15006 people paid to watch that in person. I hope they enjoyed the meaningless delay in play. Glad to see no-one tore an ACL.
If you are expecting a match report, then good luck. No-one seems bothered by the ODIs on here. When you get games like this, I’m not surprised. Gayle got out and the West Indies innings died. England chased it with a fortnight remaining. Jonny Bairstow made his first ODI 100. Glad he’s happy.
On to Nottingham. Sky Sports Cricket needs more than Cricket Greatest and Masterclass. And a sport moves more into the realms of irrelevance.
It’s all about context.
Being Outside Cricket 
Sky sports cricket will be shut for the winter soon. They spent more time talking about the meaningless Caraboa Cup than the ODI
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I wonder if because they lost the Ashes contract in Aus, Sky thought it would be great idea to take cricket almost to Haloween. And this series is as scary as Haloween. Funny outfits, dark nights, late finishes, freezing cold. Trick or treat suckers.
Sometimes I just think the governing body is laughing at the fans. Let’s have a September 20/20 & 50 over job, and hold the first three matches ooop North. I haven’t watched any of it today. I looked at the 20/20 at Durham on Saturday, and really didn’t know what to make of it. Fair play to the fans…. they turned out in numbers. You didn’t know if to laugh at them, admire them, or just pity them.
What was they said in field of dreams? If you build it, they will come. I think the ECB is taking the piss quite frankly.
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Didn’t watch a ball today (and I’m not adverse to ODIs generally).
Meanwhile…
Is it as bad as that first quote sounds?
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No. Ronay does present a reasonably balanced article. A bit dismissive of the 2014 stuff, as if being sacked is something he should just have accepted, but the second half of the article is fair.
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They are still living off his name I see.
Never wanted to write a balanced piece when it mattered. So this fake,let’s pretend we all get along now you are no longer a threat to his highness Cook of sheep is patronising nonsense.
Elvis has left the building, and with it so has the cricket medias integrity.
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I’ll happily watch every innings Chris Gayle plays. After he was out, I dozed off. Switched back on for background, while I cooked dinner – salmon in a court bouillon, wild rice, tomato sauce with tarragon. The rest of this ODI series will probably be similar
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I hope not. How much salmon can you cook and eat Benny?
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Hehe. Fighting diabetes atm and we have a shop nearby at Newhaven, where the fishermen come in. Beautiful stuff. Mackerel tomorrow.
For the cricket, love watching Gayle and Hayles do their thing. The rest is just people doing their job. Works as background entertainment on my IPad
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There are times when being busy at work has it’s advantages. I don’t see why they needed to let the Windies player freeze their nuts off.
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When Vic Marks is having a go….
The quirky 12.30pm start never came to pass. At 11.30am, as the sun came out, England were happily playing football on the outfield; West Indies were knocking up with bats and balls. At 1.45pm the sun was still beaming down and the playing area was deserted except for Rob Bailey, the fourth umpire, and a forlorn groundsman.
England beat West Indies by seven wickets in first ODI – live!
Jonny Bairstow’s high-class unbeaten 100, his maiden ODI century, guided England to an emphatic victory over West Indies at Old Trafford
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There had been no play because of a damp outfield and a second inspection was imminent; there was a reluctance to start because of the risk of player injury. Ho-hum – on that basis rugby players would never take to the field. The two-hour delay contrived to make our summer sport look ever more ridiculous. If it is deemed to be a good idea to schedule international matches for the second half of September, do not expect perfect playing conditions.
After the second inspection, sanity prevailed; the umpires gave up consulting with wary captains and decreed that play would commence at 2.30pm and the contest became a 42-over match. Thereafter, there was never any indication that the players were being exposed to unacceptable risks – provided they had remembered to apply sunscreen diligently.
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I have to say, sky sports has really gone downhill recently. Often I turn it on when I get home in the evening, and I have to say, its becoming increasingly unlikely to be able to find any kind of sport to watch whatsoever – either live or highlights.
They’ve got 8 channels, all showing repeats of the same talking heads they showed the night before.
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Agree with this AB. I used to watch more football and cricket than not yet now I find it difficult to be motivated.
Its a combination of boredom with sports, apathy against the organizations that run them and general lack of time.
I barely have the time to do the stuff I don’t ‘want’ to, but have to, let alone having time to do what I want to do, or that may be considered ‘luxury’, like sitting on my arse for 3 hours at a time.
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The less we watch the more we pay.
The market knows that Sky massively overpaid for football. Like football fans who have little choice but to stump up the cash to watch their team play, so Sky had little choice but to blow a non-existent BT bid out of the water. The results are tangible across their platform. Programmes are cheap to produce, in-house affairs, with noticeable cuts even in those (see The Verdict). The money is going in to live sport, and to their main events. Sky gave up the US Open tennis, were frozen out of the US PGA golf. These weren’t lost to BT either.
Meanwhile it’s about all I watch, sport. I get home at 8ish most nights, and watch a couple of hours of sport, catch up on the blog and stuff with it on in the background.
Then I see something like I’m watching while writing this. It’s an ESPN 30 for 30 short about a man drafted last in the NFL. He’s called “Mr Irrelevant” but he has that indefatigable attitude to succeed. This isn’t a fairy story, though. You know it isn’t because he’s not being interviewed, his ex-coach is. Bill Parcells, a man not known for his soft side. And in this programme, he breaks down. The subject of the documentary died of cancer in 1986. It’s sport at its most raw. It reminds you a lot of what it means. And they know it.
Sky once did an advert for football that said “we know what it feels like to be a football fan, because we are too.” That was the one that nearly cost me a TV. You are an effing business, not fans. Don’t you dare go there.
Ramble over.
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It’s interesting the issue of the lack of time to watch sport these days. I’m told that a lot of young people now watch sport by recording the live event, and then Watching it back at fast speed to just see that “action bits.” Stopping and rewinding when something happens.
I can’t see the point of that. You are completely devoid of any connection to the event or those involved. But then that is the way sport has been sold to people as a consumer product to chuck away as soon as you have eaten it. It’s the modern society with people with no concentration levels and attention spans the length of flys.
The next one will be along in a while. When you make sport all about the money, and the bussiness………the concept of……”less is more” does not compute with corporate executives. So you get endless new crap.
Story of the modern world I’m afraid.
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