Crown Jewels get played with

Television in the UK is bit odd. For a start, you need a licence to own a TV. No, seriously – a licence. The licence largely pays for the BBC. In addition there are a set of sporting events that have to be shown on free-to-air television. This is called the 'Crown Jewels' sporting list. No cricket matches are currently on the list and so, predictably, there is no live cricket on free-to-air television in the UK. Sky has it all and it costs about £36 a month to watch it. It seems that this is to change in the future and that the Ashes (in England) series will be shown on free-to-air television – not until 2017 though.

The ECB are against this. They clearly do not want the general UK population watching cricket. After all, why would you want the grass roots of your sport being able to watch it? The ECB clearly puts it coffers above the populous. Of course we knew that anyway otherwise Sky wouldn’t have the current deal in the first place – but do they have to make it so obvious by complaining about a single series in six years time?

A few immediate thoughts:

1. Sky could do free-to-air TV if they wanted too. It would make them look like heroes
2. The ECB have shown themselves to be only concerned about money – so come on Sky screw them right down – you can clearly own them for much less money.
3. Expect lots of Sky people to hate the idea and say so publicly (Atherton, Warne, Hussain, Lloyd, Botham, Knight , Ward etc)

Personally I think the free-to-air list is a bit weird. Do we have a free market or not? I suppose the UK government supporting banks and train companies would suggest ‘not’.

Cricket is a product of the Popular Group

For my sins I haven’t seen any of the Sky Ashes coverage. Instead I have been forced to watch ‘streamed’ cricket. That is TV that has been captured from TV and rebroadcast. It may or may not be illegal (depending on where the originator and viewer are) but it seems to be almost always of suspect quality. It is a bit like watching cricket in the rain – that is that the TV is in the rain and the picture a bit blurry.

The quality of the picture however, is not the most irritating part; it is the actual coverage itself. I have watched Pakistani and Indian streams. They take the Sky feed and add their own adverts. When I say ‘add’ I mean spray liberally at all possible moments. The adverts start at the very instant the ball goes dead at the end of an over. The adverts end at some point after the bowler has started his run up to start the next over. Sometimes that point is after the ball has been bowled. Any break in play is met by adverts. The adverts themselves are repeated, endlessly. Over after over the same adverts are repeated, some as many as twenty times an hour. This is brainwashing at its most insidious. There is very little technical discussion and few replays because these are covered over with advert breaks. The show itself is a very pale imitation of the original Sky coverage and I can only feel sorry for people that have to put up with it as their native coverage. It just not cricket. They say that on the radio the pictures are better, well in this case, they are: TMS’s coverage was much more instructive than the TV pictures...