''Cricket AM'' was a Saturday-morning

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

-based

television programme A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

broadcast in the United Kingdom on

Sky Sports 1 Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It h ...

. It began broadcasting in May 2006, and is largely based on its successful

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

-related counterpart ''

Soccer AM ''Soccer AM'' is a British football-based comedy/talk show, produced by Sky Sports. First broadcast in 1995, the programme currently airs on Sky Showcase, Sky Sports Premier League and Sky Sports Football at 10.30am on Saturdays during the fo ...

'', as a replacement during the football off-season. The show lasts for 90 minutes and is presented by Matt Floyd, who has taken over from Simon Thomas, and

Sarah-Jane Mee Sarah-Jane Mee (born 10 July 1978) is a Sky News presenter and the anchor of ''The Sarah-Jane Mee Show''. From October 2016 until October 2019, Mee anchored ''Sunrise''. Career After graduating from the University of Manchester, Mee joined Sky ...

, the latter taking over from

Anita Rani Anita Rani Nazran (born 25 October 1977), better known as Anita Rani, is an English radio and television presenter. Early life Rani was born and brought up in Bradford, West Yorkshire to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother. In an episode of ' ...

. During the English Cricket Season either an England test or game or a County Cricket game followed the programme. The programme was last broadcast in 2013, and Sky confirmed it would not return for the 2014 season.

Features

The show features a range of regular cricket-related programming features. Studio guests include past and present cricketers, and musicians with an interest in cricket. Aside from results, previews and commentary on ongoing cricket, there are a number of regular studio features on the show, including ''Ready Steady Freddie'', a segment featuring prominent

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

all-rounder An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a handful of batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are consi ...

Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff competing against professionals in a number of different sports. Freddie has competed against

Ricky Hatton Richard John Hatton (born 6 October 1978) is a British former professional boxer who competed between 1997 and 2012, and has since worked as a boxing promoter and trainer. During his boxing career he held multiple world championships at li ...

at boxing,

Joey Barton Joseph Anthony Barton (born 2 September 1982) is an English professional football manager and former player who played as a midfielder. He made 269 appearances in the Premier League, including 130 for Manchester City. He is currently the man ...

at football, and has played

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

tenpin bowling Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned evenly in four rows in an equilateral triangle. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first roll o ...

archery Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In m ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

and

darts Darts or dart-throwing is a competitive sport in which two or more players bare-handedly throw small projectile point, sharp-pointed projectile, missiles known as dart (missile), darts at a round shooting target, target known as a #Dartboard, dar ...

against world champion Phil "The Power" Taylor, with mixed success! Another regular feature has two animated characters ("Willow and "Stumpy") explaining unusual rules or jargon. 'Champagne Cork' features Hampshire's

Dominic Cork Dominic is a name common among Roman Catholics and other Latin-Romans as a male given name. Originally from the late Roman-Italic name "Dominicus", its translation means "Lordly", "Belonging to God" or "of the Master". Variations include: Domini ...

looking back at the best moments of the past seven days, also there is a Stat of the Week, presented by the Sky Sport Statistician Benedict Bermange, while one of the Sky Sports commentary team is sitting behind him looking distinctly unimpressed. The show mirrors ''Soccer AM'' very closely in many regards; the ''Luther Blissett Stand'' was renamed as the

Gary Pratt Gary Joseph Pratt (born 22 December 1981) is an English cricketer and footballer, best known for running out the Australia cricket captain Ricky Ponting during the England 2–1 win in the 2005 Ashes series. Pratt is primarily a left-handed ba ...

cricket

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

, (2006). It was subsequently renamed as the

Dwayne Leverock Russell Dwayne Mark Leverock (born 14 July 1971) is a former Bermudian cricketer. Living above an Indian restaurant in Bermuda, Leverock is a jailer. At the 2007 Cricket World Cup he was the largest player to grace the pitch, weighing in at 2 ...

(2007) and the

Jesse Ryder Jesse Daniel Ryder (born 6 August 1984) is a former international New Zealand cricketer, who played all forms of the game. He is a middle-order batsman for Tests and is an opening batsman in ODIs. Ryder also bowls useful medium-pace. Ryder has ...

Pavilion for the 2008 season. In 2011, it has been renamed the

Douglas Jardine Douglas Robert Jardine ( 1900 – 1958) was an English cricketer who played 22 Test matches for England, captaining the side in 15 of those matches between 1931 and 1934. A right-handed batsman, he is best known for captaining the English ...

Pavilion. The pavilion is filled by the members of a club cricket team, who compete in a

bowl-out A bowl-out (sometimes termed a bowl-off) was used as a tiebreaker in various forms of limited overs cricket to decide a match that would otherwise end in a tie. Five bowlers from each side deliver one or two balls each at an unguarded wicket (th ...

in the outdoor car park at the end of the show. ''Throw Time'', a feature in which county cricket teams were visited and contested to throw a ball at the stumps with their "wrong" hand, closely resembled ''Soccer AMs ''Crossbar Challenge''. In 2009, two weekly features called 'Ultimate Sportsman' and 'Brain + Brawn' were introduced. In 'Ultimate Sportsman', three county professionals all from the same team compete to become the ultimate sportsman. A penalty shootout, a golf pitching challenge and a 3 dart throw are completed, and the player with the most points after this is the winner. In 'Brain + Brawn', two players from the same team attempt to score as many points as possible. One player has to answer quiz questions, while the other must hold a 5 kg dumbbell with their arm straight and horizontal to the body. Time ends when the weight cannot be held for any longer.

References

External links

Cricket AM (Sky Sports)Cricket AM on IMDB.com
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