BBC should pay the going rate for right to cover home Tests (27 April 1998)

27 April 1998

BBC should pay the going rate for right to cover home Tests

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

IT is early in the season for momentous decisions but two must be taken within the next week. One will attract widespread publicity; the other will have far-reaching effects on cricket in Britain.

The England selectors are due to choose their captain, or captains, for at least the first part of the summer. They will stick with Adam Hollioake, no doubt, for the one-day internationals; but for the Tests they must choose between Alec Stewart and Nasser Hussain. Mike Gatting has admitted that the possibility of a gamble on an outsider like David Byas or Matthew Maynard has been rejected.

We all know how important a decision it is. Yet it is more effective bowlers, not tactical brilliance, which is likely to change England's fortunes. In some ways the more important dilemma is the one facing the Secretary of State for sport and the arts, Chris Smith, who has to decide whether the BBC will continue to have the exclusive right to televise home Test matches live.

They were obliged to pay significantly more before the old Test and County Cricket Board gave them the contract which expires at the end of this season, but the BBC still get the product too cheaply by far: £8 million for 180 hours of Test cricket each summer compared with £18 million for some 60 hours of football's Match of the Day.

Everyone in cricket ought to want the BBC to retain the rights, not because of any prejudice against Sky but simply because their audience is vastly greater, even with an average figure of under two million on weekdays and under three at weekends. That is still far more than Sky's potential figure, witness the AXA Life viewing figures for the 14 Sunday matches Sky covered last season; an average of between 100,000 and 200,000, compared to between 1.5 and two million for the six matches covered by the BBC. The switch in coverage of international rugby union produced a similarly vast discrepancy.

Home Test coverage is one of the few remaining jewels in a BBC crown which has started to resemble the one lost by King John in the Wash. When the England team does do something spectacular it is crucial to the future strength and well-being of the sport that the inspiration should spread to the widest possible audience. Who could begin to estimate the effects on youthful watchers of Jim Laker's 19 wickets in 1956, Ian Botham's hundreds at Headingley and Old Trafford in 1981, or even Devon Malcolm's nine wickets against South Africa at the Oval four years ago?

We have to consider also the elderly and relatively poor members of society for whom £20 a month for Sky Sport is too much money. They lost a doughty champion when Lord Howell, by a distance the most effective Minister for Sport in any government, died suddenly last week. Only recently he had reminded readers of the Observer that "sport carries with it social responsibilities to the wider community which it should serve".

The recommendation of Smith's advisory committee that Tests should be on a proposed 'B' list which would ensure "good secondary coverage on free-to-air channels" but allow exclusive live coverage by a subscription broadcaster will probably be adopted by the minister but that need not mean the end of home Tests on the BBC.

The England and Wales Cricket Board have taken every opportunity to reassure people that they will not just sell everything to Sky - assuming them to be the higest bidder - and they point to the compromise struck with Sky and the BBC for next year's World Cup which gives the former an only slightly larger share of the cake. The board recognise that the bigger the audience the better, but stress the £300 million needed if necessary capital expenditure on grounds is to be completed and the National Development plan is to be properly put into practice. Television is already the biggest source of central revenue by far but it provides only £15 million a year of that amount at present.

The answer is simple. If the BBC can afford £18 million a year for Match of the Day they can do the same for Test matches. The Corporation spend only 10 per cent of their annual licence fee of over £1 billion on sport. No one should begrudge a penny spent on Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice (as opposed to poor light entertainment or American imports) but the best way for the ECB to get the investment and development money they need and still to show Test cricket to the widest possible audience is for the BBC to come to their own rescue by at least doubling their current outlay. It is known as the market rate.

STEWART or Hussain? It is not easy. Hussain is shrewder and would probably make the better captain in time. Stewart, for all that he needs to rebase his batting technique on getting behind the line of the ball, is a consummate professional. Either will have to be sternly reminded that the captain is responsible at all times for ensuring that play is conducted within the spirit of the game (Law 42.1).

Whichever they choose, Stewart may have to keep wicket and bat at six, with Hussain at three, Thorpe at four, Ramprakash at five and very careful consideration given to the opening pair. Steve Marsh, the Kent wicket-keeper/captain, believes that it is perfectly possible to do both jobs from the middle order and adds that no one is better placed than the 'keeper to know how bowlers are performing and when they are getting tired. Although he is one of several alternative wicketkeepers, Marsh opts for Stewart as the new captain.

Recent A team 'keepers like Paul Nixon and Warren Hegg have not impressed sufficiently in the past to press Jack Russell and the short experiment with Steve Rhodes under Raymond Illingworth was not in the end a success. The best of the mature wicketkeeper/batsmen are Marsh, who is 37, Adrian Aymes of Hampshire, Rob Turner of Somerset and Karl Krikken of Derbyshire. The coming man seemed two seasons ago to be the gifted Robert Rollins but a chronic finger injury has set him back and one has to ask whether the batting of any of these candidates would be effective at Test level?

Stewart would prefer to open and not keep wicket, but he has had poor series when batting in the top three against England's next two opponents. He averaged 29 in South Africa and 24 against Australia last summer. Hussain is now a mature Test cricketer but it is against him that he has neither toured Australia nor played a Test against South Africa. Gerry Alexander, who led the West Indies 18 times from behind the stumps, is the only man to have done so regularly.

Stewart was not a great success in his two Tests as caretaker captain in India and Sri Lanka in 1992-93, nor as captain of Surrey, but he is the staunchest of patriots and with Cork, Gough, Headley, Croft and Salisbury or Giles he might yet have a decent attack to command. The solution is to appoint Stewart and hope that he can round off a distinguished international career with one final, intensive year.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)