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BBC showing tennis’s new Battle of the Sexes will just offer up opportunity to belittle women’s sport | Barney Ronay

The match between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios opens up a direct channel between the BBC of old and a world of toxic internet hatred

It’s always best to take a sceptical view of the constant flow of BBC-bashing newspaper stories, which are often simply bogus outrage expressed for commercial gain. Even the war-on-woke, cod-ideological stuff – Clive Myrie INSISTS hamsters can breastfeed human robots – the bits that make you want to smear your face with greengage jam and weep for England, our England, with its meadows, its shadows, its curates made entirely from beef. Even these come from a hard, transactional place.

Basically, it’s the licence fee. The BBC is free at the point of delivery, but paid for by a national levy. The BBC is also a direct commercial competitor to every other form of legacy media, all of which are trying to find ways to survive and recoup revenue.

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© Illustration: David Lyttleton/The Guardian

© Illustration: David Lyttleton/The Guardian

© Illustration: David Lyttleton/The Guardian

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Joe Root is finally a wizard in Aus after Harry Brook’s Bazball scarecrow act | Barney Ronay

A tale of two Yorkshiremen, one keeping England in the series, the other batting without a brain

In the end even the celebration was perfect, out there under that strange deep-blue southern sky, in the frenzy of the game-state – manic Baz energy, England’s lower order scything away death cult-style at the other end, the way even the grass seems lacquered and glazed by the lights.

So yeah. All that stuff. In the middle of this Joe Root guided the ball away through fine leg to complete his first Test hundred in Australia, then marked it with a gentle smile and a wave of the bat, no fist-punching, no monkeys off backs, no angsty and pointed messaging.

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© Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images

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