Get cricket back on UK terrestrial TV: Vaughan.

Get cricket back on UK terrestrial TV: Vaughan.
Dean Wilson.

London Daily Mirror.

Monday, 27 March 2017.

PTG 2087-10573.

Former England captain Michael Vaughan reckons English cricket is playing catch up with its rugby counterparts as it gets ready to change its structure forever.  And after spending 12 years behind a 'Sky Sports' subscription paywall, he believes the time has come to put part of English cricket back on terrestrial TV.

Vaughan understands why the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) took the money back in 2005, but laments how the game is now in a battle for the hearts and minds of the younger English public.  “I just get really jealous on a Six Nations [rugby] weekend and I hear that eight million people are watching a rugby match and cricket isn’t getting that kind of audience”, said Vaughan.

“I guess in time we may get that and I think the people in charge are trying to get the right visibility for the game, but it is a different era. I think they’re playing a bit of catch up.  It is dead easy to point the finger at the people making the decisions back then but there were minimal bids on the table and there was one bid on the table that was big. So what are you going to do? Just ignore the big bid? No.  I just think that over the 12 years, probably there could have been more done in between to make the game a bit more visible, and now it is a fresh start”.

New programs like ‘All Stars Cricket’ for 5-8 year-old boys and girls is part of the plan to make the most of what the ECB hope will be a new audience of kids and their mums who will get along to what it hopes will be their new Twenty20 tournament in 2020.  But “right now”, said Vaughan, "cricket has a problem because [new England captain] Joe Root can walk down his street and not get hassled. We need to make the game more visible and for Joe to get pestered!”

ECB Selling the TV Rights or Selling its Soul? 25/03/17

Is getting the new T20 competition on to mobile platforms key to growing the game among the currently indifferent towards cricket, wider public?

What do these indifferent masses currently sportingly lap-up on their mobile devices?

(Non-scientifically) Talking to young people about sport in general and then their general impression of cricket, as they see it now, it is clear that sportingly we in this country are nearing a mono-culture and that mono-culture in based on football and the hype surrounding the Premier League in particular.

Football matches aren’t viewed on mobile devices, not when there are plasma screens, the bigger the better, pumping out output at every opportunity, anywhere people gather socially. Mobile devices are used to lap-up subsidiary faff  on the likes of Twitter – what people are saying about XYZ or funny observations of things that are happening or have happened in the crowd. With all the associated partisan followings, banter or conversation fuels the interest and with the multiple teams involved, the snowball of coverage grows over all platforms of the media.

 Unfortunately no one is talking about cricket, well at least not to the disinterested youth.  Why would they seek out Instagrams of cricket if they weren’t aware of cricket in the first place? Cricket through its own desire to sell itself to the highest bidder has sold its consciousness with the viewing public; its soul is hopefully intact but probably not its brain.

If the existing cricket product is to survive, let alone any new gamble of a foolhardy regional confusion,  then cricket has to be in people’s living rooms not just pubs at lunchtimes. The mobile gizmos can stream snippets of play but are idea for what cricket specialises in, statistics or replaying over and over “dodgy umpiring decisions”, but those are for the already converted audience.

Increasingly however, it is becoming made known that the primary audience for this new competition is the vast Indian TV audience, not the young people of the UK at all. The whole competition has to be tailored into a format that fits the Indian model of the IPL, CPL and BBL. The grandeurs stories told to sell the competition to the Counties are essentially bogus. If TV rights are sold to the highest bidder in this country, the Freeview TV channels will not have a look-in and it'll mean the more of the same Sky TV, which saw interest fall in the first place with young people due to its secondary coverage, overshadowed by football and its subscription fees.

The All Stars project, to entice youngsters to cricket, will either fly or die, but it’s not likely to be backed-up by a high profile, on the big telly in their living rooms, professional game for the young people to aspire to become; All Stars just ending up as another game like rounders, played during PE at school. Whatever happened to Kwik Cricket? As far as I’m aware it’s still played by crowds of kids at my local club on a Wednesday evening, or will be once the clocks have gone forward.

Tweets today have said interest in the T20 Blast is greater than ever, pre-sales at the smaller counties is high:Somerset for example is 70% sold out a week before April, all in spite of the lack of wider-public awareness from the TV. Notts do indeed put a lot of effort in through advertising to attract a new public to Trent Bridge for Outlaws games, all effort which pays off with ever growing crowds with the strong local identity. 

So don’t we already have potential growth in the system, kids being attracted to a short, safe format and a professional game where a T20 format is showing year on year expansion in interest and footfall into grounds? It just needs that airtime on Freeview TV, on any channel number 1-5 to ignite the nation’s interest again. DDG