Sky resuscitates Championship out of necessity

The best thing about the appearance of Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth is that, while the ghost wants Macbeth to feel guilty about the brutal murder of its host body, it doesn’t actually say anything, or rub it in, or do very much at all. 

Instead the ghost just sits there looking wronged and noble and pale – existing reproachfully, like a highly skilled Hungarian grandmother.

There was something of this same emotional power-play about the unexpected appearance of live County Championship cricket on UK TV screens in place of the postponed Indian Premier League. 

Deprived of 31 scheduled games of high-grade T20, Sky Sports has been forced to take the nuclear option, digging out the skeleton in the attic, jazzing it up with a spray of cologne and marching it around in front of the cameras.

The end result, blinking in the cold white light of early May, was Middlesex v Gloucestershire in County Championship Group 2, broadcast live across three days to the apparent surprise, and obvious enjoyment, of all concerned. 

Three more games were scheduled  to follow in quick succession. And guess what: it’s a wonderful thing. Sport in the time of plague has thrown up a few moments like this, opportunities seized by a combination of need, existing technology and someone somewhere having a good idea. 

At Lord’s Sky used the existing Middlesex live-stream and bolted on a Where Eagles Dare-style platoon of busking commentators – a Ward, a Hussain – along with the in-house team of Matt Floyd, Isabelle Westbury and Adam Collins, who was hugely instrumental in getting the whole thing off the ground in the first place. 

And so, with little fanfare this happy, ghostly, bleached out-looking thing appeared in the second week of May, colours thinned by the digital feed, cameras a little jumpy, but with feeling of arthouse verity about the whole production.

My favourite cricketer: Eric Bedser

Crikey, you thought, pinned to the lockdown sofa by this moreish spectacle. This isn’t a next-best version of county cricket – this is county cricket. I feel cold. There’s a low-level buzz in the air and a fug of alluring sadness about those rows of empty plastic seats. 

At times I half-expected to look up and notice a man in sandals and a cotton sunhat perched in the corner of the room, putting down his piccalilli sandwich to erase a scorecard dot before spending the next two hours chuntering over a five-ball over.

It was gripping stuff too. It is easy to forget how good you have to be at cricket, even to play at the most disdained and overlooked of all the levels. David Payne, 10 years on the scene, produced a high-grade spell of left-arm nip and swing. James Bracey, who looks proper, provided some obvious batting class. Tim Murtagh swerved and seamed the ball around, approaching the wicket in a bounding slow motion, like a man in a lead-lined hazmat suit running gamely up a small incline. 

In those moments it was hard not to see a counterfactual version of history where this remaindered product had been projected and promoted, presented to the world with any kind of confidence. 

It would be perverse, and also deeply tedious to suggest, as some still do, that T20 is an aberration rather than a financial lifeline and general source of fun and light. More than one thing can be good.

But did it really have to be so absolute? Does this other thing really have to be pushed to the side of the platter like an unwanted celery garnish?

The evangelical marketing of first T20 and now The Hundred has always been tied up in something else – the stupidising of sport, the absolute, wrong-headed conviction that the only way to retail this thing is to make it shorter, flatter, less complex, less difficult. 

Young people? They only like easy things. They only watch Snaptube, YouChat, whatever. This focus-group truism has been parroted by useful, often tech-illiterate people in the media.

Experience of other humans or indeed actual young people, suggests it is a self-serving generalisation. By contrast this accidental glimpse of cricket from the back of the cupboard carried one piece of truth. It does have value, edges and narrative. It will hook you in. 

There is an obvious outlet here for county cricket to be streamed and broadcast every season like this. Sell an online subscription. Put it on Sky during the day. Gift an hour’s highlights to BBC4. It’s good. People will like it. In the meantime fire up the flatscreen and meet that reproachful gaze full on. Who knows for how long, but this thing is still alive dammit. 

This article was published in the June edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game