Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the ECB, has privately told people within the game that he does not want to see any Tests handed to Sky - only for the BBC to pay a fair price for them. One-day internationals and winter Tests, as now, are the limit to Sky's realistic aspirations when negotiations on a new television contract begin next week.
Despite the decision of Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, to remove Test cricket from the protected list of live events, allowing the ECB to negotiate with Sky, home Tests will stay on terrestrial television as long as Bob Shennan, the new controller of the amalgamated BBC TV and radio sports departments, launches what is expected to be a spirited defence of the BBC's grip on them.
It would be a huge blow to Sky, who saw this week's decision as their passport to securing the share of home Tests they feel they deserve both for bringing winter Tests to British screens every year since 1990 and for encouraging the BBC to sharpen up their act. For instance, it is hard to imagine the BBC now leaving a Test to go to news programmes with a home batsman about to reach a triple century, as they did during Graham Gooch's epic 333 against India at Lord's in 1990.
There was a clue to the ECB's intentions in Smith's statement on Thursday when he said that he still expected a ``substantial'' amount of live coverage to be carried on terrestrial television and told the ECB that they were ``on trust'' to deliver their promises to that effect. The Culture Secretary, indeed, pondered long and hard before he accepted his advisory group's recommendation to 'de-list' home Test cricket and said that he would review his decision if at least three Tests per year were not shown on terrestrial television. He is not likely to have to worry.
The ECB earned £58 million over four years from all parties for cricket when they last negotiated a television deal in 1995, a figure greeted as a triumph for their marketing experts but one that was secured before the 1996 Broadcasting Act which barred satellite companies from bidding for home Tests. So without this week's development, the BBC could have expected to gain coverage 'on the cheap'.
It is felt that the BBC, even with their responsibilities to public service broadcasting, can afford a lot more than they now pay for cricket and a realistic figure is felt to be the £18 million a year they pay for football's Match of the Day. But, the BBC say, Match of the Day regularly attracts audiences of five million whereas live cricket rarely reaches those heights.
A Sky spokesman yesterday said the company would accept any decision made by the ECB and suggested that, as the ECB made it clear on Thursday that terrestrial coverage was still crucial to them, a retention of the status quo would not be a huge surprise.
He added: ``We, along with the BBC, have got a contract which lasts until the end of the year and we will have to see what happens. The ECB now have the market to sell their product how they wish and they are in the best position to judge who they should sell it to.
``They must balance the need to maximise income with maximum exposure and air-time to benefit the sport. We will wait and see what happens with interest but negotiations haven't even started yet so it is premature to say that the BBC will retain all home Tests.''