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CAN we start the Ashes now, please? Don’t get me wrong, I like one-day cricket as much as the next
bloke. But England and Australia seem to have been squaring up to each other in the game’s short form for months.
First we had a Twenty2O clash between the sides. Then we had the NatWest Series. And we’ve just finished the NatWest Challenge.Talk about taking the edge off the main event.
This is the only phoney war to last alniost as long as the actual shooting match. It’s akin to asking the Wales and New Zealand rugby teams to play each other half a dozen times in friendlies before getting it on for real at the Millennium Stadium in November. The fixture would lose its allure, just as England v Australia in the Ashes has lost something thanks to the duffers who organise these things.
I watched the Twenty2O clash at the Rose Bowl and I thought the final in the NatWest Series was top notch. But what was the NatWest Challenge all about? The words “time” and “waste of” spring to mind. It seems to me to have been about making money and making money only. We’ve been left with a situation where Liverpool have started their Champions League campaign yet the battle fur the Ashes hasn’t even begun.
cricket’s Really, on occasion decision-makers strike me as being a couple of balls short of a full over.
A few months ago we learned that the England and Wales Cricket Board had struck a deal to give Sky exclusive rights to screen live coverage of home Tests.

As for those unfortunate enough to have access only to network TV, well, tough. They can either listen to the action on their radios or spend their days watching Teletext.

All that matters is the bottom line. Sky bid the must, so Sky get the rights.
No matter that at a time when cricket needs all the exposure it can get, it chooses to cut an exclusive deal with a broadcaster whose channels are not seen by millions. If there’s been a more