Extras

Ashes Test highlights are on what channel?

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They’re on Pick. You know… Pick!

Yeah, you do. It’s the one you always skip past on your way to Eden when you think that maybe, just maybe, you’ll fancy watching something informative if exactly the right sort of programme just happens to be on. But it isn’t, so you put How I Met Your Mother on instead, ignoring it completely while you pointlessly cycle through the same five pages on the internet, hoping that one of them has changed since the last lap.

Pick is apparently what used to be Sky Three. We sort of remember it changing, but not really. It mostly run repeats of stuff like Dog The Bounty Hunter and Most Haunted. We also note that it is showing When Vacations Attack in the early hours of tomorrow morning, which sounds like a classic. We daresay that programmes of the oeuvre ‘World’s Blankiest Blanks‘ feature heavily.

This is to say that it’s probably not where you’d go looking for Ashes highlights on free-to-air TV. However, it is where you’ll find them. A full, hour-long highlights programme, culled from Sky’s coverage, will show at 10pm the day after each day’s play.

Because it’s a Sky channel, you’re probably assuming you don’t have it, but you almost certainly do. It’s just that you haven’t noticed it before because it’s rubbish.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

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68 comments

  1. I won’t be watching, no matter where it is. This is the Day Before The Ashes, and therefore there are some things we know FOR SURE:

    Australia will put England in and be 128 for 0 at stumps.
    Watson will top score for the series, averaging 98.
    Steve Smith will be only a fraction behind.
    Mitchell Johnson will become transformed into a competent test bowler.
    Lyon will be tidy and cheap, and have two spells of match-winning brilliance (6 for 43and 5 for 24).
    Clarke will guide his team with serenity and incisive brilliance.
    Cook will fail to get past 50.
    Trott will score a century in the first test (England’s only one), and won’t get past 40 after that.
    KP will sulk his way to an average of 36.
    Anderson will limp off on Day 3 of this test, not to play again.
    Broad will sulk his way to an average of 89.

    Alright, maybe not the Mitchell Johnson one.

  3. All hail the king for providing this vital information. Am getting used to watching cricket on funny channels – most of my recent viewing has been on ITV4 and 5+1 (which in defiance of all mathematical logic, isn’t 6).

    Irritatingly my digital reception is terrible and when I do get Pick the picture often freezes up, even more irritatingly it seldom does this at moments when a mid-action freeze frame would be funny in an inappropriate way, usually I just get stuck with pictures of a brick wall or the back of someone’s head. Hopefully a bowler or outfielder is working on a bald spot that is only visible on close inspection, which will be a little comic recompense for me.

    3. We write about cricket and to some extent it’s our job, so we do have Sky. While their coverage is excellent, we would like nothing more than to not have to have it.

      We’re pretty confident we don’t have to go into the reasons why this is the case.

    5. I feel your pain KC. Following Cricket and cycling but not being a lover of SKY is one of life’s challenges.

    1. Surely the question is: how much do you want to keep your job? Do you? Really? Come on. Be honest.

  6. Thanks on two fronts: first, for letting me know there is actually some way of seeing the action away from skittish internet streams and curtailed TV news reports. But mainly, for the evocative image of ‘skipping on your way to Eden’. I’d write a song about that, if I could write songs.

    1. Harmison didn’t hit Langer on the head with the first ball in 2005. The first ball passed harmlessly outside off stump. It was actually a bit wide. Funny, that.

    3. Nice piece Sam. Given you are posting with fair regularity, why don’t you get your own blog?

  8. You only really need to watch the first ball of the series to know roughly what will happen. It could be Michael Slater slapping Phil Defreitas for 4 in front of point, Harmison bowling the ball straight to Flintoff at second slip, or Harmison hitting Langer on the head.

    Did I misremember any of those? Time tends to blur the memory a bit and lump things into one edgeless blob.

    In Sweden it doesn’t start until 1am. Not sure I can be bothered to stay up. Can you do a post saying what happened in the first ball so I can look at it when I get up please?

    2. Anderson nipped one behind Warner’s pads just missing leg stump, taken nicely by Prior, with Warner playing the original line stretching for the wide cut towards point. On the basis of this, all the Australian batsmen came out to the middle and surrendered. England was awarded the series five-nil there and then. Anderson was made Man of the Match / Series for his single delivery, for which he won a commemorative tea set.

  9. Starts at 4pm here. Maybe I should shell out for Willow TV, finally (temporarily).

    I’ll leave it a day, I think.

  10. Can any old channel bid for the rights? Given the time that its on when England are in Australia, surely there must be some sort of deal to be brokered with Babestation.

    Would I be right in thinking that before Sky, there were no TV highlights of overseas tours anywhere?

    1. We remember watching Ashes tour highlights on the BBC. They usually put them on at about midnight.

    2. Gloriously, they used to just put on the highlights that Channel 9 made in Australia. When you were used to watching Peter West, Tony Lewis etc murmuring their way through a formula that hadn’t changed in 20 years, it was wonderfully vulgar. It would look a bit tame now compared to Sky and Channel 5. The best bit was a little yellow duck that would waddle across the screen when someone scored a.. duck.

    3. Under Australian law, pay TV cannot acquire the rights to the Ashes unless it is available on free to air.
      Doesn’t help us for other OS tours, but then again that’s what the interwebs are for.

  11. Ex-England pace bowler Steve Harmison, who played alongside Pietersen in the 2005 and 2009 Ashes-winning sides, told BBC Sport: “Kevin is the best player ever to wear an England shirt.
    “He’s not the best English player to play for England because he’s not English, he is South African, but he is the best player ever to wear an England shirt.”

