The necessity of television to professional sport, rather thanthe other way round, was crystallised at a small ceremony in Londonlast week. Ostensibly, the extension to English cricket's Test-match sponsorship deal - cue back-slapping all round - had nothingto do with television. Nothing and everything, that is.
In making the announcement that the energy company npower hadagreed to sign for another two seasons after their current contractends this summer, both parties stopped just short of dancing on thetable. They could not stop saying how beneficial it was for allconcerned, and given that one side were trousering pounds 7m and theother getting their name above the title, maybe they were right.
But the amount and the period were both profoundly influenced bytelevision, a point carefully not denied by Kevin Miles, npower'smanaging director. All he would say - in between emphasising hiscompany's long association with cricket (it goes back to 2001), thatthey were not here today, gone tomorrow merchants and wanted to putsomething back into cricket - was that it was a commercialproposition.
The reason for this influence is that from 2006, all liveinternational cricket in this country will be on Sky. In somequarters, where life is still lived in some kind of never-neverland, and the church clock always stands at 10 to three and there ishoney still for tea, this has been roundly condemned.
Why, a pressure group calling themselves Save Cricket have beenset up to rail against it. While it is probably true that they wouldbe better saving their money for satellite-television subscriptionsthan spending it on old-hat, no-hope campaigns, this concern is atleast partly shared by big business. But it is a concern that iseconomic rather than emotional.
In deciding to re-enlist for only two more years, npower arewaiting to see how the new TV rights pan out. Miles decently saidthat newspaper exposure was just as important, but if he truly meantthat he would ensure his company's name started with a capital N.
Their executives, too, are uncertain if cricket has done quitethe right thing, and whether it might elude a mass audience infuture because, except for a crucial 45-minutes-a-day highlightspackage on Channel 5, it will not be available on terrestrialtelevision.
That is why the company have managed to secure the rights for thesame money they are already paying - and this to back seriesinvolving a team who have won 12 of their last 16 matches. They havealso insisted on almost 10 per cent of their sponsorship cash goingto a new marketing fund aimed at taking cricket to a wider audience.
The way Miles put it was that the pounds 600,000 in question wasgoing directly to giving fans greater access to the sport. Soperhaps some punters could be in line for free satellite dishes.
All these fears are probably groundless. Sky's coverage ofcricket has been fairly pedestrian at times - save for thepeerlessly grumbling Bob Willis - but the idea that it isMephistopheles taking hold of a game's soul does not wash. Channel4, who are being painted as angelic saviours, only wanted and onlybid for one series a summer. The BBC did not bid at all.
The big worry is not that cricket is on a satellite channel, forsatellite television is, for better or worse, only another consumerexpense of modern life. The big worry is that Sky Television will bethe only bidders for the game in future, and set the priceaccordingly. This is one reason why David Collier, the chiefexecutive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, met Peter Salmon,the BBC TV head of sport, last Tuesday.
They were not talking about the current deal, they were talkingabout whether BBC might be interested post-2009, when the Sky deal,which has not yet started, runs out. It was sensible planning, andif it seems a long way in the future, the fact is that televisionprogramme schedules really are planned that far in advance.
Still, cricket in any form on any kind of television may be introuble if it is all like the First Test between South Africa andZimbabwe. Zimbabwe were 54 all out, South Africa finished the firstday at 340 for 3. Whatever else it was, it was not Test cricket.
