Championships’ coverage will never be the same without Sue Barker, the admired broadcaster that felt like chatting to your mum
It was possibly the biggest miss on Centre Court this tournament. Nick Kyrgios had completed his anarchic, anger-fuelled third-round win against Stefanos Tsitsipas and was about to address the crowd. There was only one person who could take him on in this mood. One woman with the moral strength and the laser-empathy to cut through his layers of bravado and commune directly with his soul. The Wimbledon Wonder, aka White Steel, aka Sue Barker.
Unfortunately, omnipresence is not one of Barker’s many superpowers. Confined to the studio, she could only pass comment on Kyrgios’s performance from afar – “the swearing, Tracy” – then warn us that Casualty would be following in a few minutes. Which, given what we had just witnessed, sounded like a coded message.