The best time to be an English cricket fan

Exciting news, England fans! What's that I hear you ask? Has Alastair Cook decided to spend the winter on the farm and handed over the reins of the one-day international side? Has Giles Clarke been spotted leaving ECB HQ carrying a cardboard box piled high with his belongings? Has Michael Vaughan taken a vow of silence?

Not quite. But it does seem that, according to a report by ESPNcricinfo, English cricket could be back on free-to-air television as soon as next summer.

Now followers of English sporting matters will know that many English people regard the loss of English cricket from English television as the final nail in the coffin of human civilisation, and the possibility of its return the only faint glimmer of hope in what promises to be an otherwise entirely desolate century.

And rightly so.

Like most English children who didn't go to Eton, I only knew that cricket existed because it was on the television in the summer holidays. In fact, it was pretty much the only thing on television in the summer holidays. At some point in the middle of August, I would wander indoors, slump onto the sofa, remember that it was still the early eighties, so we didn't have a remote control yet, get up, switch on the television, return to my seat and wait for the thing to warm up while wondering what the BBC had in store for its captive audience.

You'd hope for an unscheduled episode of The A Team or Battle of the Planets or even some football. What you invariably got was grainy footage of white-clad men with bad hair and beards standing around in a field, clapping periodically, accompanied by commentary from the "say nowt unless tha's got summat to say" school.

Millions had the same experience, at least they did until 2005, when at the height of English cricket's triumph, the ECB decided that cricket was quite popular enough, thank you, and cashed in, ensuring the sport would disappear from most children's lives.

So it was very exciting to read that next summer, young English cricket fans might once more be able to slump onto their sofas on a blazing hot summer's day, turn on their television and watch live coverage of… Middlesex Muppets versus Durham Dodos?

Oh. I see. When they said domestic cricket, they really meant domestic, didn't they. Well, there's nothing wrong with having English T20 on free television. I mean, it is still cricket, sort of, but - and I don't mean to be rude - it's hardly the IPL now, is it? I'm not sure that the prospect of watching a few colourfully clad journeymen huff and puff around county grounds of an early evening is going to entrance the next generation.

But Surrey Chief Executive Richard Gould is bullish, in the way that chief executives often are when they're trying to sell you something:

"Sky would retain first choice of the domestic games they show, but there is no reason why we could not put together a highlights show of five or six minutes per game from other matches and bundle them together."

There you have it, kids. Who wants to watch the boring old Ashes? Instead, with a bit of luck, in seven months' time, you might be able to sit down and enjoy five and a half minutes of Worcestershire Warblers failing to chase down 98 against Derbyshire Duffers in a game that doesn't matter in the slightest. If that doesn't get them turning off their X-Boxes and selling their PlayStations, I don't know what will.