The dish runs away with the ball

The news that the ECB has awarded the rights for English international cricket from 2006 to the highest bidder was half-expected, and good news for the game financially, at least in the short term. But will it be quite so beneficial in the long term? The jury's out, until 2009 and beyond, but the signs are ominous.

The problem, in a nutshell, is this: people, especially the young people cricket is desperate to attract, will not tune in to cricket on satellite by accident. At the risk of sounding like Fred Trueman, when I were a lad I would come home from school, turn on the telly, and in the summer cricket would be on more often than not. It insinuated itself into my brain, almost by osmosis. My parents weren't particularly interested in sport, and I don't suppose they would have subscribed to Sky Sports if it had been around at the time.

Fast-forward to now, and the impressionable ten-year-old boy whose parents aren't terribly sporty. He may have more channels than were at my disposal. He may even have satellite or cable. But he won't stumble across cricket unless his parents subscribe. That's the really bad news.

There is - for those prepared to dish out to put the dish up - some good news. Sky's coverage has long been superb, and they show a range of matches that the terrestrial channels could never realistically hope to match. Unlike the BBC, who were always a bit too keen to nip off for Neighbours, or Channel 4 with their annoying breaks for the 3.15 at Wincanton, Sky almost never miss a ball. The commentary team is star-studded, if something of an exclusive club, although the signing of Nasser Hussain this year altered the balance a little among a set of ex-players rather too firmly rooted in the champagne days of the good old '80s.

And the one crumb of comfort for the great undished is that highlights will be on Channel Five, and at sensible times too (or so we're told - wasn't that the original line for Channel 4's highlights, which then seemed to appear later and later, like a teenager pushing the parental guidelines?) Even that crumb goes a bit stale if you're in one of the several parts of the country that don't pick Five up very well either ...

Steven Lynch is editor of Cricinfo.

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