Really looking forward to seeing the new-style ICC coverage. Sunset and Vine's first run-out (in a major tournament - technically, the U19 World Cup in January was the first) as the ICC's new production partner.

Is it still Star Sports who are in charge of the commentary line-up, or is more of this in the ball-part of S&V now?

Sunsetvine-prepares-to-serve-up-t20-coverage-in-india along with 2 other companies/.
It appears that the OB unit and the on screen graphic will be provided by the same companies - Broadcast Solutions and Alston Elliot - which have provided it since 2007, only this time Sunset vine will be incharge instead of Star Sports which had the production rights too from 2007 to 2015 and now only have the broadcasting rights.

Alston Elliot do the graphics for pretty much all cricket worldwide, so no surprise they'd be used

The big guns enter today so I guess Sky will bring out their big guns in the studio.
Its been refreshing hearing some different voices this past week.

Jimmy Anderson has posted on Facebook that he's one of the studio pundits on Sky today.

KP on today for the England game. Should be some "interesting" analysis

Despite that stupid book he wrote Pietersen has seemed pretty positive in his newspaper articles about the current players and the team generally. Hopefully he will be asked if he wishes he was out there playing, it would be interesting to hear what he says about that and Morgan's decision (if it was indeed his call) not to consider KP for the tournament.

The new Sky Sports channel (Sky Sports Mix) could be a welcome boost for the ECB. They are coming under increasing pressure to get some cricket on FTA and this could be a stepping stone. Do they have any influence with sky. Could they lobby them to get (for example) a blast game each week shown on this channel, or even a session of a test match?

It won't do harm, but it isn't any kind of game changer. As far as I understand it, it will only be available to Sky subscribers so the extended reach isn't going to be massively substantial. At least BT Showcase has a presence on Freeview and Virgin Media.

Yes, some of those may have ditched the package because of cost rises, and may want to watch some sport, but a large majority of those subscribers won't have the Sports package because they simply don't want it.

There is also the BT Showcase issue of knowing what is on and when. It's great showing a game, but if those games are irregularly scheduled and people don't easily know it's on Sky Sports Mix then they won't watch it (A problem heightened this year with the T20 moving back to blocks and not being on regular nights)

Reckon Sky would promote the Mix channel better than BT did with Showcase.
Reading the press release sounds like it would be a Sports entertainment channel showing Sports docs, Women sports and Kids sports shows, Fantasy football stuff, Soccer Am alongside some live sports which are probably the low key stuff.

Anyway ECB are surely speaking with Sky to get them to show the blast highlights on it considering in theory 12M people would have access to the channel and in recent years ECB have been trying to get some sort of highlights show for the blast but not finding a viable option for it.

Can't see FTA channel being interested on the blast highlight stuff so Mix is a good option for it and 12M is a good reach and the number could be far higher if Virgin Media is included although the key is how Sky promote the channel considering Showcase is a free channel yet get terrible ratings even when it shows english team games.

Wonder if Sky sports mix takes the old bbc three slot

From what I've seen, this isn't a FTA channel - it's just included in the basic Sky package.

No it isn't, it's including in the basic sky package. 13 million homes I believe. So could be used as a stepping stone.
Good ratings on here may prove there's an appetite for cricket?

Sounds perfect for the IPL

COUNTY CRICKET LIVE ON SKY

May fixtures have been announced

SUN 1st MAY - WED 4th MAY - Nottinghamshire v Yorkshire (Championship)

T20 Blast

May
Friday 20th - Essex V Surrey
Thursday 26th Surrey V Glamorgan
Friday 27th - Warwick V Worcester

Surprised they only announced may games, they normally announce all the games for the season.
Barring the last county championship games and the last few T20 games and 50 overs games.

Website only updated till the end of May, maybe it's in the process of being updated?

It's just that someone hasn't done a great job of updating the page. You'll notice they haven't included the 1st Test vs Sri Lanka which starts on the 19th May, also all the times are an hour out from BST

The counties all know the vast majority of the televised games, a release just hasn't been put out yet.

Surprised at this, with nothing to back this up it always seemed to me that Sky preferred to show CC from the smaller grounds (in may when they have a free choice) e.g. hove. Might be wrong but that's how I always noted it.

*Obviously the smaller grounds don't have the vast empty stands.

nope
always been the champions game 2 weeks before the first test of the summer.

In the early game they always show the current champion, and it has to be in a week that does not clash with any major international cricket. So that does not leave them much choice, if any.

Here is the list of Championship matches on Sky over the last five years:

SS1 Tue, May 10, 2011 Sussex vs Nottinghamshire
SS1 Mon, Sep 12, 2011 Hampshire vs Warwickshire
SS1 Wed, May 9, 2012 Sussex vs Lancashire
SS1 Tue, Sep 11, 2012 Derbyshire vs Hampshire [D2]
SS1 Thu, Apr 25, 2013 Somerset vs Warkwickshire
SS2 Sun, May 4, 2014 Durham vs Yorkshire
SS2 Tue, Sep 9, 2014 Nottinghamshire vs Yorkshire
SS2 Tue, Sep 8, 2015 Nottinghamshire vs Yorkshire
SS2 Sun, May 1, 2016 Nottinghamshire vs Yorkshire

The choice got even smaller now with the IPL.
think the window sky got now is the first week of may and the week before the test starts.
Sky going to choose the 2 week window where English players are more likely to play in and when all the test players from IPL if any are told to come back to the uk to start preparation for the Summer.

Edit plus they take into account weather and quality of cricket.
April is no since the weather likely to be dodgy, cold and quality of cricket is often quite poor.

Sky have signed F1 up exclusively from 2019. The last year of the cricket deal. Extra money on F1 = less money for cricket???

Last year of the new Premier League deal, too - maybe they aren't planning on bidding quite as much for Football this time.

bit surprised to see SKY aren't showing the england v WI women's match this afternoon and showing the pakistan v bangladesh women's game instead , i assume they just have to go with whatever game the host broadcaster give them