The Sound of Silence

Found a lovely feature on the BBC coverage of Wimbledon today. If you use the fancy match selection thingy you can sometimes find a game with no commentary. No people saying things like:

"He must really regret missing that serve"
or
"I'm no expert, but I don't think he meant to do that"
or
"If he doesn't win the next game, he might not win the match"

I watched an hour or so of play and it was wonderful. Just the players and the game and the score. Even the crowd was well behaved. One of the players was Spanish and the other was Greek (I think) and so they didn't quite know who to root for.

I've never quite understood the need for commentary. If you go to see the game live you don't get it and we don't get people commentating on other things:

"..and here comes Miles into the lecture theatre now. Running only two minutes late, a record for him. And yes, he's going for the laptop. Let's see if it will boot first time, or if he'll have that blue screen problem like he did back in 2002 in that memorable data structures seminar. I think that was also the time that his green marker pen ran out, but I may be wrong on that one. Anyway, I see he's found the remote for the video projector, and turned it on at only the third press. I think we could be in for a good session here. The students on the back row have opened their copies of The Sun already in anticipation of a glorious display of teaching at its finest. What do you think Graham...."