Asian Cricket's Heat in an English Summer: County Calendars, Broadcast Windows and the Pulse of the Stands

I was climbing the stairs to the Old Trafford press box last week, and the first thing that stopped me was not the pitch. It was the queue outside the ticket counter — families from Rusholme, friends from Bolton, kids in India shirts, and an elderly couple buying a ticket for their son who couldn't get off work that day. The match was scheduled for seven in the evening, which is half past eleven at night in Indian time. That is the hour when county grounds in England usually start emptying. But that evening Old Trafford was filling up. In the twenty-odd years I have watched English summers, this is what has changed — the clock of cricket has moved. And it was not moved by a coach or a captain; it was moved by a broadcast deal.

Most of this piece will circle that deal. But before I begin, let me be clear about one thing. I grew up in India, I now live in Wigan, and I cover Asian cricket from an English press box. That double vision is neither romanticism nor an excuse. When I write about how BCCI money is bending the English summer calendar, I keep both markets' numbers side by side — India's broadcast numbers and England's county numbers — and I do not try to adjudicate from the middle. I just want to show who is sitting in the room and whose chair it is.

Context: A summer that is being rented out

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has six months of summer in a year, and in those six months it has to accommodate three kinds of guests — its own domestic county competitions, overseas tours (especially India and Australia), and new leagues like The Hundred. This was always difficult, but in recent years a new layer has been added. The value of the BCCI's media rights and the size of the Indian television market have become so large that it becomes difficult for the ECB to decide which match is played at which hour.

I have a simple sheet I call the 'broadcast ledger.' In it I have been noting, over the last few seasons, which fixture was scheduled for Indian prime time and what impact that had on the county schedule. For instance, when India tours England, the first day of the Test matches is often placed on a Thursday, with early hours in the afternoon so that it lands in the Indian evening. This means that in the same week, County Championship fixtures often get squeezed from Monday to Wednesday, or are shifted to another ground altogether. This is not a conspiracy; it is simply the arithmetic of money and the clock.

But the impact of this arithmetic is not confined to the calendar. It falls on the people who come to watch county cricket — the very audience that has been the backbone of the English summer for a hundred years. When county matches shift to Monday-Wednesday, the schoolteacher, the retired worker and the local family who watch them cannot come. And when they don't come, the club's gate revenue falls. This is where my argument begins.

Core analysis: Who is buying whose summer

Now turn the picture around. The pressure of the broadcast window is not only on England. In India, the IPL and the Women's Premier League (WPL) have filled the domestic calendar so much that the Ranji Trophy and domestic one-day tournaments are now squeezed into a tight March-April window. I have watched this shift from the first IPL season in 2026 to the arrival of the WPL in 2026. And I have also seen people in India say that the IPL did not kill Test cricket — the truth is that it sidelined the Ranji Trophy. The same applies to England. Test cricket is alive here, but the County Championship is slowly heading to the same place the Ranji Trophy is — the margins of the calendar.

Take a concrete example. In the 2026 English summer there was no India tour, but there were tours by Sri Lanka and West Indies. Regarding the timing of those Test matches, what the ECB made public was clear: the start hours were decided after consultation with broadcasters. When I spoke to officials at some county clubs that year, they said their domestic fixtures had already been fixed, and they had to make minor changes later. One club official told me, 'We are renting out our summer to somebody else's prime time.' I wrote that sentence in my diary because it is the essence of the whole matter.

But there is a catch here, and this is my main point. The problem is not that Indian money is entering the English summer. The problem is that England's domestic structure is losing the space to negotiate with that money. When county clubs are told that their matches will be shifted because an international match's timing has changed, they have no choice. They can neither raise ticket prices (because their audience is local) nor compensate their members. And when they do all this, their revenue falls, which directly affects their players' wages and coaching staff.

The impact falls on players too. A young county player who is just establishing himself suddenly learns that his next match is three days later, and in another city. His preparation, his rest, his family — everything is decided by that broadcast window. I spoke last year to a young fast bowler who plays for a county club near Wigan. He said, 'We don't even know where we are playing next week. We just get a message.' This is the same young player who is supposed to come into England's Test structure. If the conditions of his preparation are decided by broadcasters, the quality of Test cricket will suffer.

Now look at the other side — the audience. The queue at Old Trafford that evening was not only of people of Indian origin. It included local English people who wanted to see the Indian team play. This is a market that English cricket has not fully understood yet. The Indian diaspora is a large audience in England, and it does not come only to India matches. It can come to county matches too, if it feels welcome. I have seen that when a county club organised events with the Indian community, their gates grew. But this effort is scattered, because most clubs have neither the money nor the time.

Contrarian angle: Those who say it is all fine

Now I will say something that perhaps some of my colleagues would not. There is a section in English cricket that believes Indian money coming in is good, because it gives the game financial security. Their argument is that if relations with the BCCI are good, England gets big matches, and the revenue from those matches supports county cricket too. This argument is not entirely wrong. ECB figures show that a share of revenue from international matches goes into the domestic game. But this argument ignores one thing — financial security and structural control are not the same thing. If county clubs are told their calendar will change and they will get some money in return, that is not help, it is dependency. And dependency harms in the long run in the same way that it harms a club to take a player on a large signing-on fee rather than a transfer fee.

I want to make another contrarian point here. Many people think England's county system is old and useless. But my experience says county cricket is where Test players are made. When I was in Manchester during the 2026 Champions Trophy, I saw how young players of Indian origin were playing in county clubs and not getting a proper platform. That same summer I got the football beat — Wigan Athletic — and I learned from there how a team's atmosphere works. But returning to cricket, I found that county cricket is the place where players are made, and if it is weakened, England's Test cricket will be weakened too.

One more thing I connect to my experience. In 2026, when I was covering the football World Cup in Russia, I saw how a tournament's organisation passes through that country's media room. There too, broadcasters decided which match would be played when. Back in India, I saw the same thing in cricket. The difference is that in football the international calendar is fixed in advance, while in cricket changes keep happening. And it is these changes that hurt county cricket the most.

Takeaway: The signal for next season

Now I will say what I believe most strongly. The real question for English cricket is not whether Indian money comes in or not. The real question is whether the ECB and county clubs can hold their own terms in negotiations with broadcasters. I know this is not easy, because money talks. But I also know that until county clubs have a solid way to retain their audiences, they will be ready for every change. And that is the biggest danger.

I have a suggestion, and it comes from my experience. County clubs should partner with their local Indian and Asian communities, and not limit it to match day. In Wigan I have seen that when a club organised events with the community, their gates grew, and so did their revenue. This is the way county cricket can hold its ground.

Finally, a question I want to ask at every press conference but never get to. When next year's calendar is made, will any county club official have the right to ask why his match was shifted? And if not, do we accept that the English summer now runs entirely on loan? For me, that is the question whose answer will come in the next few months.