They say ne­ces­si­ty is the moth­er of in­ven­tion, and for sports jour­nal­ists around the world, starved of con­tent in a news cy­cle dom­i­nat­ed by the coro­n­avirus, we’ve all had to reach un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of cre­ativ­i­ty in our ca­reers to en­sure sports news don’t die a slow death dur­ing this pan­dem­ic.

But if ne­ces­si­ty is the moth­er of in­ven­tion then des­per­a­tion must be a close rel­a­tive. As the con­tent pro­duc­er for the sports de­part­ment at Guardian Me­dia, I’ve at­tacked this pan­dem­ic head-on reach­ing out to agents and ath­letes across the world for in­ter­views. Sure­ly, they’re all stuck at home wait­ing for my e-mail, I thought. Among a list of sport­ing celebri­ties I wrote to was Don Rid­dell, the British-born CNN World Sport an­chor and in­ter­na­tion­al cor­re­spon­dent. “Let’s do it!” was his re­sponse.

This would be more than an in­ter­view. It would be a con­ver­sa­tion. It was a chance to talk to the man who had in­spired a younger me, a chance to get an­swers to ques­tions I al­ways had, and last­ly, in­tro­duce the T&T au­di­ence to a fa­mil­iar face in a per­son­al way.

Brand­ed a Rebel

Here in the Caribbean, Rid­dell is per­haps least known for his work on the ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar 2013 doc­u­men­tary Brand­ed a Rebel, where he shone a light on the West In­dies crick­eters of 1983 that ven­tured to apartheid South Africa, which was banned at the time by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC). View­ers re­mem­ber the doc­u­men­tary but not the pro­duc­er. “To get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain their trust (the West In­dies rebel crick­eters) and give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to present their point of view was in­cred­i­bly re­ward­ing,” he said of the film.

An all-round jour­nal­ist

Rid­dell has spent the last 18 years at CNN work­ing as both an an­chor and cor­re­spon­dent. He’s one of the net­work’s most ver­sa­tile jour­nal­ists. On the sport­ing front, he watched as Spain cel­e­brat­ed its 2010 World Cup vic­to­ry in Madrid, broad­cast­ed live from Wim­ble­don, the US Open (both ten­nis and golf), the Ry­der Cup, Tour de France, Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and five con­sec­u­tive Cham­pi­ons League fi­nals. To bal­ance the scale of sport and hard news, he re­port­ed from the 2010 Roy­al Wed­ding and the G20 sum­mit in Lon­don. When the 7.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake rocked Haiti that same year, Rid­dell re­port­ed from stu­dio as he did with the Mum­bai ter­ror at­tacks, the dis­put­ed Iran­ian elec­tion and the death of Michael Jack­son.

It’s an in­cred­i­ble jour­nal­ism CV for a man who nev­er had this in­dus­try as a first-choice pro­fes­sion. “I think I al­ways as­sumed I would go in­to fi­nance be­cause my fa­ther worked in fi­nance,” Rid­dell said. That is, un­til he took an eco­nom­ics class when he was 16 and “hat­ed it.”

In an iron­ic way, it fits in­to the nar­ra­tive that we jour­nal­ists are not best friends with math. Yet, his as­cen­dance to CNN wasn’t quite an ex­press train ei­ther. He start­ed by rewind­ing tapes and la­belling them at a lo­cal TV sta­tion in Britain. As he tells the sto­ry, “the guys in the sports de­part­ment took a shine to me.” From writ­ing a script, he start­ed voic­ing them, then he did some in­ter­views. His big break came when, the show he was pro­duc­ing, the an­chor didn’t show up in a mix-up of the sched­ule. Rid­dell would go on to host that show for years. His rise in sports jour­nal­ism was quite or­gan­ic.

