Scotland v Australia

Just flicking around the chanels (as usual!) and noticed BBC TWO Scotland showing a cricket match! They are actually showing footage of a 1970's match between England and Australia at the moment, but will be showing the match between Scotland and Australia when it stops raining.

One thing I noticed, they put a caption up to explain why they were showing the match, and it was in the Channel 4 aston style!

So it looks like Channel 4 (or whoever produces the C4 cricket coverage) is covering this match for the BBC.

BBC are providing commentary team, Sunset + Vine are doing production and both BBC1 and Sky have highlights this evening if it ever stops raining (whether Sky have bothered to do their own graphics who knows, but seems unlikely as they have another game on at same time).

I note the opening credits had a proper BBC Sport aston so perhaps they were done by BBC Broadcast. Presumably it was too much effort to do a BBC graphics set for a one-off game (the Channel 4 ones took ages) - although I was half expecting a few more given Sunset and Vine also currently have the production contract for BBC racing.

Was always going to be interesting if it rained to see what highlights they showed - as it turned out, Eng v Aus from 1972 (with dodgy music/captions and cameras only at one end).

The commentary team is Jonathan Agnew, Michael Slater and Tony Greig. Agnew works for the BBC on TMS but I think Slater and Greig are contracted to Sunset and Vine for the summer. They do the commentary on Channel 4 but are actually contracted to Sunset and Vine, only Nicholas and Richie Benaud and perhaps Athers and actually contracted to C4.

But did they use the good ol' TMS music?
(you can re-create the start of it by rapping your knuckles against a CRT screen. Try it!)

Looks like it's been rained off for the day, though.

Certainly did.

Not necessarily, far more likely to be done by BBC Sport themselves or BBC Post Production I'd have thought.

Not sure if BBC broadcast do opening titles

I would love for the BBC to get the Test Cricket rights back. I'm not happy with the Channel 4 coverage.
Isn't this year supposed to be the final year for Channel 4's Cricket coverage? Who will the Cricket go to for next summer?

Channel 4 coverage has been fantastic. It's already been decided that from next year coverage goes to Sky with 45 minutes of highlights on Five.

Shame it was a washout, any chance of it being rescheduled?

I'm not going to let you get away with that statement.
Why are you not happy with Channel 4 coverage?

Please remember the bad old days of BBC coverage before you answer that - just incase you need a refresher....
Viewers to BBC cricket had to put up with some or all of the following.. :

Breaking off for the national news/regional news and weather every hour for 5-8 mins,
A late start to the post lunch session due to children's programmes,
Sharing coverage with both racing and golf on some afternoons,
The commentary box filled with the 'I remember when..' bridgade
The only graphics were the scorecard and bowling figures
No lunchtime/tea time discussion shows or phone-ins

Now, I'd be interested to read your reasons...

Sadly not - only semi final or finals of one day games have an extra day allocated incase of bad weather

Of course they've now got the ability to show it uninterrupted on an interactive stream, on all digital platforms, and by 2009 you would hope the % of digital households will be considerably bigger than it is now. I would also be very surprised if they didn't offer a choice of audio as for the FA Cup, ie. tv commentary, TMS and ambient sound.

I only got Sky 3 years ago so I don't know what their graphics were like in the mid-90s but I would imagine there wasn't a great deal of difference (I don't recall us (i.e. terrestrial viewers) getting a great deal extra during the shared coverage of the 1999 World Cup, for example).

I take your point though, scheduling *was* a nightmare, particularly during Wimbledon I seem to remember.

I am slightly surprised BBC didn't bid this time round (but then I'm also surprised they're cutting 15% of budgets across the board and are determined to spend millions moving various departments to Manchester)