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The ABC should broadcast the Sheffield Shield

Roar Guru
15th January, 2013
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Roar Guru
15th January, 2013
67
1452 Reads

The Big Bash League is heading towards its climax in the second season of its city-based ‘wham bam thank you ma’am’ competition. But there is something that puts a bee in my bonnet with the Big Bash League.

When a player gets the call up to play Test cricket for Australia, the nightly news bulletins always show highlights of the player at domestic level – but at the Big Bash League, not the Sheffield Shield. This annoys the tripe out of me.

Why should the media show highlights of a player playing in a different form of cricket to the one that he is selected to?

It makes me think that the Sheffield Shield competition doesn’t have cameras, and hence no footage. But as we know, the Sheffield Shield is broadcasted on the Cricket Australia website, where you click on the video section.

The broadcast of the Shield as far as cameras is concerned is very similar to ABC television pre World Series Cricket.

Today the ABC doesn’t cover Test cricket, but does cover other sporting competitions that are either low profile or second tier. Competitions such as footballs W-League, WNBL, lawn bowls, various Australian rules competitions like VFL, SANFL and WAFL or rugby’s Shute Shield

All of those competitions don’t need the commercial realities in which the likes of NRL and AFL depend on, and it is highly unlikely that the ABC will ever get to cover competitions like NRL and AFL due to lack of affordability.

But what the ABC should try to do is attain the rights to Sheffield Shield cricket. It’s time for the Shield competition to get some profile on free to air.

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The BBL and the domestic one-day competition is broadcasted on pay television, while Australia’s Tests, Twenty20 and one dayers are broadcasted with the Nine Network and Fox Sports. The only time the Sheffield Shield gets broadcasted on television is the final on Fox Sports.

Whenever we try to look for players coming through for the Australian Test side, we always go to the Cricinfo website, look up players statistics, and judge a players form from there. It is not the perfect way to judge a player if there good enough to play at test level.

But if the ABC broadcasted the Shield, it would give fans, media and the selectors a better indication on how the players are faring.

Sometimes a players ability doesn’t reflect in their statistics, while with other players, the stats can inflate their ability.

While selectors do go and watch the Shield games live, the broadcasting of the Shield with extra cameras on FTA, compared to the online coverage at the moment (use of only one camera) can highlight technical flaws in bowlers and batsman, which therefore may help coaches improve their players. At the end of the day, the Sheffield Shield is a ‘development’ competition

The ABC should cover around ten Shield matches a season, including the final, and have it broadcasted on one of their digital channels like ABC2.

However, maybe there are reasons why the ABC doesn’t broadcast Shield cricket. It could well be the costs of putting a telecast of six hours a day for four days.

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Then again, the ABC have covered sports like Hopman Cup tennis and Golf tournaments where it required similar hours of broadcasting to Shield cricket.

The other reason could possibly be that Cricket Australia doesn’t want the Shield to be on free-to-air, due to low crowds at the venues. The CA could always purposely use venues like Allan Border Field and Bankstown Oval for matches to be broadcasted on the ABC.

Whatever the reasons, if competitions like W-league and WNBL can be on the ABC, why not Shield cricket?

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