13-01-2024, 05:53 PM
(13-01-2024, 05:22 PM)RhysJR Wrote: It is difficult with such a small pool of recent talent in snooker to get a team of good pundits with up-to-date and relevant knowledge etc. Even Stephen Hendry is over a decade since he was competing for major titles, and he is probably the youngest A-team figure on BBC's and ITV's rosters.
It reminds of a sexist complaint last year of Naomi Schiff being on the Sky F1 team, with the complainant saying they should only have world champions. The amount of eorld champions that are well enough and heve not been on Sky must be in single figures, and even the available ex-F1 drivers who are English first-language must been very small (hence their first choice co-comm has been retired for 35ish years for example).
One of the problems the BBC have is that they seem to, for the most part, only focus on those who've won the world championship, or had notable success in the Triple Crown events (ie reaching the final of one or more of them at least once or twice). This means that they have a pretty limited pool of people to ask for doing punditry/commentary, which is fair enough for their events, but does limit them a lot in who will get involved.
I don't think its helped much when Eurosport keep driving their marketing slogan of "the home of snooker" everywhere, so most current players just think the BBC is irrelevant to the coverage, and thus don't try to get involved with anything they cover. It would be nice to see more current players swapping the cue for the microphone, but I'm of the opinion they should only do that once they've exited a tournament (unless they have a long wait to "start" their match, as happens with Round 1 of the TC events)