There's only one way to convert the unconverted

My seven-year-old daughter can’t get enough of a TV show called Strictly Come Dancing.

Celebrities – sportsmen, politicians, actresses etc – attempt to pull off any number of ballroom dances in the company of a professional dancer with a winner found after a few weeks of competition.

She knows the name of every dancer, every song they’ve danced to and what particular dance they performed and, more often than not, the marks out of ten each of the judges awarded.

The popularity of the show continues to baffle me, and it is very popular, but that isn’t the point.

The viewing figures are so high, and my daughter so enraptured, because it is easy to view.
If you own a TV then you can watch and this is the point.

The announcement earlier this week that the English Cricket Board’s plans for an eight-team Twenty20 competition were moving closer to fruition featured the revelation that a percentage of the games, in theory at least, will be shown on free-to-air channels.

If you weren’t paying close attention this could well have passed you by but the devil is in the detail – and this is a crucial detail.

A great deal has been made in recent years of the fall in cricketing participation levels in this country as the competition from other leisure pursuits has increased, making more traditional forms of entertainment less attractive.

This, in turn, has created a good deal of debate surrounding the availability of cricket on TV. In the basest of terms, if you want to watch cricket from your sofa then you pay for it.

Be it Sky for England and a few others, or BT for Australia, if cricket watching is your bag then get your bank details ready.

This isn’t to bemoan the fact as money carries the power and influence and the subscription channels do a fine job of broadcasting the sport but, and this is a particularly big but, their viewing figures wouldn’t make you sit up and take notice.

Maybe the odd fixture will cause a spike – the first Ashes Test in Brisbane this November for example – but by and large the numbers are so-so.

Hence the willingness of those in control to get, after a self-inflicted absence of a dozen years, cricket back on terrestrial television.

The search for a new audience is apparently the aim – I say apparently because the price will still have to be right – and, as with the dancing, conversion will only come about if people can see it.

I wouldn’t count myself among the targeted audience but the rest of my family, and especially come 2020 when it is due to start, fall smack bang in the middle of the desired demographic and the only way their heads will be turned, well, see the above.

And given the fact vast swathes of the population will live outside of striking distance from the likely venues as the number of teams is reduced by over a half, the only medium for promotion is the black set in the corner of the living room/kitchen/bedroom.

A lack of proximity will inevitably affect the ability of many to attend, and this is the cause of the most vehement arguments against the concept, and if they can’t turn up to watch any novelty that will initially be created will rapidly fall away.

I know why this course of action is being taken, and the Big Bash’s resounding success has been a significant factor, but marginalising what is already in place, to such a large degree, is an awfully big gamble to take.

There are some particularly green eyes in this part of the world and the litmus test of whether the grass really is greener, ignoring the fact myriad different social, economic, cultural and sporting factors abound in other parts of the world, is about to occur.

If the wager is to succeed, and success can only be measured by how many new people are brought into the game’s sphere, not by any increase in the governing body’s coffers, then real visibility is the key.

Get it out there – speculate to accumulate if you like – and see what may happen.

Don’t, and don’t expect anything, apart from the bank balance, to change.