November 20th, 2008 8:34 pm

Summer of Cricket HD

Hey, I’m Matt and I will be doing blogs about sporting results, reviewing and previewing sporting coverage on TV and just discussing sport and TV in general. I’ll try and generally do a weekly wrap-up like this one but if any other major TV sporting news comes up I’ll try to cover it. Hope you guys enjoy it

This week represents the start of cricket season on Nine (I’m not counting that useless 20/20 last Friday) with the first Test against New Zealand at the Gabba starting today. After the struggle that was the Indian Tour for the Australian Cricket Team, the more friendly Australian pitches are expected to help us out a lot more as we come in heavy favourites against New Zealand.

New Zealand struggled to beat minnows Bangladesh in a test match a few weeks ago so they will have to step it up to have a chance against the Aussies. Australia will be hoping the return of Andrew Symonds will give them the added spark that’s needed after the rather flat team that played in India. This new cricket season also represents the first time cricket will be shown in HD on Channel Nine. I saw a bit of the coverage on Friday and it does look amazing in HD, have to love the picture quality HD brings to sport. The usual team will be heading the coverage as always with Mark Nicholas, Richie Benaud & co. Say what you want about a few of the commentators but cricket in the summer wouldn’t be the same without them.

In sporting TV rights news, Nine has decided to buy the rights for the English Super League, the English version of the NRL. For 2009, Nine are supposedly going to show up to 70 Super League games and Nine Carnegie Challenge Cup games set for a 3-year deal. You would have to think that the majority of these games would be shown on their secondary channel with maybe some late at night games on their Normal channel. We’ll have to wait and find out what Nine’s plans for this.

As for sport last weekend, not too much happened. Australia smashed Fiji 42-0 in the semifinal of the Rugby League World Cup showing how much of a joke the competition, no surprise it rated so poorly in Melbourne. Channel Nine will have the final live on Saturday at 7.30pm between Australia vs. New Zealand, hopefully a bit more of a contest this time around. Rugby Union Spring Tour continued on Ten, with Australia beating England 28-14 and face France next Sunday morning at 6.30am on ten. A nice and bright early start for Rugby fans.

Last weekend also wrapped up Ten HD’s NASCAR for the year, one of the sports Ten picked for their HD channel this year. It has come under fire of coverage of the secondary nationwide Series missing couple of races and not showing races live in the Western States, hopefully they will step it up next year when they take this across to the new ONE HD. The cars do look incredible in HD and watching cars go around in circles is not as bad as it sounds (ok, I can pretty much watch any sport no matter what it is). Clint Bowyer took the Nationwide Series in an exciting last race on Sunday with Australian Marcus Ambrose able to finish 10th in the standings, he’s improving each year. Marcus is actually going to the top tier (Sprint Cup) next year and Ten do not have the rights to the majority of those races. Must be annoying for Ten considering the main reason they picked it up would be for following Marcus Ambrose. Also, this weekend is the second last round of the V8 Supercar series with coverage on Seven both Saturday and Sunday, Ford’s Jamie Whincup could clinch the title this weekend. Also, look out for Ten HD’s coverage of the NFL on Monday and Tuesday, I’ve become a bit of an American Football fanatic thanks to this, you also get to see ads for shows in America (without Ten realising it), I’ve seen quite a few ads for Chuck.

I’ve probably gone on a bit long but I hope you enjoyed it. So sit down on the couch this weekend and enjoy the start of the summer of cricket!