Cricket — britain’s invisible game | thearticle

You may have missed it, but England were playing last night. The cricket team, that is. Chances are you had no idea. But they are currently on tour down in New Zealand, in what should be an

excellent test series between two strong sides. I love cricket. I’ve watched and played it all my life. I first learned how to swing a cricket ball back in the 1980s, at the Alf Gover

Cricket School, on the south circular in Wandsworth. Despite the protestations of my middle-aged back, I still play. A sad day it was when they took down the Gover stand at the Oval. I still

smart a bit over that. But I smart even more over the game’s invisibility. Ever since 2005, cricket has been hidden from view, sealed off behind a Sky television paywall. If you want to see

the cricket — any cricket at all, in fact — you need to fork out around six hundred pounds a year to do so. The effect of this has been catastrophic. It has cut the game’s audience, and

stifled cricket’s ability to grow. Back in 2005, when England beat Australia and the whole series was shown on Channel 4, an audience of 7.4 million people tuned in to terrestrial television

to watch the final day’s play at the Oval. By contrast, the peak viewing figures for the 2013 Ashes series, which was broadcast exclusively on Sky, was 1.3 million. These two numbers form a

brutal and inescapable picture of the game’s decline. That decline is not only reflected in viewer figures. The game itself is dying out. In 2008, there were 428,000 cricketers playing the

game in England — by 2016, that number had fallen to 278,000. The argument in favour of the Sky deal has always been that it brings a huge amount of money into the game. This is true. At its

most recent auction in 2017 the England and Wales Cricket Board sold five years’ worth of television rights to Sky for £1.1 billion. This was characterised by Sky as the start of a

“landmark partnership” between Sky and English cricket. The £1.1 billion is a colossal sum — but what’s the point in all that money if the game itself is in decline? Or to put it another

way, who wants to be the richest game in the graveyard? The most important thing for the game is not the money. More important by far is to encourage young people to take up the game, both

boys and girls. For this to happen, cricket needs to be in full view. Kids can’t identify with sporting heroes if they can’t see them. The best way to make this happen is to get cricket back

onto terrestrial television. When the England cricket team got into the World Cup final this summer, Sky came under pressure to show the game on terrestrial television. They gave in to the

pressure and 8.3 million people watched England’s victory — only 1.4 million of them tuned in on Sky. It was a dangerous moment for Sky, as it invited the question of why they had chosen to

drop their paywall in the first place. The only possible answer would have to concede that the paywall was restrictive to the point of damaging the profile and reach of the game. More than

this, the Sky headlock on the game has removed it from the national consciousness. The 2005 victory over Australia resulted in a bus-top parade through the streets. England’s home victories

in 2009, 2013 and 2015 were met with no such jubilation. And when it comes to heroes and their value in promoting the game to the next generation, Sky has been a disaster. Alastair Cook is

England’s highest-ever scoring Test batsman, having scored a colossal 12,472 runs. Not a single one of them was ever shown live on terrestrial television. Happily, the BBC has managed to

wrestle some cricket back from Sky. As of 2020, the BBC will broadcast two live England T20 games, as well as women’s matches and highlights of test matches. This is to be welcomed — but for

the game to thrive, cricket must come even further out from behind the Sky curtain. If not, the game will remain hidden from view and there, it will continue to fade. What a disaster that

would be.