the Ashes need to be on terrestrial TV. its absolutely the right decision. look at how huge a moment us winning in 2005 was, the whole country behind the team, people queueing overnight to get into the grounds, kids wanting to play, 9 million viewers on terrestrial tv. compare it to 2009 - by comparison nobody gave a F***. hardcore cricket fans cared and that was it.

Should it only be the England based Ashes though? I mean, the reason it became a huge moment is because England finally beat a historic rival but even in 2007 no-one gave that much of a s**t when you got humped in Australia, save those hardcore cricket fans that you already mentioned.

Off the top of my head (so I may have missed oneor two obvious ones) terrestrial tv should have the World Cup, the Olympics, the Rugby World Cup, the Ashes (only when in England), the Grand National, Wimbledon, the Boat Race, the Commonwealth Games, the FA Cup final (and the Scottish Cup final in Scotland), the Champions League final and the London Marathon. Everything else should be up for grabs.

I'm not sure either of those events need to be protected on the grounds that I don't see satellite broadcasters wanting to pay big bucks to televise either of those events. Neither of them are currently protected and both are televised on terrestrial.

England with a 232 run first innings lead against South Africa have reduced the hosts to 37 for 2 in the 2nd innings and Graeme Swann has gone past 50 wickets for the calendar year in the process. Another couple of wickets by the close and South Africa are going to be in real trouble.

Make that 50 for 6 now. I wonder if the South African coach still thinks that there's no life in the pitch and that England will spend a long day in the field.

ITV4 have bought the rights to screen the Indian Premier League matches which were up for grabs since Setanta went to the wall. First time ITV have shown cricket on their network since the 1970s apparently.

Boat race? Who gives a F*** about the boat race??!! It only provides any semblance of entertainment if some c**t sinks!

On that basis, perhaps they could come up with an amphibious taxi race instead.

I'll have you know that boat race was the 3rd best member of the A-Team.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket ... 559122.stm

England get to face Pakistan this summer, but won't get to play against 2 of their best batsmen, Mohammed Yousuf and Younis Khan, because the Pakistan Cricket Board have given them life bans for playing for their country for "in-fighting" on their recent tour to Australia. That country's cricket team is forever shooting itself in the foot and stifling their progress.

Anyone been watching any of the IPL on ITV4? It's been quite a good spectacle what I've seen of it. KP and Collingwood have been playing themselves into form, Tendulkar has been playing like a God for Mumbai and Chris Gayle was hitting sixes like they were going out of fashion at the weekend. On Saturday, one team scored 246 runs off 20 overs and the team chasing ended up only losing by 23 runs, so the spectators got to see 469 runs in 40 overs and 3 hours!

Yesterday Shane Warne took 4-19 in his team's win and showed that despite being 40 years old, England should be glad that he won't be playing against them in The Ashes over there this coming winter.

Been watching bits of pieces of it, mostly when I get in from work and catch the end of the game. Nice to see a few English players doing well. One thing I do want to see in action in this mongoose bat as it sounds intriguing

I watched the 2nd innings in the game with 469 runs was manic, is incredible to think scores of 240 would have only been slightly below par in the 50 overs game 20 years ago.

That is one of good things of the IPL as it is short it allows older pros to carry on playing as know they wont be bowling long spells nor batting long periods so is good for them and allows us to watch them as well

I also read that ITV have done very well on the deal they didn't pay much for it and expected low viewing audiences around 100,000 per game but are getting up to 500,000 for some games

I see England fell foul of the rather farcical Duckworth-Lewis method in the T20 World Cup tonight after rain curtailed the West Indies reply and ended up meaning they had to chase 30 off 22 balls, which was always going to favour them.

They need to update D&L for T20, although in 50 overs cricket it wasnt a perfect system at least it wasnt as heavily weighted towards the team batting last as the game was yesterday

More rain at the minute in the current game, if it rains out England qualify however if it stops and the covers are coming over as I type this it means the game will be shortened which will probabely hurt England more then Ireland

England scrapped home last night thanks to the rain. I think the Irish would have won it, especially after the last 2 balls of the match where Sidebottom set them up. South Africa, New Zealand and Pakistan in the next round. Difficult, but assuming we actually get some 40over matches, I saw enough of Englands batting force in the windies game to suggest we can go through