How to catch the Ashes as an expat

The Ashes began last night and cricket fans everywhere are excited. Resident Aliens out in the USA and elsewhere have a harder time in viewing / listening than those in England or Australia, so I'll share some thoughts just in case they are of use.

The easiest solution to the viewing problem is Willow TV. After our failure to get satellite TV installed at our place with all the trees surrounding us, back in 2006, I was delighted to discover that there is an internet service that is pretty good and constantly getting better. I pay about $150 a year to get Willow TV's coverage online and that gives you pretty much everything -- home and away test series, one-dayers and everything. The quality is not at all bad and constantly getting better. As of this series, they have begun a 1Mbps HQ stream and I had it on for a couple of hours last night without interruption.

There is usually a choice of streams on Willow, so that at the moment you can either get the Aussie coverage (which includes Richie Benaud and Mark Nicholas) or the Sky One coverage (with all the usual suspects). We have our TV set up for it and so we can plug the laptop into it and watch on-screen.

I like a bit of Test Match Special too, though, and this presents an additional challenge. For some reason, they block off access to TMS for international users. Actually, they forgot to do this on day one and I was hopeful that there was no block. But it is back in effect again tonight and will be for the rest of the series. Luckily, there is a solution -- Expat Shield. This is relative newcomer on the scene but I find it quite the best way to access the BBC iPlayer. It's advertisement-funded and you just download it for free and then switch it on when you want to get some UK-based material. As long as you can cope with the ads, it's a great solution, especially for listening to the radio -- it's close to an uninterrupted stream.

The other thing that adds to the expat's listening experience is the TMS Podcast, which is free for all and, of course, compulsory listening. In the build up to the Ashes, there was an excellent series of Times podcasts and I am hoping that there will be more to come. I was pleasantly surprised to see that The Times had made these podcasts available for free given their recent erection of a pay-wall for the much less desirable text content. The Guardian too had a great preview podcast and I am hoping that there will be more to come.

Watching the Cricket in America

America has very little interest in or knowledge about cricket and cricket lovers like me have to do a little extra work to bring the content into our homes.  This morning, the first English home test match of the summer begins. It is not exactly a thriller, England v. Bangladesh at Lords, but cricket lovers will enjoy it nevertheless, not least because of the joyous Test Match Special, which is streamed live on the website with no lock-down to international users like me, at least for the home tests like this.

But what about watching the Test Matches if you are in America?  There are two legal ways to do this.  One is to get satellite TV.  Direct TV have cornered the market here, but I think you can get hold of cricket on Dish too.  This is not an option for us after the trauma of trying to get satellite installed in order to watch the cricket four years ago, a story detailed on The Americanization of Emily.

The second legal option is the one that I go for: Willow TV.  It's pretty good and it is getting better all the time.  This year it is $150 for all international cricket for the entire year, test matches, one dayers, Twenty20, in all countries.  This is far, far cheaper than the equivalent satellite price, either here or back in England.  It streams at a reasonable quality, similar, say, to watching the BBC iPlayer live.  If you have a good internet connection and router, it will stream without interruption.  They have a choice of different feeds and the one I always go for is the feed that comes directly from Sky, which enables you to watch in wide screen when you plug the laptop into the TV, and which retains all the Sky adverts, which gives the Resident Alien a great taste of home.

One thing I like about Willow is that it is just username and password based, so you can watch on any computer you like, at home or at work (shh!), as long as you don't do anything daft like trying to watch it on two machines at once.  The only disadvantage is that the live feed has a delay of about 15-20 seconds, so you can't really watch it with the sound down while listening to TMS, unless, of course, you would like to hear the commentary first so that you know to pay special attention to the pictures when something really exciting happens.

I should add that I am not on commission here, but mention it because a lot of people do not realize that Willow TV provides such a good solution for the cricket lover out here.  I only discovered it by accident back in 2006.

England Cricket Season

Only a couple more days to wait now until the first Test Match of the summer, England vs. New Zealand, at Lords. I get a real buzz of excitement at about this time each year. I still have not got used to Test Matches starting in May and, as I mentioned at the end of last seasion (The anti-climax of one-day internationals), I think it's all the wrong way round now. Still, with the massive growth of Twenty20, the days of the one-day internationals may be limited. Jonathan Agnew thinks so (Exciting Times - but dangerous too). Speaking of Twenty20, it even made it into the Wall Street Journal the other day (Cricket Gets Lively). It is rare to see any mention of cricket in the American media, so it looks like the Twenty20 craze has even caused a few over here to take notice.

