I’m wired and unable to sleep off the back of what was up there with one of the greatest cricket matches I’ve witnessed.
We may have lost to New Zealand out in Wellington but the ebb and flow of the game, the highs and lows, the controversial incidents and the brilliant performances of Root, Foakes, Brook, Williamson, Wagner and co has left me reeling. Punch drunk despite the loss.
I grew up watching test matches round at my grandparents house. My parents didn’t like the fact that a game could take 5 days out of my life, but I was transfixed by it and I remember vividly (as I’ve mentioned previously) that famous battle between Donald and Atherton. Donald mad eyed and sledging, Atherton smiling and obstinate.
I remember Gough steaming in offering up toe crunching yorkers; Stewart, talented and reliably churning out the runs; Caddick’s 4 wickets in 1 over against the Indies…Though these were tough times to be an England fan, with our batting line ups regularly destroyed by some of the greatest bowlers ever to grace the game, it was all I knew and I loved it.
And so, on to 2005 and the greatest Ashes series of all time. I watched much of the series - In fact probably more of the series than I had before or really have since. I had time on my hands back then and I made the most of it. The initial disappointment of the opening game was soon to be replaced by a flicker of hope. Maybe we could even draw a series on home soil? But no, even better than that we came away with our first ashes win since 86/87.
The tight finishes and eventual Ashes win meant that public interest was at an all time high. At which point (naturally) the rights were sold on to Sky to presumably work some of the magic that had seen the football league successfully change to the Premier League in football. I get that this decision was made before the success and popularity of the Ashes, so I guess the ECB need to be cut some slack, but the entire game of cricket went from riding high on a crest of a wave to sitting behind a pay wall where only a small percentage of the population had access.
If only they’d sold just some of the rights to Sky….left a little bit for the Free to Air, but it seems there wasn’t enough appetite for it at that point of time. As a result I was left feeling bereft. The sport which at that time I adored to the ends of the earth was played out via radio 4 a radio 5 live instead of televisually. And there was many a cheeky afternoon in the local pub before the TV was inevitably switched over to the latest PL game.
Efforts to get cricket back on mainstream TV have been trialed in recent times. The World Cup Final (probably the greatest final of all time) was aired on channel 4 in 2019 for instance. And then there’s the Hundred and the last T20 World Cup final. In my eyes, Sky selling rights to have some of the cricket matches on Free to Air could only be beneficial to them in that more people would be drawn to the game and start a subscription with them. It simply needs to be on free to air for people to gain access to the game, want to take up the sport and to stop the ever increasing average age per cricket fan from rising still further
Most people I speak to are not interested in cricket or they’ve never even seen a game. It’s a source of endless frustration that no one cares about the game I adore. I want to enthuse them to like it if not as much as me, then at least just a little bit. Hence why I have my little community of cricket lovers on Twitter who are mostly more obsessed than me.
The global Test match game is dwindling too. Indian’s have their heart on the IPL, other franchise tournaments are springing up almost daily it seems. There’s now:
Indian Premier League (IPL)
Big Bash League (BBL)
Pakistan Super League (PSL)
International League T20
Caribbean Premier League (CPL)
South Africa T20 (SA20)
…With surely more to follow
Money rules and in countries like India, West Indies, South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand interest in Tests seems to be dropping.
Test Matches are worth saving. They are the pinnacle test of ability in what is a great sport. However I feel money rules and now that the IPL juggernaut begins to swamp the game, I fear for the future.
I so wish that the various parties would get round the table and decide what’s best for the good of the game rather than merely filling their pockets…I won’t hold my breath. Cricket is now a complex, unwieldy and unmanageable beast where money leads to the Worlds best players playing to empty stadiums in the desert for example . It’s a sad state of affairs.
At this rate we’re heading towards Test Matches being novelty events…and judging by NZ vs Eng, that would be a crying shame!
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