Behind the scenes at Sky Sports Cricket and how they changed the game
Perched beneath an open flap on the side of the lorry, the beckoning wave of the happy cats immediately draws the eye. These golden knick-knacks, known as maneki-neko, are supposed to bring good luck and fortune to those who possess them, but here, amidst a sprawl of cables, cabins and a whirring generator, they serve a different purpose.
It is day two of the one-off Test between England and Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge and The Independent has been granted a rare look behind the scenes with Sky Sports' award-winning cricket team. For close to two decades, the broadcaster has served as the ECB's primary partner, showing every home international and much, much more besides. This is one of 166 match days to be covered across 129 actual slots on the calendar this summer; it is a hectic time.
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Back to the cats, then, which are used each morning to sync up the slo-mo cameras – a minor part of what is, as almost goes without saying, an extraordinary operation. For the Zimbabwe Test, the sprawl of trucks and trailers fills an empty space alongside the ground; for a Hundred game, with the BBC also in town, the broadcasters will also commandeer a pub car park.
Sky cameras are dotted all around the ground to capture the action (Getty)
Three cameras and their accompanying operators generally sit on the gantry at either end, each serving a different purpose behind the bowler's arm. The rest are dotted around the outfield, providing different perspectives, all overseen by a team of producers, directors and wider personnel. Where once this was done on-site, most is now done at the broadcaster's base in Osterley. To assist with the ease of coverage, cabling is placed at each ground – at Worcestershire's New Road, prone to flooding in winter, this must be removed regularly and re-laid before the start of each summer. Innovations like the Sky cart – wheeled out for analysis – and T20 commentary pod are added to this on occasion, creating a different feel beyond the slightly staid studio set-up that characterised cricket coverage for years.
Little of the wider operation is sighted, but Sky has made stars of its on-air team. Figures like Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton can set the cricketing agenda. Former England fast bowler Stuart Broad is a recent addition after concluding his playing career. 'Coming into the Sky team has been incredible for me,' he explains. 'You leave a changing room full of friends and you come into a smaller version of a changing room. In my playing career, it was all about continuously improving every day, and coming into this role, it's exactly the same mindset. I've loved it.'
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During a Test, commentators generally operate under a system of half an hour on, an hour and a half off. They can be an idiosyncratic bunch. Hussain, for example, hates air conditioning, while Broad can occasionally be prone to patrolling the commentary box in his socks. Given the sheer volume of cricket that Sky shows, a rotating cast of characters is managed and monitored carefully – Ian Bishop has been a welcome addition in every sense as an expert for the recent West Indies white-ball series, while pundits like Simon Doull and Mel Jones are regular returnees regardless of New Zealand and Australia's involvement in the English summer.
The tone will naturally differ depending on the cricket on offer. A broad portfolio, Hussain outlines, should provide something for everyone. 'We have so much cricket and so many different styles of cricket that it should cater for all. The key is to give a broad spectrum of coverage.
Nasser Hussain is a Sky Sports cricket expert (Sky Sports Cricket)
'When I was young, mum and dad asked if I wanted to go to the theatre and I wasn't keen. Now I've got a bit more time, you enjoy the finer things in life, and you do want to go and watch a show. Your time and your tastes and what you want to do changes. If you can get people into the game through white-ball cricket, the IPL and the Hundred, you can take them on the journey.'
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Overseeing all aspects of the coverage is Bryan Henderson, the broadcaster's long-serving director of cricket, and among the more quietly influential figures in the game who has just been recognised with an MBE. Workload management is a key challenge.
'We would love Nasser, for example, to work on every single broadcast we do, but clearly that's not possible,' he explains. 'It's not as exhausting as playing, I'm sure, but they are quite intense days and it can be quite mentally draining working on a Test match. They need work-life balance, like all of us do. But you want your more experienced or bigger names on the higher profile games – it's common sense, really.'
Stuart Broad has eased effortlessly into the Sky team (Getty)
Henderson's planning for the next summer will begin before the current season is even at an end. Once a fixture list is figured out – increasingly complex with some changes to the structure of the County Championship likely for 2026, plus the presence of the Women's T20 World Cup – he will begin a three-to-five-month planning process, figuring out budgets, commentators, staff and some of the technical elements that may enhance coverage.
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The hope is always to stay up with, if not ahead of, the game. While the fundamentals of Sky's coverage remain based around a strong journalistic sense, there has naturally been an emphasis on ensuring that it also moves with the modern world, reflecting the diversity of the audience watching.
'I like the phrase innovate or die,' Henderson says. 'I'd like to think that Sky Cricket tends to be slightly ahead of the curve. It would be rare for us to be accused of being a bit slow to change. Sometimes it's forced on us a little bit, through Rob Key getting the big England job, or Michael Holding or David Lloyd moving on, or the tragic events around Shane Warne's passing.
'I think we're proud of the role we've played and developing the women's game. I think we're probably quite proud of how in difficult economic environments or with different formats and the congested schedule, I think we keep our standards pretty high.' He also spotlights the work raising money for the Bob Willis Foundation in memory of an old favourite, and giving platforms to Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent to talk powerfully about racism as examples of the wider work Sky does alongside simply covering cricket.
Michael Holding, here with Michael Atherton, was able to talk powerfully about his experiences of racism (Getty/ECB)
Technological advancements are on the way. Hawkeye is developing a sort of virtual reality replay system that could place the viewer, say, in the cordon after a slip drops a catch, putting them in the perspective of the fielder. While helmet cams have been helpful, showing the sheer speed of a game is something Henderson feels cricket is still yet to crack. Broad has eased effortlessly into the commentary box and work to develop the next generation of voices – from Tammy Beaumont to Tymal Mills – has been clear in recent years.
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There is also a need for existing broadcasters to stay in touch with the sport. The digital age has made this both harder and easier, with the advent of high-quality county streaming, umpire cams and global broadcasting deals meaning the amount of cricket broadcast vastly outweighs that of when Hussain started.
Nasser Hussain works hard to follow cricket all around the world (Getty)
'I always remember the comment Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, said after I got the job at Sky,' the former England captain recalls. 'He shook my hand and said, 'well done for the job. Just remember in five years' time the game will look completely different. Make sure you keep up to speed.' Within a year, Kevin Pietersen was switch-hitting Scott Styris for six.
'If you take a month off watching cricket – and I don't for this reason – you end up so far behind. When I first joined, you could catch up. Nowadays, there is a 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi bursting on the scene at the IPL. When Shoaib Bashir was picked, I hadn't watched him bowl in my life, but you go into Twitter and put in his name and you can see his wickets – and that's how he got selected. It's a completely different landscape now.'
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With India's men and women visiting England simultaneously, it is clearly a huge summer, one that also brings renewed scrutiny on The Hundred after the windfall brought by the sale of stakes in the eight franchises. But after a glimpse behind the scenes, Sky's cricket coverage looks in very safe hands indeed.
Watch all five England-India Test matches live on Sky Sports Cricket and NOW from 20 June
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