Television now has cricket in the same vice-like strangle-hold as it does football. The payers of the piper call the same tune with both games except that the television authorities have not yet told the fixture-planners in cricket to alter their traditonal starting days for five-day Tests. In football, the big clubs play when the paymasters decide - the result of which is that market forces dictate both the days of big matches and their starting times. They can't do that in cricket - yet, but don't bet against that happening when satellite coverage starts next year. Already Channel 4 has changed much in the timetable. Play used to start in home Test matches at 11am; that was brought forward to 10.45am and now some start at 10.30am. The real problem with the programme-planners was at the other end of the day, with the former mandatory minimum number of 90 overs per day now no longer enforceable, because of the lure of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks. In order that viewers will no longer be denied their daily fix, the cricket public are robbed blind following a recent change of playing conditions. Only six-and-a-half hours are allowed to bowl the 90 overs and any unbowled by 6pm are lost for ever. The captains can orchestrate their over-rate to suit themselves, as happened on all 25 days in the series in South Africa, when the minimum 90 overs were bowled on only two days. Yet despite the average rates per hour of both teams rarely topping 14.4, match referee Clive Lloyd did not impose a single fine because of the over-generous allowances for wickets and drinks intervals. Spectators at the Ashes series this summer are warned. You will rarely see a 90-over day because of the 6pm cut-off time and, as happened frequently in South Africa, anything from three to six overs per day went missing, leaving a Test match of 425 overs instead of the so-called mandatory 5 x 90=450. On the nine-week tour of South Africa, your correspondent conducted lunchtime interviews with leading administrators. Former cricketers David Richardson and John Carr - now general manager of ICC cricket and director of ICC cricket operations respectively - answered questions about the 90-over fiddle and recent England itineraries which appear to make little sense. This is what Richardson said: Q."Why does 90 overs no longer mean just that? " A "It should, but everyone complained about open-ended days in which the last session was often more than two-anda-half hours. Umpires and players alike, and crowds would often leave before the end anyway." Q. "So what? It is the fault of the players, so make them bowl their quota or fine them heavily, and make the umpires give them the hurry-up. Is there any other consideration?" A." Er, yes. The television companies are also unhappy, because a seven-hour day interrupts their schedules." That is the bottom line - the game is now driven by television schedules. Asked how best to avoid a side cheating on the third or fourth day by taking overs out of the match to improve their chance of saving it, Richardson answered: "Umpires are under instruction to clamp down hard on any such practice." Really? So what happened to Michael Vaughan on the third day of the Cape Town Test when he allowed - no, encouraged - his bowlers to drag their way through the last two sessions at 13 overs per hour? He used diversionary ploys such as letting the bowler hand his own cap to the umpire at the start of an over, instead of a fieldsman meeting him halfway and doing it for him. Not to mention a bowler standing at the end of his follow-through until the ball was returned to him instead of, as normally happens, walking back to his mark and receiving the ball then. There were at least two conferences per over between captain and bowler and even an Ashley Giles maiden over lasted well beyond three minutes. As for fining the captains, the dressing-room slide-rule experts knew that the fining criterion for a side is their overall over-rate during the entire match, which is why neither a penny nor a rand was paid. South Africa were just as cynical. After slouching through four-and-a-half Tests, they ran about their business on the final afternoon of the Centurion match when they suddenly realised that the more overs they bowled, the better their chance of winning the match. Glory be, they actually topped 15 overs per hour. Richardson still insists that the television-driven six-anda-half hour day is not a charter for cheats, because the fining sytem is the answer. Not in the Republic, it wasn't. And so to Carr and his justification for the crazy itinerary of 32 days of international cricket in 58 days, including nine internal flights. He said: "I admit is was not ideal but it came about because of a reciprocal arrangement we made with South Africa for their tour to England in 2003. We asked them to play more international cricket than they wanted and, in order to secure their agreement, we had to accept their schedule for our tour." Asked about this summer, when county cricket starts in seven weeks' time but the first Ashes Test has to wait for another five months, Carr says: "It is a matter of balance. We have so much one-day cricket to fit in first - the triangular tournament involving Bangladesh and Australia followed by a three-match Nat-West series against Australia - and Sky want the onedayers not to clash with the start of next season's Premier League." The ugly head of television is thus reared again. And again and again, because somewhere among the wriggling answers is always the deadly tube which, next year, belongs to satellite television. Another guest to quiz was Mike Soper, former chairman of Surrey and now chairman of the ECB's First Class Forum. Justifying the disenfranchising of those viewers blessed with only terrestrial channels, he came up with this dodgy argument about the inevitably smaller audiences. "We know that more and more people are attending Test matches. Therefore, fewer are watching on television." It is quite difficult to choke on a lip-mike, but yours truly all but managed it. Asked about the way the extra money generated would be used by those clubs, Soper denied that counties would waste their increased slice of the Lord's cake on several categories of overseas cricketers, including official foreigners, Kolpak and EU, plus those on dodgy parental passports. "You must remember, many of these cricketers can be hired cheaper than English players." Which begs two questions. How many flights and hotels have to be paid for homegrown young cricketers? And how do such hirings benefit Duncan Fletcher and Team England one iota? Television via Sky will pour in more money but every sign is that most of the extra will be wasted on dead money paid to players from abroad. Former England captain Mike Atherton is a member of the Reform Group which has suggested some revolutionary changes in domestic cricket. Most of them will never see the light of day but he has a bull point when he says that, irrespective of the lip service paid by ECB officials to grassroots cricket: "only four per cent of each county's annual share-out goes to grassroots cricket." Until that changes, nothing else will. Small wonder, then, that Sport England is threatening to withhold £11 million of National Lottery and Goverment money over the next three years unless the ECB reforms its own governance. Director of Sport Stephen Baddeley says: "There is a tendency for governance of cricket to be solely with the counties but we want to see wider representation from all parts of the game. Ultimately, it is about ensuring the whole game is managed appropriately by the ECB." Let Lord MacLaurin, former reforming chairman of the ECB, have the final word. "To my mind, we are at an administrative crossroads and I am not surprised that Sport England is contemplating withdrawing funds." The ECB, said Maclaurin, is badly run. | 
