Sky Sports need to act now and get England’s Ashes clash with Australia on terrestrial TV for the good of the game after World Cup win
LIKE a devilish old flame, England’s summer sport returned from the shadows to be met with a warm embrace on Sunday evening. The English love their cricket, from Eton and Harrow to the former pit villages of Yorkshire, and all points in between. The game is woven into our language and our national character, part […]
LIKE a devilish old flame, England’s summer sport returned from the shadows to be met with a warm embrace on Sunday evening.
The English love their cricket, from Eton and Harrow to the former pit villages of Yorkshire, and all points in between.
The game is woven into our language and our national character, part of who we are.
And 14 years without live free-to-air coverage hasn’t changed that.
When England were crowned world champions for the first time — in the most dramatic fashion imaginable on the day when live international cricket returned to terrestrial TV — it felt as if the stars had aligned and Cupid the archer, just like Jofra Archer, was arrowing them in straight and true.
Here was long-lost love, thrilling yet familiar.
How else can you explain a wicketkeeper whipping off the bails to dismiss a diving batsman and sparking scenes of jubilation in Trafalgar Square that were reminiscent of VE Day?
As English cricket wonders how it might best capitalise on World Cup glory, it would be easy to cast Sky TV as the villain and imagine a return to the halcyon days of five-day Tests on the Beeb or Channel 4.
This would be over-simplistic — especially as terrestrial TV companies no longer have the money, time or inclination to screen every Test of the summer live.
But while Sky’s coverage is outstanding and financially enriching, English cricket has suffered from a visibility issue ever since it disappeared from free-to-air just as interest in the game peaked after the epic 2005 Ashes.
All the game’s key players, including Sky, should be concerned about the threat of a generation being lost to cricket.
Fewer and fewer state schools, starved of funding, offer cricket — a time-consuming game which demands proper groundsmanship.
And with Sky subscriptions too expensive for many families with young kids, that deep knowledge of the game will not last forever unless more youngsters are exposed to the joys of what many of us consider the greatest sport of all.
The ECB have been getting twisted knickers about all this and their answer is to introduce a new format — a 100-balls-a-side competition between made-up city-based teams, starting next summer.
Ironically, the knock-on effect of “The Hundred” means that there will be no elite players competing in domestic 50-over cricket in England from next summer — just as Eoin Morgan’s men have mastered the format.
Like the move to Sky in 2005, this feels like another self-inflicted gunshot wound to the feet.
Cricket already has three formats and does not need a fourth.
The ECB, who insist their new shortened version is not merely to get the game back on terrestrial TV, often underestimate quite how good their existing game actually is. And they also underestimate the attention span of audiences, old and young.
Sunday’s final against New Zealand was a classic slow-burner of a one-day international.
It bore little resemblance to the crash-bang-wallop of Twenty20 or even the ultra-aggressive 50-over cricket England have favoured over the previous four years.
Yet there it was being lapped up by a grateful public.
The International Cricket Council had put pressure on Sky to share coverage of the final with a free-to-air platform — and Channel 4’s peak audience of 4.2 million was decent, though not helped by a clash with a dramatic Wimbledon final on the Beeb.
Yet it wouldn’t be too cynical to suggest that the wonderful finale at Lord’s will have helped sell plenty of Sky subscriptions. It would be of long-term benefit to Sky if they shared the love and offered a terrestrial channel the live rights to one Test per summer plus a one-dayer and a Twenty20.
With the iron hot, why not strike now? The Ashes start on August 1, with the first three Tests played in the school holidays.
Couldn’t either the first at Edgbaston or the second at Lord’s be shared on free-to-air?
The majority of England’s World Cup winners — including star turns Ben Stokes, Archer, Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler are likely to face the Aussies.
And this greatest and oldest of cricketing contests couldn’t be any easier to market.
It’s literally heroes against cheats, with Australia’s two best batsman, David Warner and Steve Smith having returned from year-long ball-tampering bans.
If kids witness Stokes and Archer doing to the Aussies what Freddie Flintoff and Steve Harmison did in 2005 — or what this seven-year-old kid watched Ian Botham and Bob Willis achieve in 1981 — then they will always love cricket.
An old flame perhaps, but a light that never goes out.
BRAVE BRUCE
SO Steve Bruce will take over at Newcastle, having already managed Sunderland. And having taken charge of Birmingham City and Aston Villa, as well as Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday.
Whatever you make of Bruce, the fact that he has never been strung up on a lamppost in any of those cities is testament to his thorough likeability. Bruce will manage his boyhood club, just like Dean Smith at Aston Villa.
Frank Lampard has made an emotional return to Chelsea, as has Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United.
How odd to see the greed-is-good Premier League discovering a taste for romance.
ORDINARY HERO
HARRY MAGUIRE is one of those people you instinctively want to succeed in life — decent, down-to-earth, with a wholehearted attitude. An England cult hero, partly due to the fact that — in the words of his song — ‘his head’s f***ing massive’.
Yet is Maguire really a significant upgrade on what Manchester United already have in central defence? Does he truly possess the quality of an elite player?
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KOS I’M VAIN
AFTER France won the World Cup last year, Laurent Koscielny — who’d missed out with an Achilles problem — criticised coach Didier Deschamps for not having been in touch enough.
And the Arsenal skipper also made the strange admission that his nation’s triumph had “made me much more psychologically hurt than my injury”.
Koscielny’s words spoke of a self-absorption unbefitting of a man captaining a major club.
So while his decision to go on strike and attempt to force a move from the Emirates is lamentable, it should not come as a complete surprise.
NORTHERN LIGHT
THERE is reason enough to rejoice in the simple fact that The Open this week returns to Northern Ireland — on the gorgeous Antrim coast at Portrush — after an absence of 68 years and following the harrowing years of the Troubles.
And if there were also to be a local champion, such as Rory McIlroy, it would be another glorious chapter in a wonderful summer of sport.