The pow­er of sport

The jour­ney has seen him in­ter­view some of the great­est ath­letes of this era in­clud­ing ten­nis stars Roger Fed­er­er, Andy Mur­ray and Rafael Nadal, box­ers Floyd May­weath­er and Man­ny Pac­quiao, Amer­i­can hur­dler Lo­lo Jones and British div­er Tom Da­ley. Yet, sur­pris­ing­ly, those aren’t the ones that stand out to him. “Hon­est­ly, I find in­ter­views with ath­letes peo­ple have nev­er heard of to be just as re­ward­ing be­cause every­body has a sto­ry and the mag­ic of this busi­ness is to be able to ac­cess that sto­ry.”

He gives off a big laugh when asked which sport is his favourite. That’s be­cause, in Rid­dell’s two-plus decades in this in­dus­try, it’s be­come less and less about the sport. “I’ve come to re­alise that it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly about the sport, it’s about the sto­ry and every sport has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce an in­cred­i­ble sto­ry. I think I’ve be­come less of a sports fan and more of a sto­ry fan,” he said.

In his trav­els around the world, Rid­dell has seen sport in a light that is more than just ac­tion and en­ter­tain­ment. He point­ed to a com­mon quote they use at CNN, the pow­er of sport, say­ing, “It doesn’t mat­ter what you do out­side of the field. Once you get on­to that field and once it's 22 guys play­ing soc­cer or 30 guys play­ing rug­by, it doesn’t mat­ter whether you’re a school teacher or a jan­i­tor or a doc­tor or a lawyer. It doesn’t mat­ter what your back­ground is, it doesn’t mat­ter what your qual­i­ty of life is like, once you get on­to that field you all have one thing in com­mon and you’re equals, and I think a lot of us can learn a lot of things from sport.”

Ad­vice to as­pir­ing jour­nal­ists

Rid­dell start­ed his jour­nal­ism jour­ney in the mid-1990s. The in­ter­net was around and so too was e-mail. How­ev­er, the biggest tool he feels as­pir­ing jour­nal­ists have nowa­days that he didn’t have in his time is so­cial me­dia. “If any­body is re­al­ly se­ri­ous about get­ting in­to this busi­ness or even if you just want to have a play with it and see if you like it, there aren’t re­al­ly the bar­ri­ers to en­try like they used to be.”

Tech­nol­o­gy has bro­ken down those bar­ri­ers and he ad­vis­es those want­i­ng to get in­to the in­dus­try to start telling sto­ries in their sur­round­ings us­ing video-shar­ing web­sites, blogs and so­cial me­dia. “It’s some­thing that every­body can do, and I would sug­gest if you are re­al­ly se­ri­ous about do­ing this as a pro­fes­sion you need to be do­ing those things be­cause all of your fu­ture ri­vals and pro­fes­sion­als are al­ready do­ing it,” Rid­dell said.

“They all have Twit­ter feeds, they do write blogs, they do go out shoot and ed­it their own videos and put them on YouTube and so what if on­ly 50 peo­ple watch them? The point is you’re do­ing it and you’re gain­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and prac­tice and when you come to the big in­ter­view with a po­ten­tial em­ploy­er you can say this is what I do.”

Rid­dell’s ver­sa­til­i­ty

If we were to ref­er­ence Rid­dell to the sport of crick­et, he would be an all-rounder. His suc­cess as both a hard news cor­re­spon­dent and a sports broad­cast­er is not some­thing en­joyed by many jour­nal­ists. Most choose one. But if Rid­dell had to choose be­tween news and sport, which would he choose?

“The news ex­pe­ri­ence was a lot of fun but it’s very se­ri­ous… I think the thing I’ve come to re­alise is by do­ing both is that as a sports broad­cast­er you re­al­ly can be your­self, you can bring your per­son­al­i­ty in­to it,” he said.

Rid­dell didn’t choose, and per­haps he shouldn’t be made to, be­cause such a skill is rare. He said, “I think I en­joy be­ing a sports guy. For a long time in sport, I want­ed to be in news but now that I’m back in sport I re­al­ly do en­joy it, but I’m glad that I have the ver­sa­til­i­ty be­cause you nev­er know in this busi­ness what’s go­ing to hap­pen next.”