The unlikely heaven and many hells of cricket highlights

By Ewan White

England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are currently battling it out in a somewhat trivial ODI tri-series. A distinctly unstylish format of competition.

It has been 20 years since England abandoned it domestically, just as Sky began to dominate the broadcasting market.

The series, of course, is broadcast on Sky. They only snapped up the rights for this in-demand competition at the last minute, after nobody else wanted them.

The Sky Gods are currently accepting sacrifices of £35 per months as a thank you.

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Setting the gold standard

These payments never become any less grating. Indeed, as a broke student, I will not pay them to watch another bunch of irrelevant ODI matches.

However, I am confident I can follow the series.

If the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) can publish 16-minute highlights of ‘Income Tax vs Kingsmen’ in the semi-final of the President’s Trophy Grade-II tournament, I doubt they’ll fail to show off their stars.

That is, if they don’t sanction them first.

Indeed, the PCB seems to prefer its fans to its players. Too often, half-hour ODI match summaries are locked behind paywalls. Pakistan puts them on YouTube.

Having said that, their tri-series opponents post 23-minute (Sri Lanka) and 15-minute (England) recaps on YouTube after each day’s play.

Admittedly, you will need Pujara-like concentration to follow England’s cascading swarm of clips.

Yet, this is better than cutting out dropped catches and near misses, as often do its counties.

Well, apart from Surrey. They have deep pockets.

Nonetheless, every county publishing 10-minute daily highlights is a great improvement on years of short, grainy recaps.

Especially since, for those with a job, following the domestic first-class game in several countries remains virtually impossible.

Coming up short

Both South Africa and New Zealand’s cricket boards stream their first-class competitions on YouTube, but do not produce highlights.

This is especially egregious since they do for domestic List A and T20 matches.

Yet, in the Kiwi case, this doesn’t mean they are very good.

To take but one example, the four-minute package put together for their 2026 Super Smash Grand Final – 48 seconds in, we skip from the 11th over to the 17th.

The Canterbury Kings have seemingly put on another 42 runs with Mitchell Hay and Leo Carter forming a crucial sixth-wicket stand.

Do they show how this partnership was established? Of course not.

You would think New Zealand Cricket (NZC) would take more pride in their national team.

Quite the opposite, with an angry comments section providing a tribute and (very useful) guide to NZC’s awful highlights.

The worst example comes from a Test as farcical as NZC’s content.

Both Rachin Ravindra and Kane Williamson scored hundreds on day one of the first Test against a second-string South Africa side in 2024.

NZC only bothered showing Ravindra reaching his three-figure landmark.

Leaders not capitalising

It may be harsh to focus on New Zealand with their relative fewer resources. So let’s turn our attention to the bosses of cricket, the ICC (and India’s BCCI).

Although the BCCI’s highlights are good quality, they are not posted on YouTube. Given that is the largest video-sharing website, this makes little sense.

This both can and cannot be said of the ICC.

Despite posting seven-minute Hindi highlights of the Women’s 2026 T20 World Cup on YouTube, English highlights lasted only two minutes.

The (somewhat) longer English versions were only available on the ICC’s website and app.

For the Men’s 2026 T20 World Cup, the situation was even worse.

Five-minute Hindi highlights and one-minute – yes, only one, singular, minute – of English highlights uploaded to YouTube.

Taking the modern cricket fans’ seemingly growing desire for immediacy in viewing habits to extreme and quite literal levels.

If the ICC believes these short bursts of cricketing thrills are the way to attract new fans, they are very wrong.

Such people will simply become confused and turn away. Yet, maybe you can say that whenever the uninitiated watch cricket.

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