    Eh?

    2. I’m here.

      Well “there” actually. “There” being Dundee. I don’t live in Dundee just visiting for work. So in a Premier Inn. It’s all glamour this waiting-for-Ashes lark.

    4. They sometimes advise insomniacs to try and keep their eyes open because the effort makes you feel sleepier.

      We therefore advise that you switch off all electronic devices, don pyjamas, get under the duvet and close your eyes.

      Don Pyjamas is England’s third seamer, by the way.

  14. Good sweet Lord. Has it been so long? A midnight start to an Ashes test, the cat already deciding to sit in front of the television, me with a selection of random and frankly ambitious drink selections and the warm fuzzy glow of King Cricket’s Through The Night Thread.

    Magic

    2. DRINKS!

      And such and important thing should be in caps.

      Double Espresso from newly cleaned coffee machine. Smells slightly chemically.

      Bottle of Baltika no. 7 (it’s 4 for £5 in Tesco at the moment and you won’t get a better Russian lager for that price)

      Midori (this is totally a mistake and I accept it however it empties the bottle and I have a recycling run tomorrow being oh so middle class…)

      Sailor Jerry Rum (exactly the same principles apply except it’s better as it isn’t green)

      Whisky miniature from a Welsh distillery (if you can even believe that) a birthday present from my sister that I haven’t drunk and she is coming round at the weekend and I don’t want it to be in the cupboard and look ungrateful

      That is all

    3. Baltika Porter is in the 500 Beers To Drink Before You Die book which we live by and which we’ve just noticed isn’t actually called anything like that.

      It does contain 500 beers though. Baltika lager is a false friend. It looks familiar and you’re convinced it’s in The Book, but then you learn the truth when you get home and are forced to scream at the moon in impotent frustration.

    4. I do not have the book.

      I am afraid I am more of a part time alcoholic. I drink. I enjoy drinking. Sometimes I even enjoy what I am drinking.

      Alas I cannot read

  15. Best of luck everyone. Stiffen those sinews, imitate the action of a tiger and all that. As far as I know, it’s not Peter Siddle’s birthday, which should help.

    I’m going to imitate the action of a tortoise, by going to sleep till March. Wake me if Johnson gets one on target.

  16. Warne’s teeth still scare me. I would rather face Mitchell Johnson charging in than a Warne smile. Brrrrrrr

    2. Are you claiming to be both King and Deity?

      It’s a bold move.

      Sickened though I am I am rather enjoying the green tipple.

    6. And there’s truth in that.

      If there isn’t at least a nod toward a corrupt democratic system, what’s the point??

  19. Have it!!!

    And then it’s all rather depressing with Vaughan proving he is even less dynamic as a voice over artist for a dodgy wine company.

    “I wasn’t there to be liked….”

    2. I wish I could tell you there was some left…

      But the recycling bag is looking fuller for it.

    4. Considering the time difference earlies are probably your best way forward. When the Aussies toured the Windies I found my tenuous grip on reality slipping further if I tried lates, and I think the time difference is about the same.

  22. Morning chaps

    The problem with going to bed and returning for the final hour is that you miss all the wickets, watch Johnson get his fifty and have an odd watermelon favour in your mouth.

    Still six wickets and the captain out cheap is worth Midori dreams.

    1. We were hoping it was going to be the definitive opening delivery of a Test match – mid-paced, outside off, safely left – in which case we were going to write reams about it. But actually it was slightly better than that. Rogers defended, but it was a thickish edge which went to gully and hinted at plenty.

  24. I went in and out of sleep with the TV on. Woke up when we took the first wicket. Went to sleep again. Dreamt that we took a second wicket. Woke up when the score was 60-something for one. Fell asleep again. Woke up when we took the third wicket and realised that we had taken a second wicket but that I had slept through it and lunch.

    I could go on…

    …in fact, I realise, I already have gone on!

  26. What’s wrong with Sky? The BBC would never cover the cricket like Sky does, and as for the subscription thing, at least you don’t get forced to buy it and hauled before the courts if you refuse.

    1. Yes I agree entirely. Personally I love being asked to pay £522.50 + the cost of a TV license a year for something I used to be able to get for the cost of a TV license.

      It doesn’t annoy me at all that the cost is this high because they pay £1bn a year for football rights, and £70m a year for cricket, but there is no way to watch the latter without also paying for the former.

      If only I could get over my moral objection to giving money to an organisation which employs Gary Neville, Sky could have hundreds of my pounds, and I wouldn’t resent them at all.

  27. You never “used to be able to get” coverage of England cricket tours “for the cost of a TV license”, at least in the actual world.

    You did once get almost all of a home Test covered by the BBC, at least when they weren’t cutting away to the tennis, or going on strike.

    Sky both cover overseas tours and cover them with technical excellence way beyond anything the BBC would have attempted. Though the commentators bug me.

    I don’t like football, and couldn’t care less about it, but the Premiership (which I must concede some oafs do enjoy) wouldn’t exist without Sky, either.

    That may not be a good thing – I don’t know. I do remember the days when Match of the Day was QPR v Oldham, often IIRC involving lots of blokes skilllessly hoofing an orange ball around a mud patch/virtual piste.

    The good old days.

    And the other point stands, regardless. If I don’t pay for the BBC I go to court, with the full force of the State ranged against me; if you don’t pay for Sky you just get the chance to whine in a slightly supercilious fashion.

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