As usual, I will be tuning in via the internet. Our inability to pick up Dish TV, which is the only way to get it via TV in the US (How to cope without British TV and Radio: Cricket Supplement Update) means going to Willow TV, who do live streaming of the cricket for those in the US. The quality is usually perfectly OK, and pretty much unbroken, but it's nothing like as good as a TV signal. One annoyance is that they broadcast in 4:3 and not in widescreen. I have written to them about this, but have not got anywhere with them. Still, I'm grateful to be able to watch it at all in a land that knows nothing about cricket. This season, the choice is between $49.99 for just the New Zealand matches, or $149.99 for everything you can think of in 2008, so I've splashed out on the latter, which means that I'll be able to watch overseas tests too, which will be a treat.

Things are better for us during the summer too because we are allowed to listen to Test Match Special; there is no cricket commentary at all for Americans in the winter.

Muralitharan's Test Record, and a Sky News Report

I'm not able to watch as much of the cricket at the moment as I would like. The first test in a three match series between England and Sri Lanka began on Saturday, but it starts here each night at midnight (5am GMT), so even if I have a late night, I only catch the beginning. It is very annoying too that Test Match Special is unavailable to international users, and I haven't managed to find a back door that will allow me to listen. So I'm mainly managing with the TMS Podcast each morning (this time with Simon Hughes alongside Jonathan Agnew), and what I can find on the net, including some interesting bits and bobs on Youtube.

The early morning (our time) play today was momentous. Muttiah Muralitharan became the all time leading wicket taker in Test cricket, overtaking Shane Warne's 708 wickets, itself still a very recent memory. The following clip, from Sky News this afternoon, is unintentionally hilarious. As usual, there is more discussion of Murali's controversial action than there is of his amazing achievement. But here it becomes clear from quite early on that the Sky News presenter knows almost nothing about the game. Instead of a cricketing expert in the studio, she is joined by a physiotherapist who brings with her an arm so that she can illustrate Murali's congenital defect, and the big issue that worries the presenter is whether Murali will have arthritis in his old age, an issue she comes back to repeatedly. So congratulations to Murali on his fantastic achievement, and I hope you enjoy this bizarre (lack of a?) tribute:

Twenty20 Cricket Bowlout

I am finding the first ever World Twenty20 Cricket tournament enormously enjoyable, and very refreshing after the tedious seven-week Cricket World Cup earlier in the year (the one-day, 50 over a side form of the game). Twenty20 is a relatively new form of cricket, a fast-paced, fun-for-all-the-family, throw the bat spectacular. If test matches are the seven course gourmet dinner of cricket, Twenty20 is the burger and chips. And sometimes you fancy burger and chips. It's already very popular in the UK, and it's likely to become more popular internationally as a result of this World Cup, which lasts for just two weeks, finishing next Monday.

There have already been all sorts of interesting moments, but one of the oddest sights was the first ever "bowl out" last Friday in the match between India and Pakistan. It was a remarkable match, with a late surge that saw Pakistan catch up with India's total of 141, but unable to surpass it off the last couple of balls. Then, instead of awarding the sides one point each, it emerged that there would be a "bowl out" to decide the winner. This is like a penalty shoot out in football; a best of five bowling at the stumps. Although they have been used in British county cricket, this was the first time I'd ever seen one, and I watched in disbelief as all three Pakistani bowlers failed to hit the stumps. India, who hit the stumps with each of their first three balls, won the bowl out. Here it is on Youtube (after 20-30 seconds of guff):



It's difficult to know whether to be amused or baffled by the sight of international bowlers unable to hit the stumps with no batsman there. Even I can do that and I am absolutely crap at cricket.

The anti-climax of one-day internationals

I was delighted with England's victory today in the first one day international against India. This is a pretty rare thing these days in English cricket. Our one day form has been abysmal. But the delight at seeing such an emphatic win, with centuries from both Cook and Bell, doesn't help to lift that general feeling of anti-climax that hangs around yet another lengthy series of one day internationals, this time bolted on to the end of the British summer. Like most English cricket fans, I like test matches (the old-fashioned five-day form of the game). In the old days, the test matches would start later in the summer (June) and would continue to the end of August. The last test match at the Oval meant that summer was almost over and it was time to go back to school. But now the test matches finish in mid August and we have a whole bunch of one day internationals from now until early September. When a one day series precedes a test series, the one days whet your appetite and help you to look forward to the real action. When they come afterwards, they just feel like afterthoughts.

Several things made the beginning of this series of seven one day-ers feel even more like a damp squib. England's one day side is quite different from the test side, different captain, some different personnel, and it makes it feel less like a continuation of the summer than it would if it were the same side, as it used to be years ago. It was in Southampton, too, and not at a test ground, and under lights. I don't know that floodlit cricket really works in England. I once went to a floodlit match at Edgbaston, Birmingham, England v. Pakistan, the night of the 2001 general election, and the atmosphere feels odd, not least because it is rarely hot enough in England to make one enjoy sitting outside all evening.

Still, if England keep performing like they did today, I might manage to be less grumpy about that anti-climactic feeling that the cricket season is hastening too quickly to an end.