England beat Pakistan at Old Trafford in the First Test last Saturday by 3 wickets and claimed a magnificent and surprising victory.
With 5 wickets down for not much more than a hundred chasing 277 it looked like Pakistan’s game until Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes produced a superb lower order batting partnership.
Full details of the scores are here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/scorecard/ECKO46762
The Telegraph published the viewing figures for Saturday. Sky the pay channel got a maximum audience of 1.7m while the highlights on BBC2 attracted 1.5m viewers. It was a very warm day and no doubt others were checking it on social media, checked clips later or were listening to Test Match Special on the radio.
Nevertheless when England beat Australia at the Oval on 12th September 2005 to regain the Ashes the audience for the free to air Channel 4 coverage was 7.4m.
The reality is that great as it was England’s Test victory on Saturday was not part of the national conversation while the 2005 one definitely was.
Of course in cricketing terms the Ashes victory was more significant than the one at Old Trafford but in in times like these actually it was the only international cricket going on anywhere.
I’m an advocate of free to air cricket precisely to put the game back into national life, but its not the whole answer given the sheer volume of competitive cricket played now compared to 2005. Even so the matter cannot and should not be ignored.
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