World Cup playing cricketers given Sky Sports subscriptions

Nottingham: It’s not always that a marquee event held in the country is not watched by the majority but blame it on Sky Sports’ costly subscription plans, the World Cup is off TV limits in most of the residential facilities — be it apartments or hotels. The crisis has forced ICC to provide every cricketer of the 10 participating nations with Sky Sports subscription vouchers, which they can use on their smartphones, tablets or laptops. Since Sky Sports, a paid channel, won the broadcast rights from England and Wales Cricket Board, cricket coverage has been mostly out of bounds for the fans due to the high subscription rates. In fact, a lot of hotels, which are hosting teams, have been told by the ICC to recharge their DTH subscriptions with Sky Sports so that the players can watch the matches. 

Batters have got to step up: Benkenstein       

Southampton: Batting coach Dale Benkenstein believes South Africa need to adjust to the World Cup pressure and put up an improved performance with the bat to bring their campaign back on track following three successive defeats. South Africa suffered losses against England, Bangladesh and India before getting their first point of the World Cup following a washed out match against the West Indies on Monday. “The message is that the batters have got to step up and we haven’t. I feel like we are batting well but we just haven’t done it long enough. Everyone has got in. We have had opportunities to have hundred partnerships and win matches but we haven’t done it,” Benkenstein was quoted as saying. “We try and play quite an aggressive form of cricket. Scores are much higher than they used to be. Teams are scoring big totals so when you are in and you are dominating, you’ve got to try and make the most of it. Sometimes we don’t get that balance right. We try and accelerate maybe a bit too fast rather than getting our heads down and ticking it over and the batters getting us more to the end of the game,” Benkenstein added. South Africa next will play Afghanistan in Cardiff. Given the format of the tournament, where each team plays the other nine sides only once, Benkenstein said spontaneous planning could be the key in their remaining five games of the league stage. — agencies