State broadcaster’s deal to show more than 100 hours of live cricket each summer from 2020 is well merited and long overdue, according to a former director of BBC SportIt is unalloyed good news that live cricket is coming back to BBC television. One of the great national sports is reunited with the one broadcaster that can make big events bigger – and get the whole of the country talking about what they watch. The story of the falling-out between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the BBC feels, happily, to be in the far distant past.It was two decades ago that live test cricket moved from the corporation to Channel 4 – which, by common consent, did an...
Leaked documents suggest the ECB wants some cricket back on free-to-air television but this feels like attempting to squeeze toothpaste back into the tubeDo not expect a mighty mea culpa from the England and Wales Cricket Board but now we have an implicit acknowledgement that the decision, taken more than a decade ago, not to insist upon some cricket remaining on free-to-air television was contrary to the best interests of the game.Alongside the promise of more money came assurances in 2005 that viewing habits were changing so rapidly that cricket’s removal from terrestrial television would not be damaging to the sport. As indicated by the viewing figures for rugby’s home internationals, which were available to all in the winter, those...
For the past 12 years, Gayle has been running a roving revue from town to town and ground to ground. And along the way he’s racked up remarkable numbersLong lost now, deep in the scrapheap of discarded ideas, the International 20:20 was supposed to be a champions’ league between the world’s six best club teams. It was held at Grace Road at the very tail end of the 2005 season. Somerset and Leicestershire represented England. Australia, New Zealand and West Indies weren’t even running domestic T20 competitions yet, so the only overseas teams who turned up were the Chilaw Marians, the Faisalabad Wolves and the Nashua Titans. That left one slot free, so a ragtag PCA Masters XI was roped...
The commentary is awful and the fielding is terrible but T20 franchise cricket positively writhes with energy – the counties cannot ignore the heat and lightBen Stokes held his nerve pretty well for the first half of the opening over of his Indian Premier League career in Pune on Thursday afternoon. Gliding up to the wicket in aubergine pyjamas, pumped and sweating, endorsing at least seven high-end products and services simultaneously, the most expensive overseas import in the history of domestic cricket fizzed down a couple of tight, straight dot balls and a single to the Mumbai Indians openers Jos Buttler and Parthiv Patel.His fourth ball was pitched up. Buttler stood still and clubbed it hard and flat over long-off...
Australia’s Big Bash has been a success as the people behind it realised the vast numbers not watching cricket outweighed the fusty concerns of those who wereWhen Cricket Australia first hired Dan Migala, he hardly knew a bat from a badminton racket. Migala is a baseball nut from Chicago, “the equivalent of the cricket fan who keeps score with a pencil and quotes statistics from a century ago”. And he’s also chief innovation officer at the sports marketing firm Property Consulting Group. When Cricket Australia first started work on the Big Bash League, Migala was the man they brought in to plan the marketing strategy. He had a hand in almost every last little part of it, the colour of...