha has followed the lead of leading female broadcasters Clare Balding and Gabby Logan

‘On your journey, you’re striving to be the best you can be. So, people say what they want to say but for me it’s just about trying to be the best presenter I can be, and if people enjoy what I do then great,’ she says.

‘Because I feel like I have a role to play in shaping how a broadcast should be, how it should look and feel, and the stories we’re telling.’

Like the silkiest batters, Guha appears to have those extra few seconds to play her shots on air. She does not care for autocues. A natural? Not a bit of it, she says. ‘I have to imagine no one’s watching and that it’s not that big a deal.’ Terrible is the word she uses to describe herself during her initial days with a microphone. ‘I was really shy. My voice wasn’t great. And I was very fortunate to be given opportunities around the world,’ she adds.

In another echo of Barker, who became a commentator and reporter for Channel 7 post-tennis career, some of Guha’s early breaks came on Australian TV.

The 37-year-old fronted the BBC’s highlights of the Commonwealth Games this summer

That pitched her alongside the late Shane Warne. ‘He had this unbelievable way of simplifying the game,’ she says. ‘He could talk about a moment in play which had you hooked and even if you weren’t a cricket lover, you would listen to him and go, “Wow, that was amazing”. It was a huge inspiration to me to watch him in action.’

Handed responsibility for shaping the BBC’s screening of the Hundred, Guha has attempted to emulate the kind of camaraderie encouraged when Channel 10 decided to turn the cameras around on their commentators a decade ago — ‘I was blown away by the dynamic between the talent,’ she says — pushed for increased on-field player chat and promoted the entertainment aspect of the ECB’s new toy by showcasing up-and-coming music artists during matches. ‘I love randomness. I loved growing up watching things like The Big Breakfast and Saturday morning shows with Cat Deeley and Ant and Dec,’ she says.

‘It just looked like they were having so much fun and they did stuff off the cuff that I found really entertaining as a teenager. So, I wanted to make sure that we were doing that in our coverage.’

In the pursuit of a younger audience, Guha has championed the presence of former Love Islander Chris Hughes among the BBC’s commentary team but accepts the need to maintain balance and not patronise established cricket watchers. Talk of match-ups and tactics, she insists, comes more naturally to her than chat on upcoming BBC Introducing acts, despite having a musician for a husband in Richard Thomas, who is currently performing with Paolo Nutini and Ben Howard.

She has serious playing pedigree too. Once ranked the world’s No1 bowler in women’s one-day internationals, she also claimed nine wickets with her seam bowling to be named player of the match as England retained the Ashes in 2008.

Guha worked alongside Sue Barker as the latter presented her 30th and last Wimbledon

Yet an international career of more than 100 appearances was over at the start of 2012 for a multitude of reasons. Without regret. Or remuneration.

‘I was 26 and I wasn’t earning any money,’ she says. ‘I was really fortunate to be part of an amazing team that went from being pretty average to the best team in the world in 2009. We won the T20 World Cup, one-day World Cup and whitewashed the Aussies. It doesn’t get any better than that.’

Guha, who met Thomas around that time, had been intent on helping England match the dominance of the Australian men’s team of the early 2000s but reconsidered her future when she was an unused squad member on the tour of New Zealand. At the time, her life was ‘fully loaded with going to uni’ — she has a Master’s degree in neuroscience — and ‘training full-time essentially for a semi-pro sport’.

And so the first woman of South Asian heritage to represent England at any sport left the field of play. Now, she wants to help those intent on following her path by setting up a foundation to mentor young girls in particular from ethnic backgrounds, as a legacy to her mother Roma, who died in 2019.

‘We all take our lead from someone and she was the one I took my lead from,’ says Guha. ‘She was a teacher who went into the communities and gave confidence to those who struggle to get out of their comfort zones and their own environments. She was super inclusive, treated everyone equally and had tremendous empathy for people.’

Guha says she never experienced racism as a player but has, along with the rest of the game, been forced to reassess how she and others acted in the wake of the discrimination scandals that have stained English cricket.

‘On the back of George Floyd, it made everyone reflective of their own experiences,’ she says. ‘It takes incredible bravery for people to talk about their experiences. But then it makes you think, “Did I do enough to help others?”

‘Everyone probably experienced something where they didn’t feel confident enough to speak out, where they probably brushed it off as banter, but actually, it’s wrong.

Isa Guha at her wedding to musician Richard Thomas in 2018

‘There are different things that you grapple with because you do look different at the end of the day, and you do have a different background, so I always tried to check my Indian-ness at the door.

‘When I was going to Durga Puja, a Bengali festival, each October, I’d wear the Indian sari, but that would just be something I did at the weekend, not necessarily something I was talking about to anyone else.’

Another smile cannot be suppressed, however, when Guha compares her school days playing with boys with today’s T20 generation. ‘A lot of young women have amazing ideas about our sport already, so it’s making them the bosses of cricket at the age of 12,’ she says with a chuckle. ‘Ask them how they’d like to see the game in 10 years and they’re talking about more visibility on TikTok and want to know why there are inequalities in our sport.’

Questions on their futures, it seems, are less uncomfortable for one of the country’s rising television stars than those of one of her own.