CRICKET: Wide of the mark in the World Cup

THE FINAL WORD

The digital clock flipped over, Sonny and Cher chimed in with "I Got You Babe" and England threw a game away.

It was Groundhog Day again for the nation's cricket team on Wednesday as it made yet another pig's ear of winning a match.

The thought remains that the side would do better in the field if it was composed of Dominic Cork and 10 buckets. And the nagging puzzle of one-day cricket also continues.

Test match cricket and its concentrated version should be tightly related, but they are about as close as Cain and Abel.

For a start, there are two types of half-volley. The half-volley delivery in Test matches is to be treated with the greatest circumspection early on, something to be left or met with a defensive stroke. The same ball from the same bowler in the one-day arena is inevitably greeted with a far more crazed response, despite the fact there are more fielders in the target area.

If a batsman falls to an extravagant shot in the early stages of a Test innings he has been rash and irresponsible. A man suffering the same fate in the World Cup will have perished bravely.

The rules themselves change. To bowl a wide in Tests is to threaten the shins of the square leg umpire, but in one-dayers a delivery floating just down the leg side has the officials in crucifix position. This has even led to the preposterous phrase "one-day wide". A wide should be wide in whatever circumstances.

These nuances and others will be available over the next four weeks only to subscribers of Sky television. In the light of England's early performances, Rupert Murdoch's initiative of introducing pay-per-view does not look entirely misplaced. Perhaps we should wait though until Atherton and the boys have saved up before we expect any cash.

Dedicated extraterrestrial viewers will notice the difference between the current coverage and that of England's Test tour to South Africa. The pictures are fed into Osterley by another company, Grand Slam, and the Sky presenting team have now swapped the beauties of the Cape and the blue-rinsed Drakensberg mountains for studio five on the Centaurs Business Park just off the A4.

The head of the operation is John Gayleard, an Australian who somehow found the courage to stem the tears when England succumbed in Ahmedabad on Wednesday. "It's very important for us that England do well," he said, with business if not private sincerity.

Those involved in Sky's production had a simple message for their partners at the beginning of the week. "Just popping out, darling," they will have said. "Be back in a month."

Over 200 hours of live cricket and then highlights programmes will be screened, a schedule which means personnel arrive just as the nightclub bouncers are clearing the floors.

The analysis is provided by those who have made it no further east than South Africa this winter, the Test squad discards Dermot Reeve, Angus Fraser, Mike Watkinson and Mark Ilott, though the first named may soon be repacking his coffin following yesterday's injury to Craig White.

In the interviewers' chair are Charles Colvile, who is too bumptious for some people's liking, and Paul Allott, who appears to suffer from his colleague monopolising all the self-confidence that is around. The former Lancashire and England bowler is not yet on speaking terms with his autocue.

While the BBC's Richie Benaud acknowledges the fall of a wicket with a restrained "got 'im", Colvile is the man who reacts as if standing too close to Tarmac laying machinery.

The culinary and travelling delights of the subcontinent have never registered highly with the press corps or indeed some of the players - such as Neil Smith who had to retire violently ill from the crease during the victory against the United Arab Emirates, pools of tummy juice having been left behind on the square. But those operating with the written word now have the added problem of some unusual names with which to wrestle from the squads of the Netherlands, Kenya and the UAE.

If there are copytaking errors they will struggle to compare with the effort a journalist once suffered when filing a report featuring Younis Ahmed. In one quick burst on the typewriter the flamboyant left-handed batsman of Surrey, Worcestershire, Glamorgan and Pakistan was transformed into a fireside spinster clicking away with the knitting needles. His name appeared in the newspaper as Eunice Ahmed.