Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
Apparently UEFA tried to challenge the listing - sounds like the EU were supportive of the British govornment over them.
Anyways, as everyone knows, I've always been fully in favour of home Tests being relisted, I believe cricket on free-to-air TV is far more important than the Sky pot of gold (which as has also been stated by various experts, is not going to last forever - the ECB are lucky that it lasted more than one round of bidding).
What needs to happen is that someone, somewhere needs to prise control of various things away from the counties - this will be difficult but not impossible. Then the reductions that will be neccessary if TV revenue is cut back can be taken off counties (thereby stopping them wasting vast sums on overseas-players) rather than grassroots.
One of the most recent studies concluded that "the ECB has raised the price more affluent fans pay for watching cricket - both in the ground and on TV - in order to deny the vast majority of fans the chance. These more affluent fans now cough-up hefty sums for the priveledge which the ECB then gives to county clubs to pay overseas-players to play in front of empty stadia".
The counties - who after all control the ECB as things stand and always have - have an attitude similar to most Americans towards global warming. They realise their actions are bad but given that they still have the short-term option of not reducing their own luxury they take that, despite the fact that the longer-term consequences will be catastrophic. In all likelihood, of course. No-one actually knows what will happen when global warming continues, or when virtually no-one in the country has access to live Test cricket for a lengthy time. But most believe the effects will be very, very bad.
Anyways, as everyone knows, I've always been fully in favour of home Tests being relisted, I believe cricket on free-to-air TV is far more important than the Sky pot of gold (which as has also been stated by various experts, is not going to last forever - the ECB are lucky that it lasted more than one round of bidding).
What needs to happen is that someone, somewhere needs to prise control of various things away from the counties - this will be difficult but not impossible. Then the reductions that will be neccessary if TV revenue is cut back can be taken off counties (thereby stopping them wasting vast sums on overseas-players) rather than grassroots.
One of the most recent studies concluded that "the ECB has raised the price more affluent fans pay for watching cricket - both in the ground and on TV - in order to deny the vast majority of fans the chance. These more affluent fans now cough-up hefty sums for the priveledge which the ECB then gives to county clubs to pay overseas-players to play in front of empty stadia".
The counties - who after all control the ECB as things stand and always have - have an attitude similar to most Americans towards global warming. They realise their actions are bad but given that they still have the short-term option of not reducing their own luxury they take that, despite the fact that the longer-term consequences will be catastrophic. In all likelihood, of course. No-one actually knows what will happen when global warming continues, or when virtually no-one in the country has access to live Test cricket for a lengthy time. But most believe the effects will be very, very bad.
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