For an England fan the fourth test in Melbourne has been an extra Christmas present so far:- to bowl Australia out for 98 and lead by nearly 350 runs after two days of play is about as one sided a game of cricket as you can get. The last two nights have seen me fall asleep on the couch with the TMS commentary my lullaby as the festive weekend with added flu takes it toll. Since giving up the sports channels to help fund our baby I've been fighting for scraps to see how well we've been playing and was surprised to hear that highlights did exist when a work colleague informed me of ITV4's programme at 10pm about half way through the first test. Surprised because I had not seen a single trail or advertisement for what is surely one of the showpiece sporting events in the British calender. When I remember how the nation celebrated when we won the Ashes in 2005, the last time England played Australia on terrestial TV, uniting everybody in what was an epic series and how that level of celebration has dissipated in recent years. Other factors other than ease of viewing, such as the quality of the players on view or the lack of novelty at beating Australia may also be taken into account but after Channel 4 lost the rights to broadcast the viewing figures have dropped.
http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/158129/channel-4-cricket-a-hit
http://www.ecb.co.uk/news/england/npower-tests/five-enjoys-record-viewing-figures,306520,EN.html

   The highlights package that Channel 5 provided whilst not ideal did fill a void and were on a main channel at a reasonable time. The current ITV4 highlights end one hour before the next days play starts by which time I have managed to trawl through various sports reports to find footage of some wickets and / or notable shots and milestones. From a personal point of view when the highlights are on during the week I am preventing from watching them no matter what shift I am on:- Earlies require me to go to bed to get up but I may stretch that one if I believe it worth staying up for and haven't seen any other coverage; lates means I get back home in time to see the last quarter of an hour and nights I'm at work. It is almost as if ITV won the right to broadcast highlights by accident and did not really want them - how else to explain the scheduling when they are not exactly blessed with quality programmes. Tonight on ITV2 at tea time the wife was watching a REPEAT from the other day of All Star Family Fortunes.
   For these various reasons I have not managed to view too many of these programmes so it may be unfair to comment on their quality but those I have seen have ended abruptly at the end of play with no post play interviews. Most comments have already been made elsewhere but that does not mean they are not allowed a fresh perspective on things. Tonight will be interesting as they will have to comment on Ricky Ponting's behaviour but it would be interesting to hear a player's point of view no matter how bland.