Posted by If you’re in the UK and you want to watch the Ashes, Now TV is probably your cheapest legal option. (If you sign up as a ‘new customer’ via any of the links on this page, we’ll get a small cut. Update: No, turns out we don’t actually. Apparently we get nothing. We still think Now TV is the best option though.)
The Ashes is on Sky Sports Cricket and while their coverage is great, one slight drawback is that most people don’t have access to it. The other drawback is that the most obvious route to getting the channel involves signing up for any number of others that you almost certainly do not want to watch and committing to the resultant hefty monthly payments long-term.
The ins and outs of Sky subscriptions are famously painful to unravel, but it looks like they have an ‘offer’ on at the minute which brings the price down to £46 a month for a minimum of 18 months.
No thank you.
Fortunately, you don’t actually have to sign up to every channel going and nor do you have to sign up long-term. Now TV offer monthly Sky Sports subscriptions for £34.99 which can be cancelled at any time.
That’s not cheap, but compared to a long contract at a significantly higher monthly cost, it’s really pretty appealing. If you want to watch live coverage of the Ashes, it’s probably your best option. You’ll get access to a truckload of cricket documentaries too.
Now TV is available on most ‘devices’ (TV, mobile, desktop). For a bit more detail on the ins and outs, take a look at our article on the pros and cons of using Now TV to watch Sky Sports Cricket.
Cricinfo have this beautiful analysis of Broad’s celebrappeals – https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/so-you-think-stuart-broad-is-rubbish-at-the-drs-think-again-1381344
It seems to me there are some fairly complex psychological mindgames going on within the current England setup.
They insist they don’t care about results, that it’s all about having fun, entertaining and playing freewheeling aggressive cricket. But of course they care about winning. They care desperately. It’s the job of the management to take the pressure off, as Morgan and Bayliss did with the white ball team. It’s an attempt to reverse the ‘fear of failure’ culture which permeated England sides for so long.
I would love to read an in-depth examination of how to convince players that something they have worked for their entire lives doesn’t really matter at all.
On the same topic, in last week’s Champions League final, Pep Guardiola was spotted screaming and gesticulating at his players to ‘Relax! RELAX!!’ Not sure whether it worked. But the blue team won the cup.
A quote from Mark Ramprakash’s latest Guardian piece about Moeen Ali sort of reads as if it’s an exasperated criticism, but maybe we’re doing him a disservice and it is indeed an admiring tip of the hat. Because man-management-wise, this is surely quite the result…
“Has anyone ever come into an England squad with such a laissez-faire attitude, with no expectation, no pressure and no particular desire to be selected again in the future?”
Or use (not sponsered) – freehit.eu to watch it poor quality, with ads, for free or crackstreams.nu/cricket-streams for a much improved viewing, also for free.
Or listen on TMS while you are supposed to be working from home, or furiously refresh the scorecard during a meeting, or arrange to work from a nearby ‘café’ that also happens to be fully licensed, called something like the Royal Oak or Red Lion, and has large screens showing the cricket….