Arthur Crabtree wrote:True. Probably not the right thread for a discussion.... but it seems these numbers are low even for Sky.
Really low for sky considering Ashes generally gets double or triple the normal Cricket ratings.
England vs NZ rated higher than the Ashes.
Guessing all the Fake cricket fans are not tuning into the Cricket any more.
Cricket needs FTA coverage soon though in some form otherwise Cricket will die in this country and worldwide.
Crazy to think Cricket is the worse managed sport ever considering Cricket is dying in literally every nation and in 20-30 years time it is possible only India/Australia will be playing cricket the rest either not being good enough or bankrupted.
Worse of all is that BCCI, ECB probably killed cricket in most of the cricketing world, Only Australia cricketing structure looks healthy and that mostly because of the FTA aspect, Good TV ratings and Cricket Australia making good decision.
ECB are a joke though considering they known the issues facing cricket in this country for at least 10 years and are not really doing anything to fix it, they mostly assumed Ashes or BCCI will bail them out.
I understand the whole summer of cricket will never be FTA but the Ashes/T20 could easily be FTA, I would even like the ashes hype if it went FTA considering it would be helping the game grow.
Numbers of people playing cricket dropping, the percentage of Asian people playing cricket is rising high but only a small percentage play county cricket.
Remember reading an article illustrating the problems of the figures, Most English test players come from the private school system which only 6.5% of the population attend so vast majority of cricket players come from the 6.5% but 30-40% of people playing cricket come from Asian backgrounds and with government closing school fields and the urban state school mostly not playing cricket due to lack of interest and facilities.
Most problems are that Non Asians in urban areas generally can't play cricket because facilities are not really available in cites and State schools don't play it in PE, In my high school Cricket is only played in Sport days which is a round robin competition of 2 groups of 4 with 5 minute innings with mostly Asians bowling and batting.
It is really a joke considering the PE Teachers don't know rules, majority of the people get bored since they can't bowl or even hold a bat.
Asian people generally can't push to the next level because of facilities not present in cites or Education and life get in the way.
In my opinion not sure ECB are doing enough to fix these issues and because of this ECB can only pick from 6.5% of the population and that really only 3.3% if you take all the females out.
Not sure how England can do well in cricket if the problems don't get fixed even Ashes won't save Cricket in this country.