Cricket Equipment – Cricket Box – A Career on the Box

If you love watching cricket on the box, read on!

Since cricket’s first live coverage in 1938, we have watched with wonder as cricket has become one of the most exciting sports on the box. The BBC televised two Test matches which were held at Lords Cricket Ground and The Oval between Australia and England, and many fans were glued to the box at the sight of Len Hitton scoring a world record 364.

The BBC continued to televise cricket matches, but all coverage was stopped during the Second World War. After the war, as technology became more sophisticated and colour television was introduced, there became more demand for the game to be televised in a more contemporary manner. Viewers wanted more from their box, demanding more detailed and complex coverage of the ground and the players.

It was the Kerry Packer affair which changed the way cricket was viewed on the box forever. Packer, a billionaire who owned Channel 9 TV stations in Australia, was frustrated by the fact that the Australian Cricket Board refused to accept his AUS 1.5 million bid for the television rights to put Australian Test matches and the Sheffield Shield Cricket live on the box. In protest, Packer signed 50 cricketers to play in his own tournament.

During the next year, Packer proceeded in setting up his own World Series Cricket (WSC) using his own cameras and production team. The game of cricket on the box became split between the establishment – the International Cricket Conference – and Packer’s own WSC. Packer introduced new, innovative ideas to the box by dressing his players in coloured clothing, adding flood lights to the pitch, using white cricket balls and paying his cricket team phenomenally high salaries. Packer added a host of night games to the box which helped him secure peak figures in the market.

It has been said that it was Packer who “changed the face of international cricket” and of sports coverage in general. People who once saw Packer as disruptive and arrogant, today recognise that if it wasn’t for him, cricket would probably not have the international following which it receives today. His creative ideas are now the driving force of cricket on today’s box.

Today, the force behind cricket on the box is Sky TV who took over the rights to broadcast cricket live on television in 1990. England victory in Jamaica was the first match to be covered by Sky and they have continued to broadcast all live coverage of matches abroad since. In 1994, Sky bought the rights to broadcast home one-day internationals and county cricket. Then, finally in 2004, the England and Wales Cricket Board sold all live cricket coverage to Sky TV.

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