ICC’s Soviet-style Cricket World Cup broadcast is no match for Sky

Cricket’s overlords were claiming possible viewing figures of one billion for Sunday’s World Cup final, although how many of them stayed to the bitter end is anybody’s guess. The ICC worldwide coverage was shown in the UK and the sense from the broadcast and some of the broadcasters is that the wrong guy won.

It was clearly a huge day for India and Indian fans: the deafening silence through the telly when their heroes suffered any setback was striking and, for schadenfreude connoisseurs, something of a corrective after all the pre-match nationalistic pomp and circumstance, up to and including an airforce flypast that may have taken years off the life of a startled Michael Atherton. Clearly it would be hopelessly naïve to consider that this was supposed to be an international final held in India rather than an Indian home fixture but, for this neutral watcher 4,250 miles away, it was all a bit de trop.

The match-up created an unsettling feeling for the England cricket fan on a Sunday morning: even given cricket administrators’ unquenchable thirst for messing with the match formats, it is regrettably not yet possible for both sides to lose. But still. While nobody wants their Sunday lunch spoiled by a triumphant David Warner, to see Narendra Modi grumpily watching India lose in the Narendra Modi Stadium… well, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

Only a tiny fraction of the worldwide viewership would have been watching on the UK’s Channel 5, but it was heartening that the match was made available on terrestrial TV here. The Sky Sports Cricket coverage was shared with 5, good news for cricket fans who don’t have satellite, bad news for fans of the latter network’s standard Sunday fare of Friends repeats, Peppa Pig, and Christmas movies (yes, already) so cheesy that even ITV2 turns its nose up. Commiserations to that viewership community but in every war there must be casualties.

The ICC broadcast – long on matey cheerleading and product placement; short on analysis, cojones and wit – makes you realise how good England fans have it with Sky Sports Cricket. Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Ian Ward (and Sky regulars Ricky Ponting and Ian Smith) are in a different league to the ICC lot. The broadcast displayed a Soviet-style refusal to mention off-message events like a protester getting on the pitch and grabbing Virat Kohli, or pass comment on the delayed, dismal post-match presentations, or the charmless way Modi handed Pat Cummins the trophy and then stomped off, leaving the victorious captain alone and bemused on the stage. It was left to Ward to remark how rum the whole conclusion was.

But never mind the quality, feel the width. If you are a working cricket commentator and you didn’t get the nod from the selectors for this one then I’m afraid it might be time to try another line of work. Literally anyone who is anyone in cricket punditry, and indeed some who aren’t, got a gig. A whole day of your Harsha Bhogles and the Sanjay Manjrekars of this world doing their partisan schtick, and the BCCI’s hype-man in chief Ravi Shastri chewing the scenery as never before with a Michael Buffer-style “heavyweight contest… in the blue corner” turn at the toss.

Dinesh Karthik got the telecast off to a poor start by saying of the atmosphere: “You have got to be here to know what it feels like”, which sort of goes against the whole “televising stuff” concept, but he’s a jolly presence and well suited for this sort of jingoistic japery.

As for the Aussie contingent, not only Shane Watson but Matt Hayden were involved, aw mate look mate, etc etc and so on: surely a violation of Ofcom guidelines this early on a Sunday. Watto might be as thick as a dungeon wall but even he is not as bad as Haydos, wittering on preposterously about how “this is courage at its absolute best” when Travis Head took a single to long on. You can never relax when Haydos is on air, it could be Baggy Greens, surfing, elite mateship or any other fair dinkum bilge at any moment. But this might be what our viewing future looks like. The wheel is turning away from bilateral cricket in favour of tournaments and that, for the UK TV watcher, is not good news. Telegraph