Brian Viner: Why settling for second is the best of British

We don't have what it takes to produce champions. Except in Hampshire, of course

Radio Five Live, on Saturday morning, attempted to gain some insight into the conflicting emotions of a pair of sisters pitched against one another in sporting competition by talking to Emma and Jenny Dobson, "Nos 1 and 2 in Hampshire table tennis".

It was a nice idea, and nobody, least of all the Dobsons, tried to pretend that their situation was too closely parallel to that of Venus and Serena Williams. But there was also unintentionally comic symbolism in the item; are the Dobson sisters, famed throughout Chandler's Ford or wherever it is they come from, the British siblings closest to Venus and Serena in the business of propelling a ball over a net? The interview did nothing for the sense, forged by the World Cup and compounded by Wimbledon, that in ball sports (streaking apart) we still don't have what it takes to produce champions. Except in Hampshire, of course.

Incidentally, I was listening to the radio because Sir Cliff Richard's startling attire, during a studio interview on Friday with his old flame Sue Barker, had traumatised my television, and thrown what used to be called the vertical hold into meltdown.

Cliff was wearing more black-and-white stripes than I have seen since I watched a Wildlife On One about the mass annual migration of the zebra. Having missed the start of the interview, it could be that I missed an explanation for his frankly extraordinary get-up. My theory is that he has had so much Botox injected into his forehead that he can now only register expressions from the neck down.

Whatever, I was alerted to his presence on screen by my wife, who called upstairs, "Quick, Cliff Richard's flirting with Sue Barker," in the same tone of voice – mainly matter-of-fact, but ever so slightly alarmed – she uses to tell me that the hamster seems to be projectile vomiting.

Naturally, I downed tools instantly, and rushed to the living room, but by the time I got there Cliff and Sue had stopped flirting, and were discussing Tim's chances (always Tim, never Henman) against Hewitt.

As psyched as I was for the Tim v Hewitt semi-final, a sportswriter's lot is sometimes a frustrating one, and I had instead to honour an arrangement to meet the cricketer Shane Warne at a posh London hotel.

On my way, I decided that, Warne being a legend and all that, I ought to take a cricket bat for him to sign for my seven-year-old son. So I dashed into Selfridges – where, as a chirpily eccentric conductor on the 159 bus route used to point out, they really do sell fridges.

But not cricket bats. Selfridges proudly boasts a large sports department, yet I was informed by a bored sales assistant that it does not encompass anything cricket-related. No, sir, not even in the height of summer.

It is unthinkable that the sports section of a top department store in New York would not stock baseball equipment, but there it is, another small reason why Britain is so often second best in competitive sport; grandma goes into Selfridges to buy a cricket bat for little Johnny, and comes out with a fishing rod.

Anyway, I met Warne as arranged, and we repaired to his room where I interviewed him for an hour. Afterwards, I wondered how his compatriot was faring against mine at Wimbledon. He switched the telly on. Henman was 1-3 down in the third set. "Come on Lleyton, mate," Warne roared at the screen.

I wilted slightly in the shadow of his partisanship, the intensity of his desire for a Hewitt win, and it struck me that here was another reason why Britain is so often second best in competitive sport. We don't want it badly enough.

Take Henmania. There is an unappealing self-consciousness about it.

How much do those self-styled Centre Court show-offs really want Tim to win, and how much do they just like appearing on telly in silly wigs? As for their hero, there is no doubting his desire, yet still he looks as if he has been coached to clench his fist, as if he has been drilled in the finer points of snarling.

Moreover, what other country could produce this letter, which I received last week from a chippy reader in Doncaster.

"Bloody Wimbledon!," wrote Peter Day. "Time for middle-class parents with children called Tarquin or Jemima, who go to pony clubs, to queue for three days to get tickets to watch second-rate British tennis players get knocked out... then fork out what'd keep an asylum-seeker a month for a glass of champagne and six strawberries. They bring their little union flags out and cry for 'Tim' or, with a little less fervour, 'Greg' [oblivious of] a class barrier that decrees if you live in most parts of Britain, you won't even see a tennis court, never mind play on one!"

My correspondent got it wrong on many levels – not least a fundamental ignorance of the kind of people who queue "for three days to get tickets" – but still his sentiments were profoundly depressing. At least he's got 50 weeks to calm down.

b.viner@independent.co.uk