I DIDN’T see any of the games in the recent ICC T20 World Cup that was hosted by the West Indies and the USA.
That wasn’t because I didn’t want to — it was because I don’t pay for access to Sky TV.
Although the BBC signed an audio deal with the ICC to broadcast all major cricket tournaments over the next four years, the viewing rights went to Sky and Now TV in a long-term deal until the end of 2031.
Sky reportedly pays £220 million a year for the domestic rights with the England and Wales Cricket Board, and they’re paying big bucks for international coverage too.
With satellite sports subscription packages averaging over £30 a month, some people are forced into searching online for live streams while others are fuelling the black market for plug-in Firesticks with strange, dodgy worldwide access.
I do, however, have access to Discovery+ through a deal with my mobile provider that I used to watch the Champions League football last season — and that has enabled me to explore the world of Major League Cricket (MLC). And I love it.
Nowhere else in the world quite does sport like the United States.
It’s bright, it’s big and brash, and it has some of the biggest names in the sport playing out there. Sport is still exciting, an exciting spectacle in the US.
MLC is in its second year and the games are played at two venues — Grand Prairie Stadium near Dallas, Texas, and Church Street Park in Morrisville, North Carolina.
The six teams that are competing are the Los Angeles Knight Riders, MI New York, San Francisco Unicorns, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings and Washington Freedom.
Cricket has long suffered from an image problem that saw it as reserved, upper-class, and decidedly British. Stiff upper lips, handlebar moustaches and imperialism. A game that we took out to the colonies, while we took all their natural resources in return.
But the exciting T20 format has sped the game up from the long days of Test cricket spanning days with batsmen in whites defensively hitting dot balls in the blazing sun for hour after hour that could, let’s be honest, be quite boring. Or even worse, sitting in the rain with the covers on. It’s the game, but on amphetamines.
Although cricket did undoubtedly have its roots in the public schools being played by minor aristocrats, the clergy and military officers back in the 19th century, and a classist hangover of snobbery maybe persists in attitudes to the game, it is a sport that is played by 2.5 billion people around the globe now.
That’s why the business suits in the TV sports industry are cashing in.
India won the World Cup, by the way, if you, like me, weren’t watching. But I guarantee that millions around the world were, and they’ll be tuning into MLC too.
Give it a look while you still can — the season finishes at the end of the month.