ET cricket

English cricket fans might have thought they had been punished enough recently, following the Three Lions dismal performance against the South Africans, but to compound matters, the ECB today announced their contract extension with Sky Sports for live games.
Back in 2006 the first contract with Sky to show all of England's live games was set up and it has now been extended until 2013, with Five holding on to the highlights rights.

The new contracts with both companies is worth an estimated £300m and will be up for renewal in five years time.

How the ECB possibly think this is a good decision for the sport, which is currently struggling for support, especially at test level, is worrying.

Burnt Ashes

The move from Channel 4's superb coverage, which included the momentous and historic Ashes victory in 2005 was disastrous in the first place and now it will go on for the foreseeable future.

After that Ashes series the sport was on a high, the nation was enveloped in cricket fever and like the rugby team two years previously the England players were treated like heroes.

The ideal time to flood the TV with the sport, push it in schools and really get a new generation of players involved. Instead it was yanked from terrestrial TV and dumped with Sky Sports.

OK, so those who are keen will probably have Sky and if not they may hit the pub, but that is not how to popularise something, it needs to be accessible it needs to be in the public eye.

Sky Sports is a remarkable thing that often brings sport to the public that may otherwise be lost, but national sports should be available to everyone. There should be an agreement 'somewhere' with 'someone' that all major national sports remain on terrestrial television.