Sport: Weekend on the sofa with high drama and hyperbole

'If George Bush were fighting Saddam Hussein the security could not be tighter'

Royal Jubilee summers have an agreeable habit of producing memorable victories for British sportsmen and women thriving, all on their own, in the crucible of fierce expectation.

At first glance there are not too many similarities between Mike Tyson v Lennox Lewis in 2002 and Virginia Wade v Betty Stove in 1977 – as far as I can recall, Betty stopped short of publicly sinking her teeth into Virginia, and never once threatened to tear her heart out and eat it – but search and you will find them.

For one thing, neither Lennox nor Virginia, whose accomplishments did so much to compound the general feeling of well-being inspired by the jubilee celebrations, are not quite as British as they might have been. One was raised in Canada, the other in South Africa.

Still, we have never let a few discordant colonial vowels interfere in matters of national pride, in which regard the tone was set, fittingly enough, on the very day of the Queen's coronation, when Britain congratulated itself following the news that Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, had conquered Everest. Moreover, the royal family themselves were called Bierhoff von Battenberg-Beckenbauer, or some such, before wisely changing their name to plain Windsor around the time of the First World War. For another thing, 1977 lends a significant perspective to 2002, and vice versa. In 1977, the prospect of Britain claiming an undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion seemed not 25 years but aeons away, just as we now seem aeons away from claiming a ladies' singles champion at Wimbledon.

Clearly the conclusion is that we must make serious hay while the sun shines, before persistent drizzle inevitably sets in.

Speaking of the sun, it was flooding my bedroom with unwanted daylight at 5.20 yesterday morning as I tried to get some much-needed kip having intrepidly stayed up to watch "the Rrrrrrumble by the Riverrrrr", as the Lewis v Tyson fight was called by the over-excited master of ceremonies in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lewis v Tyson was the final act to 48 wonderful hours of televised sport, which included England beating Argentina, Venus losing to Serena, Croatia beating Italy, and High Chaparral pipping Hawk Wing.

Indeed, I spent so long welded to my armchair that it would have been tricky to separate myself from it even had the wee hours of Sunday morning promised nothing more thrilling than recorded highlights on Eurosport of sub-aqua dominoes from Budleigh Salterton. Instead, those wee hours promised, as Adam Smith of Sky Box Office put it with commendable hyperbole: "So many questions to be answered... will good conquer evil?" Good eventually prevailed over evil in the eighth round, but not before commentator Ian Darke had overcome even the doughty Smith in the hyperbole stakes. Darke, incidentally, is always worth listening to. Richard Keys, the Sky football anchorman, speaks especially fondly of the day he remarked "and the Middlesbrough goalkeeper narrowed the angles brilliantly there, as you would expect of a man with a university degree in, erm, geography". The post-match analysis actually had to be cut short because Keys and Andy Gray could not stop laughing.

So I was hoping for great things yesterday morning and Darke did not disappoint, mixing wonderful imagery ("if George Bush was fighting Saddam Hussein on the undercard here tonight, the security could not be tighter") with marvellous absurdity ("a cast of thousands in the ring, quite literally").

In fairness, he was not the only one enthusiastically spouting nonsense. A celebrity called LL Cool J – whose global fame I do not doubt, although it has not quite penetrated my living-room – anticipated the fight thus: "Lewis can knock you straight out... Tyson is dangerous... it's a chess match." A chess match it transparently wasn't, as the challenger emerged from one dressing-room with an entourage of heavies even meaner-looking than him, and the champion emerged from the other, stripped to the waist, wearing vast boxing gloves and with Vaseline smeared all over his chin, enabling Darke to make the obvious point that Lewis was "looking for all the world as if he's going for an amble in the countryside". Remind me not to move to his bit of the countryside.

That said, it's easy to take the mickey out of television commentators, who pretty much without exception do a terrific job both of informing and of whipping up the mood, and in their own feverish state can be forgiven an inappropriate metaphor now and then.

Arguably, though, on occasions when the images on their own both inform and whip up the mood, then the commentator might be better advised to shut up. The late Dan Maskell knew this better than anyone, allowing entire games to pass in that 1977 final between Virginia and Betty, with just the odd "Ooh I say!" to complement the pictures. But that, of course, was aeons ago, and this is now.

b.viner@independent.co.uk